Background
While there is growing international evidence pointing to the increased risks of crime perpetration and victimisation for some people with an intellectual disability, the overlap between ...offending and victimisation (the victim‐offender overlap) remains unclear.
Method
This study utilised a data linkage methodology of 2600 people with an intellectual disability, exploring their contacts with public mental health services and the police in Victoria, Australia.
Results
Victim‐offenders accounted for a small proportion of the sample (n = 148, 5.7%). The victim‐offender overlap was evident for both violent and nonviolent nonsexual crimes, particularly for theft, burglary, and threat‐related crimes. Key differences were also noted between males and females.
Conclusions
People with an intellectual disability who are both victim and offenders comprise a small but particularly complex justice‐involved population. Future research should explore the victim offender overlap for males and females separately, as well as any additional risks and vulnerabilities associated with specific mental health diagnoses.
Sexual harassment has received recent attention related to the #MeToo Movement. Due to public focus on perceptions of accusers and accused, we explored predictors of derogation of both. Participants ...(
n
= 146) completed measures of moral values, empathy, derogation, sociosexuality, political ideology, belief in a just world, religiosity, sex guilt and responded to an open-ended question about the #MeToo Movement. Multiple regression indicated that the best predictor of derogating either the accuser or accused is lower empathy toward that person and greater empathy toward the other. Qualitative analysis suggested that those with less empathy toward the accused were more likely to discuss victim empowerment. Our findings suggest that interventions focused on increasing empathy could be an avenue to decrease victim derogation.
As intimate partner violence (IPV) often remains unknown to police, bystanders can play a crucial role in prevention and further escalation of IPV. However, little is known about what brings them ...into action by reporting incidents of IPV to authorities. As such, we use statements of bystanders who filed reports about IPV incidents to an official domestic violence agency in the Netherlands (N = 78), to investigate the reasoning and motivations for reporting their suspicions. Results show that the reasons for bystanders to report IPV differ depending on the relational dynamics between partners. In situations perceived as intimate terrorism, involving a hierarchical abusive relationship between a man offender and a woman victim, bystanders primarily reported when previous helping initiatives proved inefficient, and they did so to prevent further harm, often particularly in relation to the woman victim. In situations perceived as situational couple violence, involving a symmetrical abusive relationship, bystanders primarily reported when escalation appeared, and they did so to prevent further harm to involved children. We conclude that bystanders report IPV incidents when the need for help is clear, and their motivation for acting concerns the well-being of victims. Our findings add to the growing body of evidence about real-life bystander intervention in emergencies and highlight the need for understanding intervention as context-specific in order to design effective intervention initiatives.
Criminological research has shown the relevance of examining offender–victim interaction and related factors to understand crime event outcomes. In sexual offenses against children, an obvious lack ...of knowledge exists regarding this issue. From a criminological perspective, we seek to improve our understanding of the offender–victim interaction in sexual offenses against children and, in particular, what factors might increase the risk of a more intrusive offense. We argue that modus operandi strategies play a central role in crime event outcomes and examine this hypothesis with data obtained from a semistructured interview conducted with offenders. As expected, modus operandi was found to have a strong effect on crime event outcomes, especially victim participation during sexual episodes. Victim effects also emerged from the analyses. Specifically, a strong interaction effect between age and gender of the victim was found for victim participation, which suggests that as the victim gets older, offenders are more likely to make their victim participate in sexual episodes when abusing a male victim but are less likely to do so when abusing a female victim.
We map the available scientific literature on how and why victims of sexual violence use digital platforms in the aftermath of victimization. Twenty-four empirical studies on sexual victimization and ...online disclosure were identified by systematically searching Web of Science and PsycINFO, checking reference lists, and consulting authors about relevant publications. The literature on online disclosure of sexual victimization does not yield a coherent picture. International literature pays limited attention to the various components of online disclosure like the characteristics of victims who disclosure online and the characteristics of the disclosure messages. Most studies focused on motivations for and reactions to online disclosure. Victims of sexual violence disclose sexual victimization online to seek support for clarification and validation, unburdening, documenting, seeking justice, informing others, or commercial goals (individual-oriented disclosure) and to provide support, educate, and as a form of activism (other-oriented disclosure). Responses to online disclosure are predominantly positive. Negative responses are rare. This review provides a comprehensive overview of multidisciplinary empirical information and displays knowledge gaps in victimological research. Future research should use robust quantitative and/or qualitative designs with substantial sample sizes, comparing victims who do disclose their sexual victimization online to victims who do not and comparing disclosure on different online platforms to increase generalizability. Potential for online support is identified, in which online disclosure can serve as a relatively safe alternative to off-line disclosure. This offers points of intervention for assistance and victim support in facilitating the use of the internet for support for victims of sexual violence.
