International Review of Victimology

Victimological research has examined the construction of victimhood on the basis of the model of the ideal victim and the consequences for real victims of crime. Through a literature review and examination of cases of idealization, including a specific case study centred on a series of murders sentenced by a Spanish criminal court, this paper shows how the processes of victim idealization are a part of the evolution of social dynamics, and how certain events and the intervention of specific actors influence this evolution. More research should analyse how these processes occur in different social contexts and how they shape court decisions.

The difficulties presented by the COVID-19 pandemic were exacerbated for those working in domestic abuse crisis and support services, many of whom received little public recognition for their efforts at the time. The present study addresses this gap by illustrating the factors informing and sustaining domestic abuse service provision during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eighteen domestic abuse service providers (DASPs) from one organisation in south-east England shared their experiences of working during the pandemic national lockdowns. The thematic analysis outlines the hidden negotiations of remote working, the psychological and pragmatic adaptations DASPs employed to maintain vital services, and the impact of dealing with risk and trauma from intimate spaces and while isolated from colleagues. Key themes include negotiating boundaries, navigating guilt, and re-evaluating success. The importance of ‘compassion satisfaction’ – feelings of pleasure from helping others by doing a job well – significantly helped DASPs to adopt positive attitudes during this period of uncertainty and change. DASPs demonstrated personal and professional growth through acquiring new skills, fostering innovation, and positively reframing their contributions. The findings offer evidence-based insight into factors that may mitigate risk to service delivery in future large-scale crisis situations.

Police-reported hate crimes in Canada doubled from 2019 to 2023. Hate crimes and incidents significantly harm survivors of hate crimes and incidents and their communities. While research documents the underreporting of hate crimes and incidents, what is less understood are the experiences of survivors who report hate crimes and incidents. To explore this matter, we conducted a qualitative descriptive Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) study, interviewing 18 participants between February and May 2022 who had reported hate crimes and incidents to organizations in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada over the past five years. They shared several insights. First, how organizations respond to reports of hate crimes and incidents does not reliably meet the needs of people victimized by these occurrences and can significantly impact survivors. Second, understandings and experiences of hate crimes and incidents, and how organizations respond to them, are based on lived experiences of historical and ongoing systemic and societal discrimination. Third, interpersonal relationships, existing knowledge and beliefs, and previous experiences influence people’s choices to report a hate crime or incident. These insights have implications for organizations and governments supporting survivors of hate crimes and incidents. Timely, consistent, victim-centred, evidence-based services that address systemic gaps must be a priority.

Childhood victimisation and polyvictimisation (experiencing two or more distinct crime types) can have lasting developmental, psychological, and social consequences. Yet there is limited research on victimisation and polyvictimisation in England and Wales using robust data sets. This study addresses this gap by investigating prevalence, trends, and individual, household, and area-level predictors of non-sexual non-familial violence, personal theft, household theft, and criminal damage and polyvictimisation using the 10- to 15-year-old Crime Survey for England and Wales (2011/2012–2019/2020; N = 25,415). A series of binary logistic regressions was performed, supplemented by visualisations. The weighted percentage of children experiencing a single type of victimisation ranged from 1.1% (criminal damage) to 5.8% (violence), while 1.1% were polyvictimised. Although most victimisation types and polyvictimisation declined over the 9-year period, reductions in polyvictimisation varied depending on socioeconomic status. Both individual (sex, ethnicity, disability) and area-level (deprivation) factors predicted polyvictimisation and individual victimisation types. Implications of the findings are discussed.

This article investigates the manifestations of microaggressions, hate speech, and hate crimes targeting Roma individuals in Romania, situating them within the broader European framework of anti-discrimination and victim protection policies. The study is based on a nationally representative sociological survey, conducted in late 2023 by the Research Institute for Quality of Life (RIQL), Romanian Academy. The findings reveal a persistent gap between Romania’s formal alignment with European Union (EU) regulations and the implementation of protective measures. Despite public awareness of anti-discrimination legislation and compared to the general population, Roma respondents report significantly lower levels of trust in law enforcement and criminal justice institutions and show limited willingness to report microaggressions or hate incidents they were exposed to. Regression analyses highlight the influence of institutional trust, educational attainment, and social intolerance on perceived vulnerability and reporting behaviour. The outcomes underscore the structural nature of anti-Roma discrimination and the need for integrated policy interventions combining institutional reform, civic education, and improved access to justice. This study enriches victimology and ethnic studies by empirically linking hate incidents and discriminatory micro-level experiences with macro-level institutional trust within a post-communist context.

