Abstract Background: Without a doubt there are few categories of crimes that affect the community and its victims as much as rape, sexual assaults, and the other so-called sex-related or sex crimes. Being raped, sexually assaulted or experiencing any form of unwanted sexual attention is a very distressing experience with effects that can be long lasting. Aim: To assess the attitude of youth towards the female rape victims. Methods and Material: Sample consisted of 300 graduate students from three selected colleges of Punjab. Simple randomized sampling technique was followed to select sample. Attitude towards rape victim scale developed by Wards’ (1988) was used. The study was conducted from 12th Oct.2015 to 30th Oct.2015. The data was analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics wherever required. Results: The descriptive statistics showed that 64% of study subjects had moderately favourable attitude , followed by 27% of subjects who expressed favourable attitude and rest of the subjects (9%) exhibited unfavourable attitude towards the rape victims. Chi-square computed significant relationship of both gender (= 9.950, p<0.001) and type of family (= 10.688, p<0.01) with attitudes towards rape victims. Conclusion: A little more than one fourth (27%) of the population explicitly showed favourable attitude, which challenges the society for a great need to generate awareness among youth to foster positive attitude towards rape victims.
Keywords: Attitude; Female Rape Victims; Graduate Students; Gender.