Contextual factors that contribute to race differences in reporting crime to the police are an important element in Donald Black's theory of the behavior of the law, yet few studies have investigated ...whether these differences vary depending on social context. The present study investigates whether the relationships between victim and offender race and the reporting of crime are moderated by the level of racial stratification in a given place as Black's stratification hypothesis would predict. Using victim survey data from 40 metropolitan areas, as well as data from other sources, we find results that are consistent with Black's stratification hypothesis, namely, that victim and offender race are more strongly associated with the reporting of crime in those metropolitan areas where the gap in economic status between blacks and whites is larger and the groups are more residentially segregated. The theory, however, is unable to account for the high rates of reporting of black-on-black assaults found across the 40 metropolitan areas. The question of how the needs of black victims may outweigh their reluctance to call the police is an important issue for future research.
Secondary traumatic stress (STS) is a pattern of psychological symptoms that approximates the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and occurs in professionals who are exposed to ...individuals who have experienced trauma. While victim advocates are frontline health professionals who are trained to support victims of crime and interpersonal violence and are at risk for developing STS, they have been largely neglected in the extant literature on STS. The STS Scale (STSS) is a 17-item self-report questionnaire utilized to assess frequency of symptoms of intrusion, avoidance, and arousal, specifically related to providing services to victims of trauma. The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the STSS with a sample of victim advocates (N = 135) using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Results indicated that both a single-factor model and three-factor model were equivalent. This study represents a first attempt to validate a measure of STS among victim advocates, a unique and understudied population who are at risk for developing STS given their work with individuals who have experienced interpersonal violence. Establishing effective, easy to administer, and efficient measures of STS is important given that this population encounters secondary trauma on a regular basis in the context of their job. While additional theoretical work regarding the construct of STS is needed, the STSS did demonstrate high reliability with this population and thus can be used as part of the assessment of STS among victim advocates.
This article focuses on gendered experiences of the criminal justice system, specifically the experiences of adult female victims of sexual offending and the communication difficulties they ...experience during the criminal justice process. Drawing on the findings from qualitative interviews about sentencing with six victims and 15 justice professionals in Australia, we compare the lived experiences of the victims with the perceptions of the justice professionals who work with them, revealing a significant gap between the information justice professionals believe they are providing and the information victims recall receiving. We then analyse the international literature to distil effective communication strategies, with the goal of improving victims’ experiences of the criminal justice system as a whole. Specifically, we recommend verbal communication skills training for justice professionals who work with victims of crime and the development of visual flowcharts to help victims better understand the criminal justice process. We also recommend that Australian victims’ rights regimes be reformed to place the responsibility for providing information about the criminal process on the relevant justice agencies, rather than requiring the victim to seek this information, and suggest piloting automated notification systems to help agencies fulfil their obligations to provide victims with such information.
Often left out of conversations around criminal justice reform are the victims of violent crimes. One group of people who have the needs of crime victims at the forefront of their work are victim ...advocates. The current study examines barriers and resources for victim advocates in being able to do their work of supporting crime victims. Through interviews with nine system-based victim advocates points of intervention are identified, which if improved would allow victim advocates to better be able to support victims of crimes. Using principles of grounded theory analysis, four themes emerged: building partnerships and community support, intersectionality, resources and supports, and bureaucracy. In order to better support victim advocates in their work, systems need to remove bureaucratic barriers. There is also a need for access to culturally sensitive mental health services and supports.
This study examined whether the attitudinal responses toward child sexual abuse (CSA) differ due to the person’s relationship with the victim (intrafamilial vs. extrafamilial) and/or proximity to the ...victim (close vs. distant). An online sample of 292 participants completed a measure assessing pre-existing attitudes toward people who commit sexual offenses, before being randomly presented with a vignette describing a CSA case committed by a biological father, biological uncle, babysitter, stranger, or stepfather. Participants then rated the perpetrator’s level of dangerousness and pedophilic interest, their own feelings of disgust, and their punitive judgments. Controlling for pre-existing attitudes, the extrafamilial cases (stranger and babysitter) were perceived to be more dangerous (large effects; ds > .50) and more pedophilic than the stepfather (large effects; ds > .60). Also, participants reported greater levels of disgust toward the stranger than both the babysitter and uncle (medium effects; ds > .30). The findings demonstrate the need to account for the established heterogeneity of men who commit CSA when studying the public’s attitudinal responses. Methodological limitations and suggestions for future research are also discussed.
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