Victim Blaming Detection
at scale
Give your teams a clear view of how victim-blaming language shows up in judgments, reports, case notes and policies – so you can shift culture, not just run another training session.
Try it for free. No installation. Works in the browser. Upload a PDF or paste text to get a full, research-backed analysis in seconds.
What ViDA does
Victim blaming is more than a few clumsy phrases. It’s the tendency to treat survivors as partly responsible for the harm they experienced and to downplay the role of the perpetrator or the context.
This statement implies that the absence of coercion during specific periods negates the possibility of abuse, which shifts focus away from the alleged abusive behavior and undermines the victim's claims. It rationalizes the perpetrator's actions and questions the victim's narrative.
"The fact that the Respondent did not coerce the mother to have intercourse on their wedding night or for a few weeks after the marriage... showed that the father did not feel 'that the mother’s body was his to use ...'"
In practice, that means:
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Survivors internalise blame and shame, which increases trauma and self-doubt.
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They disengage from services, are less likely to report future abuse and lose trust in the police, courts and support agencies.
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Institutions lose legitimacy, especially when formal documents minimise abuse, mutualise responsibility or pathologise the victim while excusing the perpetrator.
Research shows that victim-blaming is not just an interpersonal attitude; it is built into institutional language – in family court judgments, casework notes and decision letters – often in subtle ways that are hard to spot without systematic tools.
"... the judge at para 30 refers to many of the incidents as being 'minor or even petty, but the real question for any future court having regard to the child’s welfare is whether the words or actions alleged show a course of conduct by which X is deliberately ... coercive, controlling and undermining of Y so that domestic abuse becomes a serious issue in this case'"
Referring to the incidents as "minor or even petty" trivializes the alleged abuse, undermining its severity and potentially dismissing the victim's experience. This constitutes victim blaming by minimizing the impact of the alleged abuse.
At the same time, frontline staff are under pressure and experiencing empathy fatigue. When workloads are high and trauma is constant, harmful phrases creep in even when people care deeply.
ViDA gives you a practical mirror: a way to see these patterns in your own language, change them, and track improvement over time.
Cultural change, not just compliance
From one-off checks to measurable culture change
Using ViDA as a web app is a powerful first step. For larger organisations, we also offer:
Organisation-wide API and dashboards
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Internal API deployment
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Integrate ViDA into your document management systems, case-work tools or data lakes.
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Run analyses automatically on new documents or retrospective audits.
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Aggregated statistics
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Track victim-blaming by service, team, region or document type.
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See which categories (e.g. minimising, behavioural blame, gaslighting) are most common.
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Before-and-after comparisons
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Measure the impact of new training, guidance, supervision models or policy changes.
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Identify “hotspots” where empathy fatigue or structural issues might be driving harmful language.
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Evidence for regulators and funders
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Show that you’re not just delivering training but demonstrating change in how victims and survivors are written and spoken about.
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Start small, scale safely
FAQ
Is this a replacement for professional judgment?
No. ViDA is a decision-support tool. It surfaces patterns and examples so humans can reflect, discuss and decide what to do.
What kinds of documents work best?
ViDA is especially effective on technical text such as judgments, reports, case notes, complaint letters and policy documents in English.
How do you handle sensitive data?
We support privacy-preserving workflows and, for enterprise deployments, can run the model within your own environment so text never leaves your infrastructure.
Can we customise the categories?
The core taxonomy is grounded in research, but we can work with you to emphasise specific patterns or domains and to integrate ViDA into your existing training frameworks.