In his famous book “Crime and Punishment”, F. Dostoyevsky explores a variety of issues that concern the aspects of crime and the relation between the criminal and his victim. Although the old lady killed by the main character Raskolnikov died unfairly, she evokes very little or no sympathy as her life was a mere process of wealth accumulation, and her entire character was completely negative provoking thoughts that perhaps she deserved to die. Thus, among many other burning topics, Dostoyevskyy raises the debate over the guilt of a victim.
Regardless of whether the act of wrongdoing was deserved or not, we believe that the victim is always guilty if it represents something negative or evil. The history of the world, as well as the events of nowadays, proves this seemingly ambiguous statement.
If we look back for several centuries, we will remember the period in the history of the Catholic Church when the Inquisition was raging all throughout the catholic countries. Church officials or “witch hunters” represented the only possible truth, and thus anyone who found themselves not corresponding to the established views of the Church as to the religious behavior was found guilty, although oftentimes no actual court hearing was held. Victims of inquisition were always found guilty.
During World War II, Jews were killed in every country that witnessed the reign of the Nazis. These people were victims by the right of birth without the need for any particular behavior or actions. To those affiliated with the Nazi party or fond of Hitler theories, they embedded the evil and danger, thus not having the right to continue living (Stark, Goldstein, 1985).
There is no need, however, to go back that far as vivid examples of this statement can be found even in the world of nowadays. International wars are started and lead to massive killings of people under the pretext that the military actions are aimed at finding and eliminating the weapons of mass destruction, and thus are directed at the good for all people, even if the weapons are never found (Combs, Nimmo, 1996). Those who fell victims to such events inevitably represented evil, and thus were found guilty.
It is worth noting that the statement can be proved not only on the global level. In our everyday life the victims of domestic violence – women as a rule – are often believed to be guilty of what happened to them (Hejden, 2000). It is frequently considered that by their behavior, they provoked the act of violence.
Similarly, many victims of rapists are treated not as victims, but almost the same as criminals as supposedly it was their provoking or even aggressive behavior that caused the crime (Campbell, 1998).
Although eventually, the history proves different, at some point in the existence of the world certain type of victims, was always considered guilty as they did not correspond to the criteria of good and bad. Even though at the present moment looking at such examples through the prism of contemporary values, the opposite is obvious, we do not realize that many of those whom we associate with evil these days might be considered as the “victims who were always guilty” by the next generations.
References
Campbell, Rebecca. “The Community Response to Rape: Victims’ Experiences with the Legal, Medical, and Mental Health Systems.” American Journal of Community Psychology 26.3 (1998): 355-360.
Combs, James E., and Dan Nimmo. The Comedy of Democracy. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.
Der Heijden, Manon Van. “Women as Victims of Sexual and Domestic Violence: Criminal Cases of Rape, Incest, and Maltreatment.” Journal of Social History 33.3 (2000): 623.
Stark, James H., and Howard W. Goldstein. The Rights of Crime Victims. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1985.