History offers countless examples of victims whose experiences have shaped not only their own destinies but also the ethical foundations of justice. However, victims are often stereotyped as either passive or vengeful, marginalizing their potential contributions to legal systems. This article challenges such a representation by proposing a four-layer framework to understand how victims can help transform justice. The layers include (1) vulnerability after harm, as a shared human condition; (2) resilience, as the process of rebuilding the self; (3) ethical responsibility, where suffering is redirected into justice-oriented action; and (4) institutional receptivity and cooperation, meaning the legal system’s openness to victims’ voices. When these dimensions intersect, experiences of harm may lead to legal transformation. The argument is grounded in cases such as the activism of Gisèle Pelicot and Claudine Cordani in France, the Larry Nassar trial in the United States, and the emergence of ‘apostrophe laws’ that reflect victims’ influence on courtroom practice. The article concludes that although contemporary victimology has expanded victims’ rights and participation, it has yet to fully consider vulnerability as a constructive force. This calls for a new phase of victimology that recognizes victims as agents who, with institutional support, carry their vulnerability into the legal arena as a generative force.

Since the 1980s we have witnessed the steady growth of the victims’ movement and associated victim rights that provide international benchmarks for these rights and their enactment into domestic law. While there are ongoing concerns about the implementation of these rights and equal access to justice for all (see SDG 16 indicators, for example), these victim rights emphasise individuals within a criminal justice context. This well-trodden observation in no way diminishes the importance of existing instruments for delivering justice for victims. What has changed is that victim rights are increasingly referenced to social group position. For example, the rights of women, minoritised people, faith-based groups, indigenous and displaced people, LGBTQ+ people (to name but a few) are positioned around historical and contemporary claims of unfairness, disadvantage and the privilege of others. In some instances, collective claims to victimhood and their associated claims for recognition and restitution clash, leading to anger, resentment and the danger of further harm. This article will consider whether there is a case for a new type of collective victim right in the form of remediation, what this might look like and how it might operate, alongside existing provision.

Hate crimes and social victimization within online gaming environments have received increasing attention due to their potential psychological and social impact. This study, conducted within the framework of a major research project, examines the prevalence of victimization and perpetration of hate crimes in online video games and related communities, as well as the overlap between victim and offender roles. Using survey data from 1812 Spanish adult gamers, we analyze experiences of hate victimization and perpetration based on race, gender/sexuality, and political ideology. Results indicate that a substantial proportion of players report being subjected to hate-based insults, with political and racial victimization being the most frequent. Perpetration rates are significantly lower but show strong associations between different types of offenses. Moreover, the study identifies a significant victim–offender overlap, showing that individuals who experience victimization are more likely to engage in perpetration. These findings underscore the cyclical nature of online hate behaviors and highlight the need for targeted interventions to address both victimization and perpetration within gaming communities.

This article examines the lived experiences of 17 victims of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) through in-depth qualitative interviews. Drawing on interpretivist victimology and research on technology-facilitated sexual violence, the study explores how IBSA produces layered and intersecting harms across three domains: emotional and psychological impact, social and relational disruption, and financial consequences. It further examines how the technological environment, marked by anonymity, permanence, and borderless circulation, shapes and intensifies these harms. Victims reported intense emotional responses, ranging from fear and anxiety to shame, depression, and psychosomatic distress. Socially, many experienced isolation, stigma, and erosion of trust, particularly when abuse intersected with cultural taboos or gendered expectations. Financially, victims faced extortion, educational and occupational disruption, and the cost of seeking justice or support. The technological architecture of digital platforms facilitated recurrence, impersonation, and institutional neglect, leaving victims with a sense of prolonged vulnerability and burden. Rather than a one-time event, IBSA emerges as a temporally extended process in which harms accumulate, interact, and reshape victims’ life narratives. Institutional responses often reinforced harm through disbelief, inaction, or procedural re-traumatization. These findings underscore the need to reframe IBSA not only as a digital or interpersonal violation, but as a cumulative form of victimization that disrupts recovery and future-oriented agency. The article concludes with implications for platform governance, trauma-informed institutional design, and future research on the meaning-making dimensions of digital abuse.

Recent studies on police discretion highlight inequities in access to victim–offender mediation. However, little is known about how discretion shapes pathways of both restorative and criminal justice in countries where mediation could serve as an alternative to criminal proceedings. Drawing on interviews with Finnish justice officials, this study explores the factors that may influence the decisions of police and prosecutors regarding mediation during criminal proceedings. Thematic analysis reveals varying use of discretion among justice officials referring cases to mediation and deciding whether to prosecute or divert cases from criminal proceedings. In decisions about referral, justice officials vary in how they consider the influence of a mediation agreement on further proceedings. Following mediation, they vary in their consideration of its fulfilment in decisions about diversion. Consequently, some criminal cases appear more likely than others to be denied access to mediation, or to be diverted from criminal proceedings while reparations are ongoing. Our findings imply that the use of discretion among justice officials regarding mediation could reflect their holistic consideration of justice mechanisms, which interconnectedly incorporate both criminal and restorative justice. Hence, we argue that inequities in access are not only restricted to mediation but also concern restorative outcomes and criminal justice.

