The primary objective of this paper is to analyse how secondary victimisation is carried out by Italian judges in the reasons of judgement of their verdicts, particularly in trials for rape. Secondary victimization has long aroused interest in the scientific landscape, especially when referring to women victims of gender-based violence (Shoham et al. 2010); and has been extensively studied in the forms of rape myths (Brownmiller 1975; Estrich 1976; Bohner et al. 1998; Thornton 2022) and genderized stereotypes (Smith 2018). But little or no research is present looking at how language is used by judges in the legal context of a judgement, especially in the Italian sociological landscape. The second aim of this work is, therefore, to fill the literature gap applying Membership Categorization Analysis to two Italian appeal verdicts in trials for rape. By doing so, it is shown how the victim is characterised by the judges through language pertaining rape myths and gendered stereotypes, and how these discriminating elements are used as evidence to evaluate the presence of a crime – therefore making legal a moral judgement on the victims, and not a lawful one towards the defendants.
