Clearly, different people can respond differently to the same messages and environment. One way to understand the differences in perceptions is to keep in mind that many victims of sexual abuse suffer from guilt and self-blame as common effects of sexual victimization. This is often due to the deliberate blame shifting strategies that perpetrators employ to ensure the victim’s silence. Having already internalized poisonous beliefs about their culpability and unworthiness, abuse victims are often particularly sensitive to sermon and classroom teachings that reinforce the condemnation and despondency they struggle with daily. As a result, many abuse victims are sensitized to perceive and remember victim blaming/perpetrator exonerating attitudes and teachings that individuals without such life experiences fail to note consciously. In more concrete terms, abuse victims may be able to detect toxic victim blaming/perpetrator exonerating attitudes in highly diluted concentrations th...