Academic literature on the topic 'Acknowledgment of victims'

Research suggests that a significant portion of victims of interpersonal violence do not acknowledge or label their experience as a criminal victimization. Studies exploring unacknowledged victimizations have found that individuals are more likely to acknowledge victimization when the experience meets certain, often stereotypical criteria. This study addressed this issue by integrating literature on victim acknowledgment and stalking victimization to identify correlates of victimization acknowledgment among stalking victims. Data were drawn from the 2006 stalking supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and the sample included both female and male victims of stalking. Findings revealed support for a “classic stalking script,” which included a reliance on stereotypical types of stalking behavior (i.e., being spied on) that were shown to increase acknowledgment for victims of stalking. Results also described gender based correlates of victimization acknowledgment.

Past research has indicated that nearly half of college-aged women who experience forced, nonconsensual sexual intercourse, do not label their experience as rape. We found evidence that these unacknowledged rape victims possess more violent, stranger rape scripts than do acknowledged rape victims, who are more likely to have an acquaintance rape script. The difference in rape scripts between acknowledged and unacknowledged rape victims was not due to different demographics or actual rape experience. However, unacknowledged victims did have a sexual history which involved less force than did acknowledged victims. Apparently, most unacknowledged victims do not define their rape experience as rape because they have a rape script of a violent, stranger, blitz rape which does not match their experience of being raped in a less forceful manner by someone with whom they were acquainted. The extent to which their less forceful sexual histories is related to their more violent rape scripts remains to be investigated.

The majority of college women who experience rape do not conceptualize their experience as a victimization, that is, they are unacknowledged victims. There is some initial evidence that unacknowledged victims are at elevated re-victimization risk relative to acknowledged victims. In the current study, we sought to identify mediators of the association between acknowledgment of rape and re-victimization in a sample of 319 college rape victims; 187 (58.6%) participants completed a 2-month follow-up study. We examined regular drinking, number of sexual partners, and continuing a relationship with the assailant as potential mediators of the relation between acknowledgment and re-victimization. At follow-up, unacknowledged victims reported higher rates of new attempted (16.2%) and completed rape (11.9%), relative to acknowledged victims (attempted: 7.9%; completed: 3.0%). Number of sexual partners mediated the relation between acknowledgment and attempted rape. Both number of partners and regular drinking mediated the relation between acknowledgment and completed rape. Thus, not acknowledging rape may be associated with re-victimization in part because unacknowledged victims may be more likely to engage in behaviors that increase vulnerability. We believe there is a need for longitudinal, theoretically grounded research examining risky behaviors, victimization, and acknowledgment status over time to delineate the relations among these variables. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ' s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index

Many rape victims are unacknowledged. These victims do not label their experience as rape; instead they give the experience a more benign label, such as a miscommunication. The current study examined the relationship between victims’ acknowledgment status and post-assault behaviors, moving beyond prior research. Analyses of covariance were conducted comparing the post-assault experiences of unacknowledged and acknowledged college rape victims (n = 256), controlling for differences in victims’ assault characteristics, multiple victimization, and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Results supported that unacknowledged and acknowledged victims differed in their coping, disclosure, belief in justice, and receipt of egocentric reactions following disclosure. Implications for future work examining the dynamic interplay among assault characteristics, sexual scripts, acknowledgment status, and post-assault factors are discussed.

We assessed victims’ status and its relation to self-perceived “social acknowledgment as a victim or survivor” ( Maercker & Müller, 2004 ) in a sample of Chechen refugees living in camps in Ingushetia. A total of 61 Chechen refugees were surveyed using a war-related trauma checklist, the Impact of Event Scale-Revised, and the Disclosure of Trauma Questionnaire. Rates of potentially traumatic events and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) appeared to be very high in this sample: 100% reported one or more potentially traumatic events and over 75% were estimated to have PTSD. As expected, social acknowledgment as a victim or survivor was negatively related to PTSD symptoms. We discuss the possible causal direction of this finding. Our cross-sectional study provides further evidence that social acknowledgment should be regarded as a protective or resource factor in the aftermath of trauma.

