According to the 2024 Eurobarometer, 32 per cent of Czechs believe that a woman who became a victim of sexual violence while under the influence of alcohol or drugs is at least partly responsible for it. The European Union average is 16 per cent. Other questions the European survey used to find out how people see victims produced similar results: more people in Czechia agree with most of the statements that shift blame from the perpetrator to the victim, and for several of them roughly twice as many.
Shifting blame onto the victim has a technical name: victim blaming. A bingo card that sums it up in 25 squares is now circulating on social media. It is shared by the account @piskuntalie and collects phrases that, according to its author, come up every time domestic or sexual violence is discussed in public.
| B | I | N | G | O |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| why did she go there | come on, nothing that bad happened | her word against his | she wanted it, then changed her mind in the morning | she should have chosen better |
| and what about violence against men | why didn’t she report it straight away | opening doors, helping her into her coat | so he’s a bit hot-headed, so what | ruined life, ruined career |
| she’s exaggerating, hysterical, oversensitive | she wants to be famous | what was she wearing | it was just a joke | don’t take the children’s dad away from them |
| he didn’t hit her, so what | she remembered it years later | why didn’t she leave after the first slap? | she was drunk, what did she expect | why didn’t she fight back? |
| did she really say a clear NO? | what did she do to provoke him? | in our day women liked a slap on the bum | women can be nasty too | a relationship takes compromise |
We took the squares for which solid data exist and, for each of them, looked up three things: how many people agree with the statement in Czechia and in Europe, what research says about the matter, and what Czech law says. Public attitudes were measured by two Eurobarometer surveys of the European Commission: a special survey on gender-based violence from 2016 (1,060 respondents in Czechia, face-to-face interviews) and a flash survey on gender stereotypes from 2024 (1,019 respondents in Czechia, online). Women’s experience of violence comes from the European EU-GBV survey, in which Czechia took part in 2023–2024.
Victim blaming in numbers
32%
of Czechs shift part of the blame onto the victim if she was drunk32 per cent of Czechs believe that a woman who became a victim of sexual violence while under the influence of alcohol or drugs is at least partly responsible. The EU average is 16 per cent (Eurobarometer 2024).
70%
of rape victims are unable to resist during the attackThe body reacts to a threat on its own. Marked freezing (tonic immobility), in which a person can neither move nor scream, was experienced during the attack by 70 per cent of 298 women in a Swedish study from 2017.
76%
of victims of intimate partner homicide are womenBetween 2015 and 2024, a current or former partner killed 109 women and 35 men in Czechia (Eurostat, excluding 2018).
Twice as many Czechs consider a drunk woman partly to blame
The statement “she was drunk, what did she expect” appears in the data most often. Besides the Eurobarometer, Amnesty International has also been asking about it since 2015. In research carried out by the FOCUS agency for Amnesty International in 2018, 37 per cent of respondents considered a drunk woman at least partly responsible for being raped, six percentage points fewer than in 2015. In the 2024 Eurobarometer the figure was 32 per cent. The two numbers cannot be combined into a single series, because the surveys asked differently and used different methods, but both come out at around a third.
Research shows that alcohol is indeed linked to sexual violence, but on the side of the perpetrators. According to a victimisation survey by the Institute of Criminology and Social Prevention, a research institute of the Czech Ministry of Justice, from 2019–2022, roughly half of the perpetrators of sexual violence were under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Czech law is unequivocal on this. Since 2025, the Criminal Code has explicitly counted as helplessness a state in which the victim’s ability to express their will is substantially reduced “by the influence of addictive substances”. Anyone who takes advantage of a drunk or drugged victim commits rape or sexual assault by exploiting helplessness, even if the victim drank voluntarily.
The situation in which a woman “went home with him”, for instance after a party or a date, turns out similarly. In 2016, 18 per cent of Czechs and 11 per cent of people across the Union thought such behaviour could justify sex without consent. For flirting, the gap was even wider: 17 per cent in Czechia and 7 per cent in the EU.
The chart shows eight statements for which we have both Czech and European figures. Czechia is above the EU average for seven of them. The only exception is clothing: 10 per cent of Czechs and 10 per cent of people across the Union believe that revealing clothes can justify sex without consent. The biggest differences are for flirting, drunkenness and the question of whether the woman said no clearly enough: there, roughly twice as many Czechs agree as people across the Union.
