A. Pemberton

Tilburg University | UVT · International Victimology Institute Tilburg "INTERVICT"

Image-based sexual harassment and abuse (IBSHA) has recently gained scientific attention. To date, research has primarily focused on victim characteristics and impact, while little specific empirical research exists on victims’ help-seeking behavior, including barriers and facilitators to seeking support. The aim of this scoping review was to exami...

Dominant approaches to victimization define it in terms of (psychological) suffering and norm transgression. A critical approach endorses more-inclusive examinations of harm and turns to victims to hear and learn from their experiences. In this article, we illustrate how a phenomenological approach contributes to this endeavour and can illuminate o...

Background Over the last decade attention has grown to give patients and next of kin (P/N) more substantial roles in adverse event investigations. Adverse event investigations occur after adverse events that resulted in death or severe injury. Few studies have focused on patient perspectives on their involvement in such investigations. The present...

Experiencing image-based sexual harassment and abuse (IBSHA), or the sending of unsolicited nude or sexual images and the nonconsensual taking, sharing, or threats to share nude or sexual images, may have severe consequences for victims’ well-being. While seeking help may be beneficial, not every victim seeks help. Little research has been conducte...

Victim impact statements (VIS) have been widely introduced across different jurisdictions. Although early research examined the impact of VIS on sentencing outcomes, more recently researchers have focussed on their effects on victim posttraumatic stress symptoms. This article offers a different framework to this therapeutic approach. Instead, we em...

Modern, Western schools of thought favoring reason put ‘fiction’ in bad light. However, fictions are unavoidable elements of the way we shape our everyday lives, our political and legal institutions, and the models we deploy in social science. Employing useful untruths in the setting of legal institutions (i.e., legal fictions) is inevitable. At th...

Compensation for pain and suffering damages has been a focal point within legal academic debate. The difficulty of placing a monetary value on such damages and the lack of well-defined guidelines have been claimed to result in widely varying compensatory awards, making them random and unpredictable. Variability may arise from victim labels depictin...

Secondary victimization is a key concept in research into the experiences of victims of crime, related policies and legislation, and practices of support and care. However, the current conceptualization of secondary victimization suffers from a number of shortcomings. These include conceptual confusion, such that negative but varied emotional and p...

Background Health care incidents, such as medical errors, cause tragedies all over the world. Recent legislation in the Netherlands has established medical dispute committees to provide for an appeals procedure offering an alternative to civil litigation and to meet the needs of clients. Dispute committees incorporate a hybrid procedure where one c...

Objective This study aimed to provide an overview of the strategies adopted by hospitals that target effective communication and nonmaterial restoration (i.e., without a financial or material focus) after health care incidents, and to formulate elements in hospital strategies that patients consider essential by analysing how patients have evaluated...

In this paper, we view victimization experiences as an ontological assault on existential feelings. From a narrative approach, we examine the impact of the victimization experience on everyday-life management of a spoiled identity. Through data from an observational study, we study the micro-sociological processes of re-narrating and shame manageme...

Topic Currently, research into the key elements and role of peer support in the aftermath of victimization is limited. This study reviews the types of evidence available, clarifying key concepts in the literature, examining how research is conducted and identifying key characteristics or factors related to peer support in the aftermath of a victimi...

This chapter sees the author develop a ‘theory of injustice’ that will provide the basis for a victimological perspective on justice processes. The chapter commences with some reflections on the consequence of viewing justice and injustice as poles of one dimension. As the author exposes his theory of injustice, he argues that the issue at stake is...

Various scholars have noted that the label “victim” frequently elicits connotations of stereotypical, passive femininity—especially when the crime entails rape or other forms of sexual violence. In three online experimental studies, British respondents were recruited to test whether written information about a sexual assault led observers to percei...

A crime victim’s relationship to the offender is widely recognized as an important variable in the study of victims and the criminal justice system. However, studies concerning comparisons of the needs of victims at various relational distances to the offender are lacking. The authors studied how the victim’s need for protection and punishment corr...

This is a difficult task to perform. It is most often a good deal easier to offer a reflection on a paper with which one would beg to differ, than with one to which one’s own thinking is aligned. This is doubly so if the article in question is phrased as eloquently and insightfully as Professor Kennedy’s was. I might be well advised to merely state...

Following up on the illuminating article ‘The Ideal Victim’ by Nils Christie, this chapter expands on and reacts to its key arguments. Christie assumes that the most important reasons for perceiving a victim as legitimate and blameless lie in the specific attributions of the victim, and those of the relationship between victim and offender. The art...

Nils Christie's legendary article on the ideal victim is firmly placed within the victimological canon. Christie drew our attention to the mechanisms underlying the extent to which we grant individuals victim status. As Daly (2014: 378) summarised: ‘A victim status is not fixed, but socially constructed, mobilized and malleable’. However, what fact...

