Status Defense Myths

Status Defense Myths: Understanding How Power and Privilege Go Unpunished investigates the role of status in the decision to punish or permit violence in society. Whether sexual, racial, political or financial, powerful factors work to maintain the status quo, heaping retribution on low-status perpetrators and delivering leniency to those with high-status. The model of status defense myths identifies four factors that are used to justify violence or absolve perpetrators of blame: evidence, deviance, danger and social worth. Status defense myths have been studied most often in the context of men's sexual violence toward women, particularly "victim blaming", hence this is a timely resource.
Whether on an elementary school playground, courtroom, or boardroom, status defense myths are used to privilege the rights of some at the expense of others. Understanding how this rhetoric exists and how it works is essential to understanding and combatting injustice.

Kristine Chapleau is a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at Indiana University School of Medicine, and adjunct professor at Indiana University Purdue University-Indianapolis. From 2001-2003, she has studied the effects of stereotypes and prejudice toward African Americans; specifically, how Afrocentric features of White and African American men influence criminal sentencing. Since 2004, she then studied sexual aggression and rape denial/justification. Her publications were the first to examine how rape denial/justification are associated with positive stereotypes about men, as well as depends on the perpetrator and victim's relative status, and the threat of punishment. In her clinical practice she treats victims of abuse who are further victimized by these status defense myths.