This scoping review synthesizes findings from 62 empirical studies to develop a typology of online romance scams, distinguishing between advance fee romance scams (AFRS) and investment-based romance scams (InvRS). The analysis reveals that while both rely on early-stage emotional manipulation and trust building, they diverge markedly in operational mechanisms and technological sophistication. AFRS typically use fabricated crises and prolonged emotional grooming to elicit repeated payments, whereas InvRS, including pig-butchering schemes, employ fraudulent investment platforms, often centered on cryptocurrency, to induce escalating financial commitments. By systematically reviewing studies published between January 2024 and October 2025 across both English and Chinese language sources, this work provides the most comprehensive comparative synthesis to date. The inclusion of 62 studies allows for cross regional and cross linguistic insights into offender networks, victim vulnerabilities, and prevention strategies, addressing a critical gap in prior literature that has treated romance scams as a single homogeneous phenomenon. The findings reveal the industrialization and diversification of offender tactics and underscore the need for future research on guardianship, victim psychology, and cross border policy collaboration to inform more targeted prevention and intervention frameworks.

While legal notions of procedural justice for defendants are predominantly perceived in the context of human rights (Article (Art.) 6 ECHR) and have a more ‘instrumental’ aim (guaranteeing a fair outcome of criminal proceedings by respecting fair trial rights), procedural rights for victims are typically developed with an eye on participation and prevention of secondary victimisation, and they have a more ‘relational’ purpose of meeting victims’ needs to be heard, acknowledged and respected. These different perspectives on procedural justice have resulted in the creation of different types of rights. In this paper, (the rationale of) several regional victim and defendant rights instruments are compared with four ‘principles’ stemming from the social–psychological theory of procedural justice. This theory relates to the question of whether participants perceive procedures as fair, and ideally all four principles are adequately represented in the legal frameworks pertaining to victims and defendants. The comparison, however, reveals that fair trial rights for defendants pay insufficient attention to the ‘respect’ principle, while victim rights frameworks are underserving the dimensions of ‘voice’, ‘neutrality’ and ‘case processing time’. Concrete examples are provided of where defendants could potentially benefit from ‘archetypical’ victim rights and vice versa to address this lacuna.

Extant empirical research indicates that teacher victimization is highly prevalent and has detrimental impacts for victimized teachers. Although existing empirical studies have provided valuable information and insights into the prevalence and negative consequences of teacher victimization, to the best of our knowledge, there is no empirical research investigating the impact of apologies from offending students and the perceived sincerity of those apologies by victimized teachers on the emotional and physical distress experienced by the victims. The current research, using a sample of middle and high school teachers among 50 of the largest US school districts, is the first attempt to address the limitation. Overall, the present research found that teachers subjected to various types of aggression from students often endure elevated levels of emotional and physical distress, indicating the urgent need for effective intervention and measures to alleviate the distress experienced by victimized teachers. The results imply that sincere apologies from offending students and holding them accountable through appropriate punishment can play pivotal roles in alleviating the distress endured by victimized teachers at school.

Globally, there has been a significant rise and diversification in fraud that is targeting individual members of the public. Research evidence has shown that victims suffer harm as a consequence of fraud victimisation. However, few studies have focused on how fraud impacts on victim health, despite the importance of health in policy assessments and the design of victim support services. Furthermore, there are conceptual questions on how to operationalise and assess ‘impact’ as it is subjectively experienced by different victims. Using survey data collected from 311 victims of fraud in the United Kingdom, this study uses quantitative and qualitative analyses to explore the health impact of fraud from three perspectives: the type, composition and intensity of health symptoms that are experienced; the wider impact of these on the lives of victims; and the capacity of victims to cope or recover from the experience. The research shows that most victims experience a health symptom (most commonly emotional or psychological), but the profile, intensity, and impact on wider life is highly variable. In addition, a cohort of victims reported symptoms over longer time periods and a significant minority had wanted support or treatment to address the impact on their health. The implications of these findings for further research and policies are discussed.