Revisiting the ‘Ideal Victim’ is a collection of academic responses to the late Nils Christie’s (1986) seminal piece on the ‘ideal victim’ in which he addressed the socially constructed concept of an idealised form of victim status or identity. Highlighting the complex factors informing the application or rejection of victim status, Christie foregr...

This article offers a novel approach to the difficulties experienced by victims in relation to their social surroundings in general, and to justice processes in particular, by expanding on an emerging paradigm of narrative victimology. For victims, ownership of their narrative is a key element of their experience, but this ownership is contested. T...

Narrative has become a popular approach in a number of disciplines, including, recently, that of criminology. In this paper, we contend that the study of crime and harm would benefit from a complementary yet distinct perspective of narrative victimology. We discuss key characteristics that illuminate victimological experiences as inherently moral,...

Negative observer reactions towards victims may be related to people’s expectations of the characteristics and demeanor of an ideal victim. We examined how expressed emotion, victim sex, and type of victimization influence observers’ perceptions of victim credibility, victim character, and harm. Our hypothesis was that angry victims, male victims,...

People’s reactions to offenders and victims of crime follow different rationales. Whereas the punishment of the offender is primarily determined by the severity of the crime (which includes its foreseeable harmful consequences), the actual harm that is experienced by the victim drives the need for his or her support and assistance. With the introdu...

Narrative is intimately connected to victimization and radicalization. Trouble, the notion that drives narrative, is often coupled with victimization: the experience of suffering intentional harm. This experience can play a turning point in the stories that radicals construct about their own lives and thus play a role in their pathway to radicaliza...

Victims’ perspectives on justice in the aftermath of crime are a key victimological topic. The main justice concepts that have received scholarly victimological attention are retributive justice, value restoration and procedural justice. In this paper, we argue that the so-called Big Two framework – agency and communion – can further help us unders...

Previous research has shown that expectancy violations can have both affective and cognitive consequences. In particular, recent victimological research argues that people’s perceptions and judgments of victims are negatively influenced when their expectations of the victim’s emotional behavior are violated. That is, expectancy violation may lead t...

This article first discusses the key concepts of Nils Christie’s victimological-oriented work drawn from “Conflicts as property” (1977) and “The ideal victim” (1986). Using international criminal justice as an example, it demonstrates the enduring importance of Christie’s insights to victimology. Subsequently the paper offers a three-fold critique...

This article develops a victimological perspective on international criminal justice, based on a review of the main victimological characteristics of international crimes: the complicity of government agencies, the large numbers of victims involved and the peculiar position of victims of international crimes, who at the time of the commission of th...

p>Although the delivery of a Victim Impact Statement (VIS) in court is assumed to contribute to the healing and recovery process of victims of violent crimes, its effectiveness to facilitate emotional recovery is widely debated. The current longitudinal study is the first to empirically examine the psychological effects of delivering a VIS in terms...

Procedural quality is an important aspect of crime victims' experiences in criminal proceedings and consists of different dimensions. Two of these dimensions are procedural justice (voice) and interpersonal justice (respectful treatment). Social psychological research has suggested that both voice and respectful treatment are moderated by the impac...

Although the delivery of a Victim Impact Statement (VIS) in court is assumed to contribute to the healing and recovery process of victims of violent crimes, its effectiveness to facilitate emotional recovery is widely debated. The current longitudinal study is the first to empirically examine the psychological effects of delivering a VIS in terms o...

Recent research has shown that the ‘emotional victim effect’ (an emotional victim is more readily believed than a nonemotional victim) is mediated by expectancy violation: people base their judgments about a victim’s credibility on their expectations of the victim’s suffering. Victims whose behavior is inconsistent with these expectations suffer a...

The book focuses on three very important themes that are central to contemporary debates on justice for victims: (1) victim rights, (2) transitional justice and (3) trauma, resilience and justice. Victim rights have developed over the years, but the book raises question on whether these are indeed rights or mere standards. Transitional justice addr...

A central question in the debate about victim participation in criminal justice procedures is which instrument available to victims works'. The purpose of the present study was to examine which factors contribute to the likelihood of victims delivering a Victim Impact Statement (VIS). We extend previous research in two important regards. First, we...

An abundance of research has emerged in the last 30 years focusing on justice preferences for victims of crime. In general, findings indicate that victims are interested in aspects of procedural justice, interactional justice, restorative justice, retributive justice and behavior control. Under certain conditions, however, these preferences may var...

Justice evaluations have become a widely studied area in the past 25 years. Such research indicates that victims have numerous legal preferences, which are in tune with the theories of procedural and interactional justice. This study examines these theories with regard to victims and the justice system from a comparative perspective including the N...

This article focuses on domestic violence and how female victims are empowered to end their abusive relationships through legal intervention. We analyze whether employment status and education are related to crime reporting and whether country development level moderates the impact of education and employment on reporting. Analyses revealed that fe...

