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Who's a Victim?

© Catten Ely

I was recently chatting with the president of my local Sisters in Crime chapter, when she brought up the topics of speakers the group had hosted recently. One of them spoke on victims, a subject that the group expected to be a downer. They were surprised that the presentation ended up being very positive.

This led me to think about the term "victim" and how it is perceived. You have victims or weather, war, and political oppression. These are not the victims I'm talking about: I mean single victims of the acts of another person-a murder, a rapist, an abuser, a bully. In that context, it's a negative word, for sure, and often implies helplessness or some notion that the victim could have somehow prevented the offense against him or her.

Kids who are victims of bullies are considered weak, easy targets. Molesters remain safe because their victims are afraid to report them. Batterers rely on manipulating their victims through emotions, then graduate to physical threats. Rapists, we are told, choose victims who appear passive and lack confidence.

Statistics on crime victims are notoriously inaccurate. Victims of domestic assault often do not call police for fear of making matters worse. Male victims of violent crimes keep the nature of the crime to themselves-there is a social stigma associated with men who cannot take care of themselves. Rape victims, too, frequently do not report. Add into this mix a fear of police and intense shame brought on to not just the victim, but his or her entire community, as in cases where the victim is a member of another culture. I've heard estimates that up to half of all violent crimes go unreported.

Law enforcement agencies across the country report crime statistics to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). The Bureau of Justice also collects information when it issues the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The NCVS gathers information about crimes not known to the police and is believed to identify more offenses than the UCR does, but it's still short on total crime counts because it doesn't count victims under the age of 12 or people not living in traditional homes.

So we have a lot of victims out there. Uncomfortable statistics say that in the United States, a woman is battered every nine seconds, and someone is raped every 2 minutes. Other statistics says that battering happens every 12 seconds and rape every six minutes. In any case, it's happening. A lot.

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