Victimization

Type of psychology: Clinical; Counseling; Forensic; Psychopathology; Psychotherapy; Social

A common experience for everyone is victimization. At first, one might deny this suggestion, as they have never been robbed or assaulted by a criminal. This might be a typical response, if victimizations were limited to crimes. Victimization is actually broader in scope. It comes in different forms, types, levels, and degrees. The central issue is always loss. A loss may be physical, including personal or material, psychological, or both. In addition, personal experiences differ between individuals from the same type or similar victimizations. Therefore, recovery from victimization differs accordingly among individuals, as victimizations are unique personal experiences.

Sources of victimization

The major types or sources of victimizations might be nature, man (non-criminal), or criminal. Nature victimizations include events such as storms, including hurricanes, tornadoes, and other types of severe storms or results of such storms. Other nature forms include earthquakes, volcanoes, mud and landslides, and sinkholes.

Man is also a major source of victimization, both non-criminal and criminal. Non-criminal victimizations examples include accident or war. The victims of war would be the innocent non-combatant(s). Accident(s) would be non-intentional actions of various forms that cause a loss of person and/or property.

Crime

The victimization that has received the greatest focus and study is crime. This is the illegal act of inflicting pain, death, or loss of property of another. Beyond the traditional perceptions of crime are harmful acts that use technology, as in identity theft, cyberstalking, or cyberbullying.

The study of crime victimization was described in Karmen’s definition of victimology.

The scientific study of victimization, including the relationships between victims and offenders, the interactions between victims and the criminal justice system—that is, the police and courts, and corrections officials—and the connections between victims and other societal groups and institutions, such as the media, businesses, and social movements. (2001, p. 9)

As can been seen here, Karmen limited victimizations to acts of crimes and focused on the dynamics and actors involved in the act.

The early studies of victims of crime were in the 1940s by criminologists who have become known as the fathers of victimology—Von Hentig and Mendelson. During the same decade, Frederick Wertham, an American psychiatrist, formulated the term victimology (Fattah, 2000; Karmen, 2001). With these early foundations of understanding, the study of crime victimizations began.

Other studies of crime victimization offered explanations which described other contributions of location and opportunity. Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garofalo (1978), focused on lifestyles, which exposed a person to possible victimizations. In Cohen’s and Felson’s Routine Activity Approach Theory (1979), they suggested at least three necessary components which must be present for a crime victimization to occur: motivated offender, available target, and absence of competent guardian.

Victimizations

By modifying the three components described by Cohen and Felson, different types of victimizations may be described. There would be an available person(s), i.e., the victim(s), a source or cause of victimization, and a lack of or inadequate protection for victimization or the level of victimization to occur. These can be applied to almost any victimization.

Victims

Victimization not only occurs directly to a person(s) who is the primary victim. Victimization does not occur just to the victim(s). It also affects to the family and friends of a victim(s), and any potential witnesses to victimizations. They too may have an experience of loss and therefore they would be defined as secondary victims. Like the primary victim, these persons may have similar responses to the victimization event as a primary victim.

Victimizations by Nature

The source or cause could be any natural occurrence of nature. This could be in the form of a storm (sand storm, thunder storm, hurricane, or tornado) or the damages they caused. Depending on where one lives, this could include wind, lightning damage, flooding, debris or even mud slides, etc. The protection would be primarily where a person was physically located, such as the location and/or strength and location of the structure one was in at the time of the storm. Other natural victimizations would include droughts, tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanoes. All of these can cause loss and destruction for a person(s). The losses one may experience from a natural disaster include, property, personal injury, injury or loss of family or friends or one’s life.

Victimizations by Man

This is best described as a crime. An individual, stranger(s), friend(s) or family member(s) by blood or marriage, steals one’s personal property. The property could include personal information and identity, physically or sexually assaults, or commits homicide. Suicide and self-mutilation are included in this description, as well.

With its growing use and popularity, technology is increasingly used in the perpetration of victimizing others. This may be through using social media to stalk or bully another on the internet. Hacking into another’s computer and stealing personal information is another form of technological victimization. Fraud committed online such as phishing also victimizes individuals.

