Answer:
denial of a victim
Step-by-step explanation:
The theory of neutralization was proposed by David Matza and Gresham Sykes during 1957 and consists of five different techniques including denial of injury, denial of responsibility, condemnation of the condemners, appeal to higher loyalties, and the denial of victim.
Denial of the victim: The term denial of the victim is defined as the procedure in which the offender asserts that a victim should earn what she or she has got and therefore the offender explains the crime by comprehending that the victim was a cheater, bad person, etc.
In the question above, Matthew and Ryan to maintain positive self-images the most applicable neutralization technique would be a denial of a victim.