Bystanders’ Reactions to a Woman Victim of Sextortion: Moral Outrage, Victim Blaming and Reputational Damage

Abstract

Sextortion is a scantly investigated crime in which entrusted authority is abused to obtain sex in exchange for a service or benefit. Based on the literature on gender violence, in the present research, we examined the role of moral evaluations of the victims in predicting potential bystanders’ attitudes and behavioural intentions towards a woman who is a victim of a sextortion incident. In three experimental studies conducted with Italian participants (Study 1: n = 291; Study 2: n = 288; Study 3: n = 331), participants read a scenario describing a woman victim of sextortion and then rated the victim on moral outrage, moral evaluation, blame attribution, perceived reputational damage, and indicated their willingness to help her. The results highlighted that the victim was always perceived as less moral and more blameworthy when she caved into sextortion (vs. not). Furthermore, a sequential mediation model showed that, across all studies, caving into (vs. resisting) sextortion elicited stronger feelings of moral outrage towards the victim, as well as the perception of lower morality, which, in turn, reduced the willingness to offer help. In Study 3, this pattern was significant only when the woman reported the incident 1 year later (vs. 1 week). Current findings show that the peculiar transactional nature of sexual abuse makes sextortion victims appear to be complicit in the act. Thus, recognising the power dynamics through which sextortion can be used to exploit and abuse individuals is paramount to avoid secondary victimisation.