The phrase "a victim rather than" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when contrasting two states or roles, emphasizing the preference for one over the other.
Example: "She chose to be a survivor, a victor in her own story, a victim rather than someone who lets circumstances define her."
Alternatives: "a target instead of" or "a casualty rather than".
Mr. McCain, however, has been a victim, rather than a practitioner, of the old racial gamesmanship.
The legislation passed on Wednesday will treat the sex worker as a victim rather than a criminal.
The film offers a strongly revisionist account of Simpson, portraying her as a victim rather than as the opportunistic divorcée who cost Edward his throne.
The Saudi media have covered the case extensively, but in a way that makes Mohammed seem like a victim rather than a potential culprit.
A spokesman at West End Central was unable to explain why WPC Nichols found it necessary to race-code a victim rather than a suspect but he did say that the police used their "own internal language".
This analysis also makes me angry, because it risks portraying Gillard as a victim rather than as a leader who accomplished much in areas like education, disability services, health and the environment.
Parker's great, and seemingly unconscious, vanity in the making of "The Birth of a Nation" is to render Nat Turner a supreme victim rather than a supreme witness.
There were great difficulties with this theory: it made the totem a sacrificial victim rather than a supernatural ally; it postulated the universality of totemism; and, further, it did not adequately account for holocaust sacrifices in which the offering is consumed by fire and there is no communal eating.
That makes him, in their eyes, a teenage victim, rather than a criminal or terrorist.
Before the passage of the Resolution, Franks stated: "This escaped murderer now lives a comfortable life in Cuba and has launched a public relations campaign in which she attempts to portray herself as an innocent victim rather than a cold-blooded murderer".
The new tubes provide sharper, more complete pictures, allowing physicians to examine images of the entire brain of a stroke victim, rather than just slices at a time.