The Victimization Experience

Victimization begins when an individual is personally confronted with a potentially threatening event. Depending on the individual's previous experiences he/she will initially respond the best way they can. An individual may respond to these situations by a fight-or-flight response. There is a third response that we often forget and that response is to freeze. This can best be illustrated by a deer standing in the highway at night frozen in the headlights of an oncoming car. This is commonly reported by a victim when an event first occurs. Any one of these three is thought to be the way to protect the self.

At the time of victimization, the victim may experience dissociation. An example of this would be when a young woman had a male friend over to her place of residence. During the evening an event occurred she did not want. She dissociated when the event occurred. The last thing she remembered was the male companion picking her up and carrying her to the bedroom. She did not remember anything else until she remembers coming out of her bathroom nude and getting dressed.

Following one of these experiences an individual will often times choose to repress or suppress memories of the pain of these experiences. He or she will endeavor to block the memory in an attempt to not remember or think about the experience, as it is too painful for them to do so. Unfortunately, this behavior can actually be an emotional and physical drain on the individual. This can predispose an individual to unwanted night terrors and various flashbacks of the event and may continue until the event can be processed.

The second alternative is to remember and confront the experience. This will allow the individual to acknowledge the pain and remember the event. By doing so, the individual is able to find resolution and be able to integrate the experience into their life history. It just becomes another memory.

Recovery

Recovery takes time and this varies in length from individual to individual and from the type and extent of the victimization. An example is of a man who came home from work only to discover his house had been burglarized. Initially, as he approached his front door, he noticed it was open. He just assumed he had not securely closed it when he left. Upon entering he noticed things were a mess and the patio door was open and orange drink had been splashed on the walls. It took a moment for him to realize he had been robbed and vandalized. Following that experience, for weeks, when he would turn the corner to his house, he would look to see if the front door was open.

As with any loss, a person grieves in identifiable but not necessarily sequential stages. This has been described by several authors, but seminally by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in, On Death and Dying (1969). The first stage is denial. As the man described above did not acknowledge the burglary at first, he rationalized other possibilities. The second is anger, such as “Why me?” Followed by the third stage of bargaining, playing the “What if game.” The reality begins to set in and depression, the fourth stage occurs. Finally, with time, personal effort, and sometimes professional help comes acceptance, the final stage.

To assist in this process of recovery, oftentimes it is suggested a victim seek out a qualified mental health professional, who has experience counseling victims. This caution is offered as a prevention of secondary victimization, which may innocently occur by a well-meaning person. This could be a licensed professional or clergy. A primary focus of this is to aid in regaining a sense of control of one’s life.

If dissociation has occurred and the memory has not been re-gained, it may be necessary to address this blocking. Caution needs to be applied in this endeavor. In these situations, hypnosis can be an aid, as it allows the therapist the opportunity to help control the emotional distance a victim experiences in this recovery. In addition, the hypnotherapist needs to be cautious, so as not to implant a false memory.

As the victim recovers from this experience, their life begins to return to a resemblance of normalcy. Though changes may need to occur in their lifestyle, the victim begins to regain a sense of a locus of control of their life. A new normalcy occurs.

Bibliography

Cohen, L. and Felson, M. (1979). “Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: A Routine Activity Approach”. American Sociological Review. 44, 588–607.

Fattah, E A. (2000) “Victimology: Past, Present and Future”. Criminologie. 33(1), 17–46.

Hindelang, M., Gottfredson, M. and Garofalo, J. (1978). Victims of Personal Crime, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

Karmen, A. (2001). Crime Victims: An Introduction to Victimology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning.

Kubler-Ross, E. (1969) On Death and Dying. N.Y., NY. Scribner.

Libster, Natalie, Azia Knox, Selin Engin, Daniel Geschwind, Julia Parish-Morris, and Connie Kasari. "Personal Victimization Experiences of Autistic and Non-Autistic Children." Molecular Autism, vol. 13, no. 51, 2022, DOI: 10.1186/s13229-022-00531-4. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.