Abstract
This study investigates attributions towards the perpetrator, the victim and the victim's parents in a hypothetical internet solicitation case. A community sample of 187 respondents read a vignette outlining an internet chatroom conversation between a 10-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man, followed by a depicted sexual assault, before rating 26 attribution items. Principal components analysis extracted six reliable and interpretable factors which were then subjected to a two-respondent gender×two-victim age×two-victim internet naivety×two-parental neglect between-subjects multiple analyses of variance (MANOVA). While levels of victim naivety had no impact on any measure, parents who were neglectful of their child's online activities were deemed more culpable for their child's later abuse than were parents who took an active interest in their child's activities. In general, females deemed the victim more credible than males. Implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 196-214 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Journal of Sexual Aggression |
Volume | 17 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 25 May 2011 |
Keywords
- blame attributions
- Internet solicitation
- victims
- parental neglect
- gender differences
- perpetrators
- sexual assault
- 10-yr-old victim
- 25-yr-old perpetrator
- Attribution
- Blame
- Human Sex Differences
- Perpetrators
- Sexual Abuse
- Age Differences
- Child Abuse
- Child Neglect
- Internet
- Parental Involvement
- Sex Offenses