Unacknowledged rape, labeling a rape as a nonvictimizing event, remains largely unstudied among non-college women. This study therefore sought to examine differences in assault characteristics, adjustment, and disclosure by rape acknowledgment status among a sample of lower income rape victims (n =104) recruited from a reproductive health clinic (mean age = 28.8 years). Although unacknowledged rape was infrequent (17.1% of victims), unacknowledged victims reported that the perpetrator used less force and were less likely to have assertively resisted, as compared to acknowledged victims. There were no significant differences in disclosure, depression, and somatic complaints between unacknowledged and acknowledged rape victims. Implications of the findings for understanding rape acknowledgment and postrape adjustment among community women are discussed.

The types of social reactions that victims receive when they disclose experiences of sexual assault are important for post-trauma recovery. Using a person-centered analytic approach, we identified latent profiles based upon the nature of two types of negative (turning against and unsupportive acknowledgment) and two types of positive (emotional support and informational/tangible aid) reactions received by 300 undergraduate women who disclosed sexual assault. Analyses identified four latent profiles characterized by (a) moderate emotional support/low negative reactions, (b) moderate emotional support/moderate negative reactions, (c) high positive/some unsupportive acknowledgment reactions, and (d) moderate positive/high negative reactions. Differences between the profiles in sexual assault acknowledgment, self- and perpetrator-blame, and some assault-related characteristics (victim injury but not victim or perpetrator intoxication) were identified. Group comparisons revealed that the two profiles characterized by greater negative reactions reported greater posttraumatic stress, whereas the profile characterized by moderate support/moderate negative reactions reported greater depression. No differences were identified for hazardous alcohol use. Findings highlight the importance of addressing negative reactions to sexual assault disclosure as potential barriers to recovery. Colleges may benefit from programming targeted at disclosure recipients as part of violence prevention efforts. A broader societal shift is also imperative to eliminate stigmatization of victims. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843211038924 .

This research examines the challenges, the personal factors influencing the needs, and cooperation of human trafficking victims to develop policy recommendation for victim-centered proceedings. A mixed-methods approach was employed, incorporating a literature review, quantitative research through questionnaires, and qualitative in-depth interviews. The hypothesis posits that victims with different personal factors have distinct needs. The study population includes 85 victims of human trafficking between September 2023 and February 2024, while 20 key informants comprise psychologists, social workers from governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and law enforcement officials. The findings indicated that victims with different personal factors mostly affect significantly different needs and cooperations. There is 8 needs which are not affected by personal factors, namely, need to seek compensation, freedom in shelter, being informed of the progression of the case, the defendant being aware of the victim’s suffering, being informed of the penalty of defendant, acknowledgment of legal proceedings, need for prevention of diseases or vaccinated, and need to express the opinion about the bail of the defendant. Factors that enhance victims’ cooperation in legal proceedings, found in quantitative research, include: (1) assurances from officials, (2) fulfillment of such assurances, (3) access to safe housing, and (4) a sense of security during testimony. Policy recommendations emerging from this research include: 1) Enhancing Sense of Security: Establishing safe environments by encouraging private sector involvement in shelter management and support services, creating secure spaces for victim interviews, strengthening witness protection laws, and ensuring victims do not encounter defendants unless necessary; 2) Streamlining Legal Procedures: Expediting legal proceedings by implementing a one-stop service model for human trafficking cases, appointing case managers to coordinate victim assistance, involving prosecutors in formulating investigative questions, and promoting pre-trial witness testimonies; and 3) Strengthening Victim Support Systems: Introducing forensic interviewers to handle case interviews professionally, increasing the number of interpreters to accommodate victims’ gender, linguistic, and national diversity, expanding the presence of psychologists and social workers, and equipping interpreters and law enforcement personnel with psychological training to mitigate victims’ emotional distress.

Restorative justice alternatives to criminal justice are designed to balance the needs of victims, offenders, families, friends, and the community at large to achieve social justice, repair of victims, and deterrence of crime. In the model we evaluated from RESTORE (Responsibility and Equity for Sexual Transgressions Offering a Restorative Experience), each offender and victim received individual services and met in guided conferencing to mutually determine reparative actions for the offender. At the exit meeting, the offender, as the responsible person, read a written apology to the survivor/victim. In this article, we analyze the expression of empathy in the apology, in which the initial mitigation of responsibility in early documents was replaced by acknowledgment of harm to the survivor/victim and acceptance of responsibility for the assault. Those accused of felony rape and those targeting a visible person in cases of misdemeanor indecent exposure expressed greater regret and remorse than offenders of indecent exposure with an indeterminate victim.