This brief contribution to the debate concerning global law draws on the authors’ analysis of international criminal justice. It argues that the extent to which international criminal law is in fact contributing to global justice in the aftermath of international crimes remains to be seen. In particular, the smooth relationship between internationa...

INTRODUCTION In Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, African Rights (1994) described the horrific cruelties against and killings of Tutsi and moderate Hutu by extremist Hutu over a period of a few months only (see also Ruvebana, this volume). In 1994, the beautiful country of Rwanda – also known as the country of one thousand hills – was engulfed b...

The position of victims of crime has shown vast improvements since the 1970's. Thirty years ago it was correct to assert that the victim was the forgotten party of the criminal justice process, while this would be at odds with the actual situation of victims today. Policy at the level of the European Union is laid down in the Council Directive 2004...

A difficult case for restorative justice procedures is that of intimate partner violence. In this article we explore the feminist criticism of restorative justice theory and practice in cases of intimate partner violence. This criticism reveals that many of the notions and presumptions of restorative justice theory are out of sync with the reality...

Research has shown that symptoms of a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are prevalent among victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). Furthermore, positive correlations have been reported between IPV victimization and borderline traits, and borderline traits and PTSD symptomatology. Although there is some evidence that individuals with a bord...

It is no news that many Western societies are experiencing a period of populist punitiveness. In campaigns for tougher sentencing and less emphasis on suspects’ and offenders’ rights the interests of victims of crime are often invoked. However, academic victimology is largely sceptical of the connection between ‘law and order’ and the plight of vic...

Over the past thirty years the position of victims of crime in the criminal justice system has shown vast improvement. Many victims’ rights are relatively uncontroversial. That victims should be treated with respect and recognition, that they should receive comprehensible information, should be able to receive support and assistance and be reimburs...

Just-world victimology: revisiting Lerner in the study of victims discusses Melvin Lerner’s Just World Theory, which relates to the fundamental delusion that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people. In a classic series of studies Melvin Lerner showed over three decades ago that this ‘justice motive’ is so engrained in people...

The reactions of indirect, so-called vicarious victims to Al Qaeda’s mass victimization attacks in Western countries play an important, maybe even pivotal role in her strategy of provocation and means of organization. This is the central argument of this chapter. The organization has tried and succeeded to provoke both governments in the West, but...

On the 15th of March 2001 the European Union Framework Decision on the standing of victims in criminal proceedings was adopted. We think it is safe to say that this event is a milestone in more than one way. It is the first time that there is a so-called ‘hard-law instrument’ concerning victims of crime available at the international level. The Fra...

The large-scale terrorist attacks on 9/11 resulted in more attention being devoted to victims of terrorist acts. Discussions took place on how their needs could be best accommodated. The Madrid bombings in March 2004 gave further impetus to this process. This development is also part of a recent trend towards general victim of crime policies that b...

In the previous chapters we addressed legislation for victims of terrorism and their needs. The following chapters will discuss specific interventions that relate to the needs of victims of terrorism. These chapters are divided according to the main headings of the CoE Guidelines for Victims of Terrorism, with Chapter 5 discussing access and admini...

The position of victims of crime has shown marked improvement over the past 30 years. Where in the 1970's the victim of crime was the forgotten party of the criminal justice system, by the turn of the century the victim has returned. Compensation schemes have been set up, victim assistance, empowerment and support programmes have been developed, vi...

Chapter 1 showed a number of key features of terrorism that are relevant for its victims, and the previous chapter discussed the relevant international instruments relating to victims of crime and terrorism. It shows the importance of instruments directed to more general victimisation of crime for victims of terrorism. In particular we would like t...

Although terrorism has already featured on the international agenda for many years, attention to the plight of victims of terrorism has been conspicuous in its absence until fairly recently. The policy response to terrorism in most states was mainly restricted to adjusting police tactics and criminal procedural laws for organized crime to the new d...

Although restorative justice is often presented as a victim-oriented reform of criminal justice procedures, there is a relative dearth of research and theory into the experiences of victims within restorative justice. Recently Heather Strang, Lawrence Sherman and their associates started develop theory and research that attempts to fill this relati...

The two most prominent developments in criminal justice in the last twenty to thirty years are the rise of restorative justice and the recognition and improvement of the position of the victim. The first part of the paper discusses a theoretical model for victims within restorative justice that the researchers at the InterVICT research institute au...

Although restorative justice is often presented as a victim-oriented reform of criminal justice procedures, there is limited research and theory into the experiences of victims within restorative justice. Furthermore, available research and theory is dominated by law-related disciplines and inadequately employ constructs and research methodology us...

Deze studie geeft een overzicht geven van effectieve of veelbelovende maatregelen ter preventie van herhaald slachtofferschap, welke mechanismen verondersteld kunnen worden daaraan ten grondslag te hebben geleRPRT en in welke context eventuele effecten zich hebben voorgedaan. Engelse en Amerikaanse projecten op het gebied van de delictcategorieën w...