Introduction
Interpersonal violence, however dreadful it might sound, is a part of people’s daily lives. It occurs every day on the streets and in homes, in schools, at work. The purpose of this paper is to distinguish between the notions of criminology and victimology, examine the Sellin and Wolfgang’s victim typology, and apply this knowledge to the case of Sarah Lawrence college. Studying crime from the perspectives of both the perpetrator and the victim is beneficial as it provides an understanding of how they act and interact, and, therefore, might help address the issues associated with them.
Criminology and Victimology
Anyone can become a victim of violence or crime, either as a specific target or a casualty. The scientific study of victims of crime is called victimology. Daigle (2018) notes that it is often deemed a subfield of criminology, with which victimology has much in common. Criminology deals with the etiology of crime and studies criminals in their actions, motives, and relationship to the criminal justice system. In its turn, victimology studies the etiology of victimization and its consequences, as well as victims of crime in their relationship with the guilty party and the criminal justice system.
Victimologists are engaged in studying the demographics of victimization, that is, victims’ sex, age, race, location, and other circumstantial factors. Furthermore, specialists examine the problems of being a victim of a crime beyond the range of physical injuries related to violent acts. According to Meadows (2018), victims suffer economic losses, among which are medical expenses and loss of wages. For instance, the average cost of rape for a victim, when counting medical and other costs, might be over $50,000 (Meadows, 2018). Finally, according to victimologists, victims might feel responsible for what happened to them; therefore, victimization is often associated with a certain level of stress, anxiety, and guilt.
The earliest scientific works on victimization date back to the first half of the 20th century. Meadows (2018) reports that one of the first scholars of the field was a researcher named Hans von Henting, who suggested that it was the victim who shaped the crime and the criminal. Then there was Benjamin Mendelsohn, according to whose theory some victims might inadvertently cause their own victimization based on one’s relationship with the perpetrator. Finally, there is the Sellin and Wolfgang’s typology, which focuses on the situations rather than relationships and will be discussed in detail below. Its five categories are primary victimization, secondary victimization, tertiary victimization, mutual victimization and no victimization.
Primary victimization refers to individual, targeted victimization, that is, cases of a person or a group selecting a particular individual or individuals as a victimization target. Examples include victims of hate crimes, bullying at school, or domestic violence. Secondary victimization refers to impersonalized targeting: when committing a crime, the offender does not aim at harming specific people, and those who suffer are victims by accident. When a company sells defective products to the public, the public becomes a secondary victim.
Tertiary victimization describes the phenomenon of society as a crime’s victim. This includes crimes committed by the government, such as when money is embezzled by public officials, or when people are defrauded by them. According to Meadows (2018), an elected official taking vacation trips and charging them as business expenses deceives the public. Mutual victimization is the occurrence of offenders becoming victims, for one, when two individuals engage in criminal activities together and then one of them becomes victimized by the other. These are the cases of a prostitute robbing the client or a drug dealer shooting the buyer. The fifth and final category of the Sellin and Wolfgang’s typology is no victimization, which refers to situations of victimization being difficult to define. This is most often the case with so-called victimless crimes, which involve only the perpetrator or consenting adults.
When reading news reports or stories related to crime, an attentive law student can identify the categories of victims presented in the text. For example, the article published in The Cut on April 6th, 2022, tells about a unique offender who over the years had been making dozens of people victims of his behavior, either intentionally or casually. Marcus and Walsh (2022) provide a detailed account of the ‘stolen kids’ of Sarah Lawrence college, who became victims of actions of a man named Larry Ray. Having just finished a jail sentence for violations of child custody, Ray moved into his daughter Talia’s dormitory at the college. There he met Talia’s friends and slowly but surely insinuated himself into their lives, which resulted in Ray living with all of them for the next couple of years. During that time, the man subjected students to psychological, physical, and sexual abuse, extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars from them, and managed to draw his victims away from their families. In April of 2022 he went on federal trial for several crimes, including conspiracy, extortion, and sex trafficking, and was convicted on all counts.
When it comes to the Sellin and Wolfgang’s typology and its categories of victimization, it is evident that the students who suffered at the hands of Larry Ray were his primary victims. He targeted them upon moving into the dormitory, posing as a powerful father figure and spreading his influence over the impressionable young minds, making the students depend on him psychologically. Additionally, this article provides an example of secondary victimization: Marcus and Walsh (2022) state that Ray, being a brilliant manipulator, was reported to be impossible to psychologically evaluate by specialists during his complex divorce process. In this case, people dealing with Ray were his secondary victims: he did not target specific people but those who happened to be evaluating him were unable to do their job because of Ray’s tactics. Because of this, the process of proving that Ray’s testimony about his wife abusing their children was false took way longer than it otherwise could have taken.
The case of the Sarah Lawrence college kids is a very peculiar one from the point of view of victimology. Some might say that the students were Ray’s perfect victims: sensitive introverts searching for guidance and struggling with their relationships and mental health. What started as Ray providing support and mentorship quickly turned into psychological dependability of fragile young adults on a powerful and manipulative man. Many students stopped talking to their parents under Larry’s influence, therefore making him the most influential figure in their lives. Some of them, when asked to testify in court, never said a word against Ray, painting him as a guardian of vulnerable young people. Moreover, they spoke about their intentions to poison the man, which Ray indoctrinated them into saying to add weight to his nonsensical conspiracy theories.
Conclusion
In conclusion, both criminology and victimology provide valuable insights into the different parts of the etiology of crime. For one, various victim typologies offer various perspectives on the dynamics between the offender and the victim, with Sellin and Wolfgang’s one focusing on the situations and not on the relationship between the parties. The case of the Sarah Lawrence college kids, being a horrifying story, is great for studying the behavior of victims of cunning and manipulative mentors. It is evident that the more research is conducted on this subject, the better the understanding of how to help the victims and, if at all possible, how to reduce their numbers.
References
Daigle, L. E. (2018). Victimology: The essentials. SAGE Publications.
Marcus, E., & Walsh, J. D. (2022). The stolen kids of Sarah Lawrence: What happened to the group of bright college students who fell under the sway of a classmate’s father? The Cut. Web.
Meadows, R. (2018). Understanding violence and victimization (7th ed.). Pearson Education.