Blaming the victim, preserving the icon

The Gendered Moral Work of Celebrity Sexual Abuse Scandals

Bibliographic Data

ID7154288
AuthorsAnneke Meyer (0000-0002-7477-3175, Manchester Metropolitan University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume25
Issue8
Pages1890-1904
Publication date2025-11-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Media Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1468-0777 • E-ISSN: 1471-5902
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14680777.2024.2392102
OpenAlexW4402721592
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited27

This article takes as a case study the sexual abuse scandal surrounding British actor and “national treasure” William Roache, who went on trial for historical child sexual abuse in 2014. Based on a thematic newspaper analysis of the case, this article traces changing constructions of blame in the media to reveal how notions of guilt and innocence are both fluid and gendered. Throughout the course of the scandal, credibility and blame are reversed; Roache, who is initially assumed guilty, comes to be portrayed as an innocent victim of a “celebrity witch hunt” while the female complainants are framed as untrustworthy. Scandals have been shown to transform the status of a transgressor from “national treasure” to “monster” , but this article argues that scandals can also preserve male celebrities as noble icons by means of discrediting the female victims. Here, the moral work of sexual abuse scandals reveals itself as deeply gendered; it vilifies women and allows celebrity status to protect male transgressors by tapping into gendered cultural contexts of rape myths, “himpathy” and a “gendered economy of believability”

Criminology · Icon · Medical emergency · Poison control · Sexual abuse · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Engineering · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Human Factors and Ergonomics · Medicine · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Social Psychology

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