Au sein du débat contemporain sur les théories de la justice, les philosophes se posent de plus en plus la question de la particularisation des principes du juste dans des terrains autrement plus complexes que ceux qu’envisage John Rawls, où « toutes choses sont égales par ailleurs ». A cet égard, un nouveau domaine d’application encore peu exploré se présente dans le cadre des transitions démocratiques : quelle forme de justice doit être mise en œuvre dans ces situations extrêmes, pour répondre à des conflits identitaires ou « ethniques » semblables à ces « guerres des dieux » que le libéralisme était précisément né pour combattre ? Cette « justice transitionnelle », ainsi déjà nommée dans les cercles d’experts, comprend des dimensions à la fois rétributive, reconstructive et économique, et tend à s’apparenter à une théorie générale du juste. Ce travail entend questionner ce point de vue afin de déterminer dans quelle mesure le « cas extrême » des sociétés « post-conflit » peut constituer un « test » empirique pour certaines de nos intuitions bien fondées concernant la justice politique en général. Une tension structurelle semble en effet exister entre la « fin » de la justice transitionnelle et les moyens qu’elle emploie. Car la notion même de transition suppose une certaine téléologie : les sociétés transitent toujours « vers » quelque chose, et cet horizon politique, dans le monde de l’après-Guerre Froide où la justice transitionnelle est née, se voit toujours rapporté à une forme de démocratie libérale. Pourtant, au niveau de ses moyens, la justice transitionnelle contredit souvent cet objectif, en ayant recours à des outils et à des concepts qui remettent en question certains fondements bien pensés du libéralisme : moralisation du droit, défense des libertés positives, holisme social, sentimentalisation de la sphère publique, visée thérapeutique ou encore conception « épaisse » et substantielle de la réconciliation, semblent tous faire pencher la justice transitionnelle davantage vers une forme de perfectionnisme politique et moral que vers un libéralisme entièrement procédural et neutre. Il s’agira donc ici de comprendre dans quelle mesure ce « détour » par les situations de l’après-violence, à travers une démarche fortement applicative puisqu’elle nous confrontera à la réalité de six terrains différents (Ex-Yougoslavie, Ouganda, Rwanda, Allemagne de l’Est, Afrique du Sud, Timor Oriental), nous invite à reformuler et à infléchir certaines de nos intuitions relatives à la justice politique libérale. La notion de « capabilités », entendue comme moyen d’autonomiser les victimes de la violence, nous permettra notamment de penser les modalités de la réintroduction d’une certaine finalité éthique que le libéralisme politique traditionnel avait évacuée. Confrontée en effet à des traumatismes et à des pathologies sociales de l’ampleur de celles que nous rencontrerons, il semble en effet que l’organisation politique et sociale ait besoin d’une conception un peu plus « épaisse », plus substantielle, de ce qui constitue la morale et l’humanité de l’homme – conception que le libéralisme strictement procédural de Rawls ne semble pas pouvoir nous fournir<br>Within the contemporary debate on theories of justice, philosophers are increasingly debating the possibilities of applying these principles of justice to different situations from those envisioned by John Rawls, where “all other things are equal”. A new, unexplored, field of application is therefore emerging in the form of democratic transitions: what kind of justice should be applied in extreme situations to address “war of the gods” type of identity or "ethnic" conflicts, which were precisely those that liberalism was born to overcome? This “transitional justice”, as experts have already called it, includes retributive, restorative and economic aspects, and is often construed as forming a new general theory of justice. In this paper we would like to challenge this point of view and determine to what extent the “extreme case” of post-conflict societies forms a sort of empirical test for our intuitions with regard to political justice in general. Indeed, there appears to be a structural contradiction between the ends of transitional justice and the means used to achieve it. The very notion of transition implies a kind of teleology: we always transit “towards” something, and in the post-Cold War era in which transitional justice was born, the political horizon was always some form of liberal democracy. However, the means used by transitional justice often contradict this objective, with the use of tools and concepts that counter some of the fundamental principles of political liberalism. For instance, we might name the confusion between law and morality, the defense of positive freedom, a form of social holism, a “sentimentalization” of the public sphere, a therapeutic interpretation of rights, or a “thick”, substantial, conception of reconciliation - all of which seem to lead transitional justice more towards some form of political and moral perfectionism rather than to an entirely neutral and procedural form of liberalism. In this thesis therefore, we will attempt to understand to what extent the application of transitional justice to post-conflict societies (using a quasi-experimental methodology that will entail six different case studies: ex-Yugoslavia, Uganda, Rwanda, East Germany, South Africa and Timor Leste), could lead us to redefine and modify some of our strongest intuitions dealing with liberal political justice. The notion of capability, understood as a means of empowering victims of violence, will lead us to consider ways of reintroducing a certain ethical purpose to those “ends”, which political liberalism, in its traditional form, has abandoned. Faced with extreme forms of trauma and social pathologies, it seems that political and social organization needs a “thicker”, more substantial, conception of morality and of what constitutes mankind's humanity – one that Rawls’ strictly procedural liberalism cannot provide

