Behavior: Is the Victim Guilty?

After the slaying of Robert Kennedy, University of Houston Psychologist Richard Evans characterized the Kennedys as “victims in search of assassins.” Evans’ concept—that victims often invite and help to shape crimes—was not widely held three years ago. Now it is established as a new discipline known as “victimology.”

At its last conference, the International Criminological Society included a special session on the behavioral patterns of victims. For the first time in the U.S., three courses in victimology are being offered, one at the University of California, the others at Northeastern University and at Boston University Law School. A major book on the subject is nearing publication, and an international conference devoted solely to victimology has been scheduled for Jerusalem in 1973.

Most behavioral scientists agree with University of Montreal Criminologist Ezzat Abdel Fattah, who contends that “there are people who attract the criminal as the lamb attracts the wolf.” Some of these victims are masochistic or depressed; Criminologist Hans von Hentig described them as longing “lustfully” for injury.

Others, says Northeastern University Victimologist Stephen Schafer, have certain personality traits—for example, the Kennedys’ ambition for power—that invite attack by “offending the offender.” Israeli Criminologist Menachem Amir, who set up the victimology course at Berkeley, cites cultural factors: to participate in certain lifestyles, such as prostitution and drug addiction, is to court trouble. There are some occupations, too, that are likely to attract violence: cab driver, bank teller and policeman, among others. The motivation for seeking these jobs sometimes includes an unconscious need to be a victim, or a wish to defy fate.

The type of crime often fits the behavior that provoked it. Theft, for instance, is often stimulated by the victim’s negligence, swindles by his greed, and blackmail by his guilt. Murder can be invited by belligerence: in 1969 a national study of bus drivers showed that three who were killed during robberies had vowed not to let “any punk kid” rob them, and had carried and tried to use guns in violation of company rules. In other cases, suicidal wishes have provoked murder—a phenomenon that the mother of Congressional Medal of Honor Winner Dwight Johnson may have recognized when she surmised that her son, shot while committing a holdup, had “tired of life and needed someone else to pull the trigger.”

Rehabilitation. There is less consensus about the role of the victim in rape cases. Some victimologists contend that rape victims invite attack. But Amir believes that fewer than 20% of rapes are precipitated by the woman’s being “negligent or reckless or seductive.” Philadelphia Psychiatrist Joseph Peters also thinks that the victim of sexual assault is less often at fault than is generally believed. To resolve the controversy, he and his colleagues have just begun a study that calls for exhaustive interviewing of every Philadelphia rape victim over the next four years.

The Peters study and other victimology investigations now under way throughout the world may well result in significant changes in the prevention and detection of crime and the treatment of both criminals and victims. One intriguing possibility: because victims of crimes, like criminals, are often repeaters, society may one day set up rehabilitation programs for victims as well as for those who injured them.