a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency

(in the Bible) a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Lev. 16)

make a scapegoat of

few things are harder for kids to bear than being scapegoated

it makes little sense to scapegoat the poor