“She didn’t clearly say no” and “she didn’t fight back”: since 2025 the law does not require resistance
In 2016, 19 per cent of Czechs believed that sex without consent can be justified if the woman “did not clearly say no or did not physically resist”, almost twice the EU average (10 per cent). The more recent Eurobarometer asked a slightly different question: in 2024, 14 per cent of Czechs and 9 per cent of people in the EU believed that a woman who says “no” often means “yes” and is just “playing hard to get”.
The idea that a victim should fight back runs up against the way the human body reacts to a threat. In a 2017 study, Swedish doctors followed 298 women who sought help at a Stockholm clinic for victims after being raped. Seventy per cent of them experienced marked freezing (tonic immobility), in which a person can neither move nor scream, during the attack, and 48 per cent experienced extreme freezing. Women who froze in this way were more likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder six months later: 51 per cent, compared with 28 per cent of the others.
The law has taken this into account since January 2025. The new definition of rape no longer requires violence, a threat or resistance from the victim. It is enough that the perpetrator has intercourse with another person “against their discernible will”. Consent therefore cannot be inferred from the fact that the victim did not scream or run away.
How simple consent really is is explained by the British animation Tea Consent from 2015, made by Blue Seat Studios based on a text by the blogger Emmeline May and later used by British police in a campaign. It compares consent to a cup of tea: if someone does not want it, you do not force them to drink it, and if they fall asleep in the meantime, you do not pour it down their throat. The Czech version was published by Bílý kruh bezpečí (White Circle of Safety), a Czech victim support organisation.
Copyright ©2015 Emmeline May and Blue Seat Studios, original Tea Consent video. Czech version: Bílý kruh bezpečí.
“What was she wearing?” Nobody asks someone who has been robbed the same question
In 2016, 26 per cent of Czechs and 17 per cent of people in the EU believed that violence against women “is often provoked by the victim”. Czechs view clothing itself in the same way as the rest of the Union, but they are harsher about “provocation” in general. A similar statement was also examined in 2021 by a Kantar survey for IKEA, according to which 56 per cent of respondents said domestic violence happens partly because the woman “provokes” it. However, it was published only by the company that commissioned it, without the exact wording of the questions, so it cannot be compared with the Eurobarometer.
What such questions sound like when you put them to the victim of a different crime was shown in 2017 by the sketch What were you wearing? from Tracey Ullman’s Show on the British channel BBC One. In it, a police officer questions a man who has been robbed by a mugger with a knife and, instead of searching for the perpetrator, tries to establish whether the victim was wearing too expensive a suit, whether he had been drinking and why he did not scream. The American lawyer Connie Borkenhagen used a similar reversal as early as 1975 in her text The Rape of Mr. Smith.
“Why didn’t she report it straight away?” Most victims never report it
According to the European EU-GBV survey, 11 per cent of Czech women who have experienced physical or sexual violence go to the police, compared with an EU average of 13.9 per cent. Fifty-eight per cent of victims in Czechia and 68 per cent in the EU confided in anyone at all, including people close to them or support organisations. The remaining two fifths of Czech victims told no one about the violence.
Across the Union, victims give shame or a sense of their own guilt as the most common reason for staying silent. In the case of rape by a stranger, according to a report by the FRA and EIGE agencies, half of the victims who did not report it mentioned this reason, and 29 per cent did not believe the police would do anything or believe them. Eurostat does not publish Czech figures on the reasons.
For victims of abuse in childhood, the silence lasts even longer. According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, of adults who experienced rape or attempted rape in childhood, a quarter told someone at the time and seven per cent reported it to the police. The statement “she remembered it years later” therefore describes a common course of events rather than a suspicious exception.
“She wants to be famous”: proven false accusations amount to a few per cent
In 2024, 23 per cent of Czechs and 17 per cent of people in the EU believed that women often make up or exaggerate accusations of abuse or rape. Here the gap with Europe is the smallest, but the view is shared by roughly a quarter of respondents.
Research that has gone through police files reaches a different picture. A 2010 study by David Lisak and colleagues summarised studies using a comparable definition into a range of two to ten per cent of reports proven to be false. A meta-analysis of seven studies from 2016 gives 5.2 per cent. This is a lower-bound estimate, because some cases cannot be classified unambiguously and end without a conclusion. In addition, Czech statistics do not distinguish at all whether a false accusation concerned a sexual offence.
