Clothes worn by rape victims have been displayed at an exhibition. Picture courtesy: Facebook/CCM - Centre Communautaire Maritime

More often than not, women are blamed for having provoked men to sexually harass them, either with their ''over-friendly'' demeanour or more importantly, through their ''seductive'' clothing.

Victims of sexual abuse and rape are often asked what they were wearing at the time of the mishap, thus accusing them of being at fault.

If ''provocative'' clothing was indeed the problem, we wouldn't have had repeated cases of infants or old women being brutally raped. Did they entice men with their ''revealing'' clothes too?

To dismiss such understanding of sexual abuse and the idea of "victim-blaming", the Centre Communautaire Maritime in Brussels has put up an exhibition that features clothing items worn by victims of rape, to drive home the fact that one's choice of attire is not responsible for the assault perpetrated on a woman.

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The exhibition features items such as pyjamas, tracksuits and even a child's My Little Pony shirt, hoping to prove that “a person’s outfit can never be seen as a mitigating circumstance or provocation by a rapist,” quoted Independent.

The clothes worn by the victims have been procured on loan from the victim support group called CAW East Brabant.

''What you immediately notice when you walk around here is they are all very normal pieces that everyone would wear,'' Lieshbeth Kennes, a training and counselling employee of CAW, said.

The exhibition began on January 8 and will continue till January 20.