The article presentsan analysis of the coverage of two cases of rape in the daily Israeli popular press. The authors’ hypothesis that the younger victim who did not know most of her attackers will be portrayed as helpless and not responsible for her victimization and would enjoy more positive descriptions than the older victim who knew her aggressors was not supported. In both cases, the reports tended to focus on the victims’ behavior before the rape, emphasizing that they were not sexually innocent. It is argued that by focusing on the victims’ previous sexual experience and by identifying them as “bad girls,” the newspapers sustained and reinforced the myths that a woman who is having consensual sex cannot be raped, and if so, she is held culpable and perceived as “asking for it.”
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