Practitioners play a vital role in creating safe and supportive spaces for children and young people. The language we use – whether in conversation, recording or in our reports – has the power to shift or shatter, empower or silence.
Victim blaming language can unintentionally shift responsibility from the person causing harm to the person who has been harmed or is at risk. As well as undermining the victim, this can make it harder for children and young people to speak out, reduce trust in practitioners and allow cycles of abuse and exploitation to continue.
Victim blaming
Victim blaming occurs when the focus is placed on what the child or young person did or did not do, rather than on what the person who caused harm was doing. Some examples include:
- ‘They put themselves at risk’
- ‘Their vulnerabilities led to them being abused’
- ‘They’re a troublemaker’
- ‘They make poor relationship choices’
- ‘Why didn’t they leave sooner?’
- ‘They must have known what would happen when they got into that car’
Using language in this way places the fault or responsibility on the victim, rather than acknowledging the harm or where it comes from. When we use victim blaming language, the person causing harm is absent from the conversation. This can mean that there is less focus on disrupting the actions of the person causing harm in our interventions and plans to keep children safe and an over-emphasis on children and young people making changes to their everyday lives to stay safe.
The Children’s Society: Appropriate Language – Child Exploitation provides a guide for practitioners about appropriate language to use when there are worries about children and young people being exploited.