Victim Rhetoric among Sex Offenders: A Case Study of the Former Israeli President

Abstract

In 2009, the Israeli eight former president Katzav was accused of two counts of rape against an employee working under his authority during his time as Minister of Tourism. The story of the conviction of the eighth Israeli president of sex offences turned into a high-priority media story, which stayed at the top of the Israeli media agenda for a relatively long period. This qualitative paper, is aiming to identify and analyze the various rhetorical techniques utilized by Katsav, to replace the new criminal identity attributed to him with a victimized self-identity. The victimized rhetoric which is based on justifications and accounts such as: "Reverse character assassination", "Attack the attackers" or "Contradiction technique", had served the former president as a means to reduce his responsibility, to deny it and to build an alternative narrative that presents the alleged perpetrator as a persecuted victim. Never the less, the conviction and jailing of a president for sex crimes has greatly increased the awareness of sex offences in the workplace committed by people of power and authority.