Most assessments of the ICTY’s performance derive benchmarks for assessment from claims set forth in official instruments or made by Tribunal officials and scholars. This chapter instead derives such benchmarks from the expectations of Bosnians who embraced the Tribunal, exploring the kind of justice they expected it to provide. For many victims, retributive justice is fundamental. Many Bosnians also highly value what scholars call the expressive function of international criminal tribunals. Other goals Bosnians hoped the Tribunal would advance include: preventing future atrocities, dispelling denial and fostering acknowledgment about wartime atrocities, and removing war criminals from their midst.

Moving beyond South Africa into a broader theoretical discussion, this chapter discusses the first of three typologies of reconciliation theory: reconciliation as forgiving embrace. The chapter, like previous ones, develops around three reconciliation-related questions: of inception, transition, and transformation. Those who view reconciliation as largely identical with forgiveness view its inception as a call to moral community; its unfolding as a series of steps toward restorative justice, including repentance, acknowledgment, forgiveness, and redress; and its promise as that of healing of broken relationships. I raise some difficulties with this approach: in many contexts, restorative justice does not seem appropriate, not least when perpetrators remain powerful or unrepentant, and victims vulnerable and traumatized. Moreover, I argue that one can neither prescribe nor “programmatize” forgiveness insofar as it is essentially a gift that may or may not occur. It is therefore essential to imagine reconciliation processes in the absence or not-yet-presence of forgiveness.

Created in 1993, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has operated longer than any war crimes tribunal in history. It thus offers a singularly important case study of how and why the local impact of an international criminal tribunal (ICT) evolves over time; the circumstances in which international justice can advance the normative, reparative, and other aims of transitional justice; and, more generally, the goals ICTs are either well-suited or unlikely to advance. The book explores the ICTY’s impact in Serbia, whose wartime leader plunged the former Yugoslavia into vicious ethnic conflict, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which experienced searing atrocities culminating in the Srebrenica genocide, over the life of the Tribunal. It focuses on the Tribunal’s impact in three spheres: victims’ experience of justice; official, elite, and community discourses about wartime atrocities, as well as official gestures of acknowledgment; and domestic accountability processes, including the work of a hybrid court in Bosnia. While highlighting the perspectives of Bosnians and Serbians interviewed by the author, the book incorporates a rich body of interdisciplinary research to deepen their insights.

This book provides an overview of current social psychological scholarship on collective victimhood. Drawing on different contexts of collective victimization—such as those due to genocide, war, ethnic or religious conflict, racism, colonization, Islamophobia, the caste system, and other forms of direct and structural collective violence—this edited volume presents theoretical ideas and empirical findings concerning the psychological experience of being targeted by collective violence in the past or present. Specifically, the book addresses questions such as: How are experiences of collective victimization passed down in groups and understood by those who did not experience the violence personally? How do people cope with and make sense of collective victimization of their group? How do the different perceptions of collective victimization feed into positive versus hostile relations with other groups? How does group-based power shape these processes? Who is included in or excluded from the category of “victims,” and what are the psychological consequences of such denial versus acknowledgment? Which individual psychological processes such as needs or personality traits shape people’s responses to collective victimization? What are the ethical challenges of researching collective victimization, especially when these experiences are recent and/or politically contested? This edited volume offers different theoretical perspectives on these questions and shows the importance of examining both individual and structural influences on the psychological experience of collective victimhood—including attention to power structures, history, and other aspects of the social and political context that help explain the diversity in experiences of and responses to collective victimization.

