Night Shift: The hidden shift
Video: Rape on the Night Shift
"There's no one to ask for help when certain things happened, and you screamed. No one can hear. And there are certain places where there are no cameras. There's no sound. There's nobody." Erika Morales stated in a documentary called Rape on the Night Shift. A woman should not be afraid to go to work and a woman should never be afraid to of her supervisor. However, that is not always the case for the hidden world of the night shift that does more than hide from the morning sun, it hides from the real problems its female workers deal with at night in the work place. Do we blame these victims for working such a dark shift and the fact they are Latina? Or is it due to their cultures that rapists feel they can threaten them of deportation?
On a documentary by Frontline called “Rape on the Night Shift” sheds light on the dark nights of the night shift. A man could work a night shift and worry about the possibility of getting robbed or someone breaking into the building where he works. This is not the case for women, they not only have to worry about those same situations, but they also must fear of being raped and not just by strangers but by supervisors who take advantage of the absence of other people around. Experts say sexual assault of women in the janitorial business is one of the most underreported crimes in the country.
This perspective of modern victimization is known as the Routine Activities Theory by Cohen and Felson in 1979 and occurs where three elements are present for a crime to occur. The first element is that a motivated offender with criminal intentions and the ability to act on these feelings. The second element is there needs to be a suitable victim or target. The last element is that there must be absence of a capable guardian who can prevent the crime from happening. In this documentary there are all three elements from all these workers. Morales says in the documentary, "He knew there weren't any cameras. I would yell and nobody would hear me, nobody could see me."
It’s hard to believe but in this documentary, there is in fact victim blaming within. This is from these women working, having to work at night and being in fact a Hispanic woman. There are so many stereotypes of Latina women as passionate and sexual women. Therefore, people that would believe that these women put themselves in this situation to work these night shift hours even though they work this shift to provide food and shelter to their children and themselves. Due to this type of victim blaming caused these women to be fearful to report these ra...
