What are the Short and Long Term Impacts on Victims of Crime?


Once someone becomes a victim of crime, the impact it leaves can be life-changing. Some effects are short term, whereas others affect victims more in the long run. For example, the character Harper, from the episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. 

 Immediately after she is sexually assaulted, she has to deal with the authorities and doctors who are doing their job, but while they are doing so, they make her relieve the trauma over and over again. She is asked many questions, and has to re-tell the story many times. Her only wish is that it is over as soon as possible. However, it is very difficult for that to happen. After months of investigations, she begins to lose hope that they will find the person who did it. She loses faith in the investigators, after they question her about her drug use habits, and her possibly making up the story. This would be a difficult thing to go through, with people doubting your story and that person still being out there. She has to live with the fear of them coming back, of the whole thing happening again.

After many months with no leads, the investigators come back to question her to see if she can identify the person. She is a completely different person. The trauma has changed her ways of living and even the way she presents herself. She moved out, had multiple locks added to her door, and sleeps with running shoes on. She dresses differently, and has become cagey and no longer believes that the person will be found. She no longer thinks that she can identify him and doesn't seem to care if they ever catch him.

A real life example would be...
https://www.vancourier.com/news/national/priest-sex-assault-victim-seeks-2-45-million-1.24094897

Rosemary Anderson, a victim of sexual assault, is now 70 years old and is seeking 2.45 million dollars in damages. She was assault by her priest, Erlindo Molon, when she was 26 and for 40 years from then on. Anderson had gone to see Molon for comfort after her father’s death. Instead, he began groping her, initiating a sexual relationship.  She is seeking $425,000 in nonpecuniary damages, $500,000 in punitive damages and $1.5 million for lost wages. She wanted to pursue a medical career, but her psychological state after the abuses prevented her from doing so. Anderson’s inability to focus on pre-medical school courses in the 1980s, lifelong anxiety and depression, a of lack of trust in people and PTSD affected her throughout the rest of her life. You can start to see the similarities between her and Harper, including the psychological effects during and after the abuse, and the long term effects considering that the abuse began in her twenties and she is now 70, so she has lived a lot of her life dealing with the effects of the trauma, and is only now is she getting closure. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is School One of the Most Dangerous Places for Young People?

In 2010, almost 153,000 youths in Canada were accused of committing a crime. This represents about 6% of the Canadian youth population, aged between 12-17 years old. Youth crime makes up about 13% of overall crime in Canada. Theft under $5,000 is the most common for youth, both males and females. 13% of youth crimes are committed on school property, others are committed either in private residences or other public spaces like stores and office buildings. I don’t think school is the most dangerous place for young people, however it is a place that could potentially influence crime taking place. Mainly drug offences and property theft are what happen at school, violent crime less so. There are plenty of people around at a school, which is when a lot of crime takes place. I think that even though a lot of crime takes place at school, I also think that a lot of crime  also occurs during the summer months because kids are out of school and there's more people outside, there's m...
Read more

Colton Harris-Moore: Sociology, True Crime, and Fame

I think that Colton Harris Moore is simply a criminal with an entertaining story. I don't think he's a hero because he didn't actually help people... which is usually what heroes do. From a literature point of view, I would say he's a protagonist that people are intrigued by and might even root for, but he isn't a hero. He is the main character and the story is about him, but to be realistic the large media presence was the reason people thought of him as a hero. There are aspects of the story that Harris-Moore accomplished on his own by using his actions to grab other's attention. Everything he did was rather theatrical: stealing cars, flying planes, and leaving things like notes or chalk-drawn footprints at the scene. He also teased authorities, making them look foolish and him look like a hero. Even if he was an adult it would've been a captivating story, and him being only a teenager would grab even more people's attention. Of course, the media is...
Read more

Final Report on Crime in Media

For this final project, I decided to report on the crime drama Cardinal. It is a detective show based in Northern Ontario, specifically, a fictional town called Algonquin Bay. The show was primarily filmed in Sudbury Ontario and North Bay. The series in based on the books by Giles Blunt, each season surrounding another novel. As of this year, there are four seasons: Season 1- Forty Words for Sorrow Season 2- Blackfly Season Season 3- By the Time You Read This Season 4- Until the Night The show surrounds main character John Cardinal, a former member of the homicide squad as he goes to work as an officer in small town Algonquin Bay, along with his partner, Lise Delorme. For this report, I’ll be focusing on the season 4: Until the Night. This season, Cardinal and Delorme are investigating the abduction and murder of a politician, who is reported missing by his wife, Sheila Gagne. Sheila is distrusting of the detectives, and only trusts one cop who she knows perso...
Read more