Blaming the victim, preserving the icon: the gendered moral work of celebrity sexual abuse scandals

Meyer, Anneke ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4966-5794 (2024) Blaming the victim, preserving the icon: the gendered moral work of celebrity sexual abuse scandals. Feminist Media Studies. pp. 1-15. ISSN 1468-0777

Preview

Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (675kB) | Preview

Abstract

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”.