39-year-old Vasiliki was murdered with 45 stab wounds by her 41-year-old husband in Kalamata in the early hours of Monday, June 1st, while their two minor children, aged 6 and 10, were sleeping in the next room. But for some people, this wasn’t enough. Hours after the sixth femicide of 2026, the 39-year-old found herself targeted again. Not by the person who took her life, but by many social media users who rushed to comment on her appearance, judge her online presence, question her behavior, and in some cases, even justify her killer.
Femicide in Kalamata: 39-year-old Vasiliki targeted on social media
Instead of the discussion revolving around the violence that led to her death, it shifted to the life of a woman who can no longer defend herself. “From the photos it seems she was playing around too and he learned about it, went crazy and the bad thing happened,” “Get some sense or you’ll all end up there,” “When you do such things, you’re playing with the beast that civilization sometimes manages to calm, but sometimes not” were just some of the vulgar comments recorded under posts about the crime.
Comments focusing on her appearance weren’t missing either. “I just saw a photo of the victim with nose piercings and a chain connecting to her earring. Complete lack of respect,” wrote one user, attempting to connect the woman’s appearance to her murder.
The phenomenon of victim blaming
Thus, Vasiliki wasn’t murdered just once. After her death came a second attack: public shaming, blame assignment, and victim targeting. A phenomenon known as victim blaming, which appears systematically in cases of gender-based violence and reveals how deeply rooted stereotypes about women’s place in society remain.
Why does this happen? Expert Ioanna Alberti explains to parapolitika.gr
Psychologist, adult educator and scientific director of IASIS At Centro, Ioanna Alberti, explains to parapolitika.gr that victim blaming doesn’t always stem from conscious malice, but often from deeper psychological mechanisms.
“The horrific femicide in Kalamata, with the extreme brutality of 45 stab wounds, confronts us with a painful social phenomenon: victim blaming. In psychology, this tendency is interpreted through Melvin Lerner’s ‘just world hypothesis,’ our need to believe the world is fair and that nothing happens to anyone without reason. This stance doesn’t always stem from malice, but from a deep, unconscious defense mechanism. Faced with such blind barbarity, our psyche is shaken,” she initially states.
“Victim blaming becomes the refuge of our collective fear and simultaneously a deep injustice to the victim”
As she clarifies, when confronted with such an extreme act of violence, unconscious defense mechanisms are activated. “To manage existential terror, the admission that ‘this could happen to anyone,’ we search for an ‘error’ in the female victim’s behavior. ‘Why didn’t she leave?’ ‘Why didn’t she speak up?’ If we convince ourselves the victim did something wrong, we feel that by acting ‘correctly,’ we’ll remain safe. Victim blaming thus becomes the refuge of our collective fear and simultaneously a deep, unspeakable injustice to the one who lost her life,” the expert notes.
“The solution requires something simple but difficult: recognizing the limits of these defenses within us. The antidote is empathy, seeing the situation through another’s eyes, and critical thinking that seeks structural causes, not victim errors,” she adds.
“The responsibility for violence belongs exclusively to the perpetrator, not to the victim’s choices”
Vasiliki’s case highlights that femicides aren’t just a matter of criminality. They’re also a matter of social perceptions. As long as people continue to exist who seek excuses for the perpetrator and blame the victim, the stereotypes that allow gender-based violence to reproduce will remain alive.
“The world isn’t always fair, but how we respond to injustice is a choice. We can buy a cheap illusion of safety, paying for it with the currency of victim blaming, or choose the courage of truth: that responsibility for violence belongs exclusively to the perpetrator, not to the victim’s choices,” concludes Ms. Alberti.
