I didn't follow the thread so I can't speak for the members that were banned. My understanding of victim blaming was to put some responsibility on the person who was attacked as some sort of justification, ie, she shouldn't have worn that outfit, or he shouldn't have gone out at 2 am etc etc. If you're voicing doubt over the circumstances of the story in question, is that what qualified as victim blaming in this case? As mentioned earlier, a gay POC being attacked is unfortunately not an unheard of occurrence. So maybe if you are questioning the circumstances of the attack, you are de-legitimizing the actual event (I guess?) If they did so n bad faith, regardless of hindsight, then I can see why the actions were taken. Again I didn't read the original thread and can't speak on how a mod would handle a situation like this.