This chapter reviews research on how historical genocide continues to affect victim and perpetrator groups’ beliefs, emotions, and intergroup attitudes in the present. The authors organize their review around four central psychological processes that help in understanding why and how members of victim and perpetrator groups respond in such divergent ways: which psychological needs members of these groups have in light of the events (e.g., needs for meaning, agency, power, acknowledgment), how central the genocide is to their identity and how relevant it is seen to the present, how they perceive the scope of genocide and who is considered a victim, and the various lessons group members draw from the events. The authors also discuss possibilities for bridging these divergent responses and factors that complicate the picture such as when groups were both victims and perpetrators.

Abstract While there has been an increased acknowledgment of the fact that males are subjected to sexual violence, these crimes are rarely acknowledged as gendered, and there is still a need to identify the full range of gendered harms experienced by males and to ensure accountability for these crimes. This chapter analyses sexual violence and more specifically rape as a war practice from the perspective of the male victim. It focuses on the violated male body and argues that there are different meanings of war rapes for male and female victims and their different (in)visibilities indicate differences in the ways modern masculinities and femininities are produced. The author argues that war and armed conflict—and sexual violence therein—are social processes in which these differences come to the forefront.

This chapter uses the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as a case study to explore the extent to which the UN treaty bodies have embraced intersectionality in their examination of individual complaints. In many cases, the UN treaty body system allows human rights victims to seek justice for rights violations by submitting a human rights complaint to one of the treaty bodies. The ability to bring a complaint to an international body offers victims a chance at compensation, remedies that may prevent future violations, and an acknowledgment that the state violated their rights. Although the complaint process cannot bring back a family member who was, for example, murdered by representatives of the state, holding the government accountable for its actions can be a powerful remedy for many victims. This chapter probes for evidence of intersectional analysis in one Committee’s consideration of individual complaints. The Committee’s jurisprudence reveals that it is moving toward an intersectional approach, which will enhance available remedies and lead to stronger human rights protection.

This chapter examines how recent efforts to address the harms done to several Americans have taken shape as formal apologies and payments to surviving victims. This contemporary hand-wringing is an important acknowledgment that state-sponsored reproductive deprivation is among the most profound offenses a citizen can suffer. The chapter questions whether the harms from deprivation of assisted conception services are of equal impact to those wrought by unconsensual, unwanted, and procreative robbing surgeries. Whatever the comparison, each person deprived of an opportunity to parent by law, policy, or provider suffers gravely in ways that go beyond the first-line harm of forced childlessness. These harms befall patients, providers, children, and society in various ways, strengthening the case that disparities in access to ART warrant attention and reform.

This chapter focuses on the major goal of the international human rights movement has been in securing accountability for grave abuses. It talks about “truth commissions” in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, several countries of Asia, Morocco, and Canada, which deals with abuses against the country's indigenous population. It also highlights the establishment of several international criminal tribunals in order to prosecute and punish those accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The chapter explores accountability, which has become a central concern of the international human rights movement for the recognition or official acknowledgment of the suffering of victims of human rights abuses. It also analyzes the purpose of deniability, which made it possible for military regimes in that commit abuses to maintain a facadeof legality.

Abstract War and other forms of political violence, at domestic and international levels, tear or stain the fabric of individual lives, as well as the moral, political, and social fabrics of communities. Such depictions of the consequences of war naturally invoke the image of repair. The project of moral regeneration can be understood to entail numerous kinds of repair. One might, for example, characterize the aim of moral regeneration as the repair of morally defective or damaged norms, institutions, and social relationships. Effecting ‘reparation’ so understood could entail several components, including recognition, retribution, and restitution, since moral repair might require a public accounting of events, punishment of the guilty, material compensation for losses suffered by victims, public acknowledgment and remembrance of the wrong, and legal and other institutional transformations to legitimize a new political, social, and economic order. Used in this way, the concept of repair or reparation is basically synonymous with the entire project of moral regeneration.2