This special issue examines victim recognition in the case of serious human rights violations. Starting from how victimology has addressed the issue of victim recognition, it analyses the importance for victims of recognition and recognitive attitudes in contexts of political crimes and transitional justice. The papers presented in this special issue take on a multidisciplinary approach to highlight the importance of different types of recognition for healing victims and their relationships with others. They illustrate how recognition can be felt cumulatively and obtained by victims through the responses of different actors across various social spaces. They also indicate that victim recognition in the legal sphere is fraught with obstacles and that victims facing the absence of legal recognition may find some satisfaction through non-judicial and informal measures of justice, interpersonal and community interactions and psychosocial support. Two papers address the issue of victim recognition as a central part of a deep societal transformation towards healing intergroup relationships and reconciliation in the case of historical injustices and structural victimisation in Canada. Two other papers address particularly State recognition: one focuses on individual and collective reparations for victims of forced displacement in the contexts of Argentina and Iraq; the other discusses the struggles faced by victims of sexual and gender-based violence seeking for legal recognition in Guatemala and Belgium. Recognition of victims in Colombia through people’s engagement with art as symbolic reparations is the focus of another paper. Finally, two other papers concern victims’ struggles in claiming for recognition in the contexts of Perú and Ecuador, analysing respectively how recognition can be experienced and furthered through group mobilisation and group support. Taken together, these different papers constitute an innovative attempt to apply the concept and the intricacies of victim recognition to the context of political crimes and transitional justice.

This qualitative study explores the service needs and systemic gaps experienced by African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) survivors of homicide victims in Ontario, Canada, where homicide rates have steadily risen over the past two decades, particularly among racialized populations. Through 51 interviews in five high-homicide regions, findings reveal that current victim services inadequately meet the needs of ACB survivors due to limited funding, culturally insensitive approaches, and harmful interactions with the police. Thematic analysis identified three key domains: Barriers to Accessing Support, Police Response, and Representation Matters. These domains underscore the importance of trauma-informed, culturally responsive care and the need for greater ACB representation in service delivery. The study offers concrete policy recommendations aimed at improving access, enhancing accountability in law enforcement interactions, and expanding long-term, community-based support for ACB survivors. These findings inform urgent policy reforms to ensure equity and justice in the post-homicide service landscape.

Although the literature on online scams reveals the richness of studies in many areas, research on the forms of scam and scammers’ roles during online scam engagement is rare. The current research fills this void by interviewing 15 elder victims of online scams about their experience. The findings show that online scams can be committed individually or as a team, and that the scam can be either victim-initiated contact or fraudster-initiated contact. The analysis of the data reveals four main roles of the scammers (persuader, supporters, manager, and financial person), each of which plays a different but supporting role in order to smoothly convince the victim that their scam is legitimate. The use of information technology (IT) was also found to be a part of the scam mechanism to control and manipulate the victim.

Community Courts (CCs) provide an alternative to the mainstream, punitive criminal justice process. In this model, legal professionals collaborate to provide rehabilitation for recidivist participants. CC programs worldwide usually use conventional metrics of recidivism and legal compliance to measure the individual and program success. However, it appears there is a need to consider the programs’ impact on crime victims and their level of involvement when evaluating success in these courts. Incorporating victims into CC processes might help fulfill the goal of enhancing the community’s involvement in the program. In addition, victims’ involvement could benefit the participants during their rehabilitation process by developing a deeper understanding of the consequences of re-offending on society. Based on 80 in-depth interviews conducted in 2018–2023 with professionals and participants of five CCs in Israel, this study uncovers the existing mechanisms and identifies shortcomings in the current victims’ integration practices. Drawing upon the insights derived from the empirical data, this article discusses a critical gap: while CCs are based on community justice principles, crime victims, central to the community, are excluded from the assessment process, undermining both rehabilitation and systemic effectiveness. In addressing these aspects, this study contributes to the ongoing discourse on victim-centered justice.

Wrongful convictions are legal and moral failures whose ripple effects extend well beyond the wrongfully convicted individual. While recent scholarship has explored the psychological and social challenges faced by exonerees, the broader impacts on their family members remain underexamined. This qualitative study explores the emotional, financial, and social consequences experienced by immediate family members of exonerees—specifically siblings, children, and parents. Thirteen participants were interviewed using a semi-structured protocol and analyzed through a codebook-driven thematic analysis. Five domains emerged as central: Emotional Impact, Financial Burden, Social Consequences, Barriers to Healing and Justice, and Advocacy and Hope for Reform. Results revealed profound psychological trauma, economic strain, social stigma, and institutional distrust across all family roles, with siblings describing unique forms of invisible grief and emotional displacement. These findings underscore the need for family-centered justice reforms, including compensation policies that account for familial losses, mental health services tailored to relational trauma, and inclusive reentry support systems. This study highlights the urgency of expanding wrongful conviction responses to include the overlooked victims: the families who bear the weight of injustice without recognition or redress.