Unlikeable Victims: why you need to unlearn having to ‘like’ someone to believe them

Sometimes, bad things happen to horrible people

There’s this weird desire by the media, and indeed, public , to demand easily identifiable ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’ in a story. We can feel sorry for a homeless man who had his tent set alight, but only if he’s doing his best to get off drugs. We can condemn a man who strangled his wife, but only if she didn’t cheat on him. We can support a woman bringing her rapist to justice, but only if she doesn’t try to profit off the press attention. We can sob for a girl killed by a teenage boy with a knife, but not if she turned him down or was mean to him. It’s weird. It’s very weird.

In real life, there are very few flawless sainted damsels. It is entirely possible that someone who was stupid, nasty, selfish, self-serving, unfaithful, greedy, abusive, or lazy could be the victim of crime or violence.

We tend to disbelieve people who don’t fit our ideal of meek, humble, and distraught

There are loads and loads of examples of this, so I’ll just cover the obvious headlines; it can’t be true that Amber Heard was abused by Johnny Depp because she was abusive to him too. It’s ok that Chloe Ayling was kidnapped and held captive because she exploited the situation for fame and made bad PR decisions over it. Virginia Giuffre couldn’t have been raped by Prince Andrew…