“He didn’t hit her, so what”: psychological violence is the most common
According to the EU-GBV survey, 31.3 per cent of Czech women who have ever had a partner have experienced psychological violence from a partner, slightly more than the EU average (29.9 per cent). Physical or sexual violence from a partner was reported by 11.6 per cent, less than in the EU (17 per cent). The lower Czech figure may mean less violence, but also less willingness to talk about it in a survey. The survey itself cannot tell the two apart.
According to crime statistics for 2025, the police registered 574 cases of the criminal offence of abuse of a person living in a shared dwelling last year and cleared up roughly half of them.
“And what about violence against men?” Men are victims too, but lethal violence falls mainly on women
Men also become victims of domestic violence, and no data contradict that part of the bingo statement. According to its annual report for 2024, men made up 15 per cent of those calling the Bílý kruh bezpečí helpline about domestic violence. Among the adults at risk for whose sake the police barred a violent person from a shared home, there were 212 men and 1,477 women in 2024, according to the Association of Intervention Centre Workers (APIC).
The most serious violence, however, falls mainly on women. According to Eurostat, between 2015 and 2024 a current or former partner killed 109 women and 35 men in Czechia (data for 2018 are missing). Women make up 76 per cent of victims of intimate partner homicide.
“Why didn’t she leave after the first slap?” Leaving is the most dangerous moment
It is often repeated that a victim leaves a violent relationship seven times on average before leaving for good. This figure has no traceable source. What is documented is that leaving and returning are common. In a study from a women’s shelter, two thirds of the women had already returned to their partner before.
Why leaving is not easy is shown by an American study by Jacquelyn Campbell from 2003, which compared 220 murdered women with 343 abused women who survived. When a woman left a highly controlling partner, the risk that he would kill her was roughly nine times higher. Leaving thus often escalates a dangerous situation rather than ending it.
The Czech police can bar a violent person from a shared home for ten days. According to an APIC commentary, intervention centres recorded 1,640 barring orders last year, the highest number since the measure was introduced in 2007.
“Don’t take the children’s dad away from them”: for children at risk, the abuser is usually a parent
According to APIC, 3,251 children living in families where a barring order was issued were at risk in 2025, and for 72 per cent of them the violent person was their own parent. The Institute of Criminology and Social Prevention reviewed 106 court judgments in cases of intimate partner violence: three quarters of the perpetrators had a child with the victim, and in 91 per cent of these cases the children were present during the attacks.
How the state should proceed in such a situation when deciding on custody and contact with children is set out in Article 31 of the Istanbul Convention: the court must take violent incidents into account, and contact must not jeopardise the safety of the victim or the children. Czechia signed the convention in 2016, but in January 2024 the Czech Senate did not approve it, with 34 senators voting in favour out of the 36 needed. In June this year, Andrej Babiš’s government also revoked the earlier consent to ratification.
Where the bingo phrases come back
The bingo phrases do not appear only in comment sections under articles. Experts speak of secondary victimisation, in which the victim is harmed a second time by the way the people around them, the police or the court respond. Questions such as “what were you wearing” or “why didn’t you fight back” are typical examples, and they are among the reasons why victims of violence do not report the crime at all. According to our analysis of police and judicial data (in Czech), roughly one in ten rape victims goes to the police, and of the more than a thousand rapes registered by the police in 2024, 161 perpetrators ended up in prison.
Anyone in Czechia who is experiencing violence or sees it around them can call the Bílý kruh bezpečí non-stop helpline for victims on 116 006, the helpline for women and girls at risk of violence on 116 016, or, in acute danger, the police on 158.
Methodology: Public attitudes come from two European Commission surveys: Special Eurobarometer 449 (fieldwork in June 2016, face-to-face interviews, aged 15 and over, 1,060 respondents in Czechia) and Flash Eurobarometer 544 (February 2024, online panel, aged 18 and over, 1,019 respondents in Czechia). The surveys differ in both data-collection method and question wording, so we do not combine them into time series. Agreement is the sum of “totally agree” and “tend to agree” answers; for the question on justifying sex without consent, it is the share of people who selected the given situation. The EU average covers 28 countries (2016) and 27 countries (2024) respectively. Experience of violence and its reporting comes from the European EU-GBV survey (Eurostat, women aged 18–74, data labelled with the year 2021). Intimate partner homicides are from the Eurostat table crim_hom_vrel. All figures are recalculated from the original tables by a script accompanying the article. The bingo card is taken from a graphic by the account @piskuntalie.
