Narrating Injustice Survival: Self-medication by Victims of Crime (Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology) 3319934937, 9783319934938

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NARRATING INJUSTICE SURVIVAL

Self-medication by Victims of Crime

Willem de Lint and Marinella Marmo

Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology

Series Editors Matthew Hall University of Lincoln Lincoln, UK Pamela Davies Department of Social Sciences Northumbria University Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

In recent decades, a growing emphasis on meeting the needs and rights of victims of crime in criminal justice policy and practice has fuelled the development of research, theory, policy and practice outcomes stretching across the globe. This growth of interest in the victim of crime has seen victimology move from being a distinct subset of criminology in academia to a specialist area of study and research in its own right. Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology showcases the work of contemporary scholars of victimological research and publishes some of the highest-quality research in the field. The series reflects the range and depth of research and scholarship in this burgeoning area, combining contributions from both established scholars who have helped to shape the field and more recent entrants. It also reflects both the global nature of many of the issues surrounding justice for victims of crime and social harm and the international span of scholarship researching and writing about them. Editorial Board Antony Pemberton, Tilburg University, Netherlands Jo-Anne Wemmers, Montreal University, Canada Joanna Shapland, Sheffield University, UK Jonathan Doak, Durham University, UK More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14571

Willem de Lint · Marinella Marmo

Narrating Injustice Survival Self-medication by Victims of Crime

Willem de Lint College of Business, Government and Law Flinders University Adelaide, SA, Australia

Marinella Marmo College of Business, Government and Law Flinders University Adelaide, SA, Australia

Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology ISBN 978-3-319-93493-8 ISBN 978-3-319-93494-5  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93494-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018943642 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Szekely Images/Stockimo/Alamy Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

We are indebted to the many people who have participated in the study on which this book is based. Across the world, the trauma produced by predatory crimes is largely uncounted. Only some of the victims come forward to state their case and seek some form of justice or closure. Some of these brave people have offered to share in this publication their words and stories from their journey toward recovery, and we are grateful. To many others who have not enjoyed the circumstances or been able to muster the strength to tell their story, we hope that this book may resonate. We are also indebted to Dr. Andrew Groves of Deakin University and his work on the self-medication study; his contribution to background research for this book is immense. This work also owes much to the support of Victoria Laughton, who began with us as an honours student and research assistant before her appointment at Victim Support Services. Our gratitude also goes to Dr. Adam Pocrnic for his contribution, especially for the quantitative data analysis aspect of the project. We are grateful to both Dr. David Kerr and Tony Waters, who both acted as CEO of Victim Support Services (VSS) over the past few years and initially approached us with the concept. They both had identified v

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the issue of self-medication in the VSS clients during their everyday routine and were keen to support a reliable study in this area. We also would like to thank everyone at VSS for their help for the entire duration of the project (2011–2016): you are important to the South Australian community, and hopefully with the help of this book, your contribution in the field can reach other audiences as well. The project was funded by an internal grant of Flinders University, without which we would have not been able to set up the fieldwork. We are also indebted to the interviewees’ transcribers, for their excellent job. It was certainly not easy to listen to some parts of the interview exchange as an external party. We hope the book can address partially the gap in the literature of self-medication of crime victims. We are aware that this is just one contribution to this field. We are interested in similar studies and would like to discuss any aspect of this project with other researchers who may share similar projects. Adelaide, Australia

Willem de Lint Marinella Marmo

Contents

1 Victims of Crimes, Self-Medication and Narratives of (In)Justice 1 2 Methods, Collaboration with VSS and Victim Reflexivity 27 3 Self-Medication and Avoidance Coping 53 4 Validation—Informal and Formal Support in Narratives of Recovery 91 5 Adaptations in Recovery 131 6 Meaning Work and Chance 175 7 Validation, Chance and Justice 205

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Afterword 219 Appendix 221 Index 223

Acronyms

AA ABC ABS AOD CBT CJS CSA DASSA DPP DV GP IPV NA PTG PTSD SAPOL VIS VSS

Alcoholics Anonymous Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Bureau of Statistics Alcohol and other drug Cognitive behavioural therapy Criminal justice system Child sexual assault Drug and Alcohol Services South Australia Director of Public Prosecutions Domestic violence General practitioner Intimate partner violence Narcotics Anonymous Post-traumatic growth Post-traumatic stress disorder South Australian Police Victim impact statement Victim Support Services

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Type of victimisation and AOD use in simple victimisation, simple poly victimisation and complex poly-victimisation 8 Fig. 2.1 New clients in Adelaide and regions (based on VSS 2011) 31 Fig. 2.2 Source of VSS referrals in 2011 (based on VSS 2011) 31 Fig. 2.3 New clients by type of crime 32 Fig. 2.4 Victimisation by type of crime 37 Fig. 2.5 Simple, simple poly- and complex poly-victimisation 37 Fig. 3.1 Overall patterns of consumption 76 Fig. 3.2 Patterns of consumption before and after crime by AOD type 77 Fig. 3.3 Patterns of consumption before and after crime by frequency 78 Fig. 4.1 Support sought by victims 95 Fig. 4.2 Perceived response to type of support 96 Fig. 5.1 Recovery adaptations 143

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1 Victims of Crimes, Self-Medication and Narratives of (In)Justice

Narratives of (In)Justice How victims1 review their self-medication using alcohol and other drugs (AOD), whether licit or illicit, is a significant feature of their— and our—understanding of recovery. Victimology2 is concerned with exploring the reflexive experience of the victim; and there is a growing body of work that is focused on how people who have experienced various types and incidents of victimisation develop strategies or remedies that may assist their progression from victimhood. In this regard, the relationship between AOD use and victimisation is a matter of longstanding criminological interest (Jacobsen et al. 2001; Logan et al. 2002). However, the role of self-medication in shaping or influencing reflexive responses to victimhood, victim recovery and the survivor narrative is ripe for investigation (Morrison et al. 2011). Much scholarly interest in this matter is focused on a simple binary approach that more or less assumes that self-medication is indicative of non-recovery, and therefore the less consumption, the more recovery. Thus, if victims are not improving themselves sufficiently or constructively, they are self-medicating and failing to build the necessary tools for recovery. © The Author(s) 2018 W. de Lint and M. Marmo, Narrating Injustice Survival, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93494-5_1

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This book addresses this issue and adds new nuances to this ­iscourse. The survey research carried out for this book shows that d there is indeed an increase in AOD consumption after victimisation. However, this book also draws upon interviews with victims and two focus groups with counsellors to explore and link the victim’s reflexive engagement with active and passive recovery and validation in its many forms. As revealed through our analysis of these interviews and case studies, the binary does not reflect the reality of victims; the assumption that the use of AOD is delaying of or destructive to recovery is not universally correct. In this book, we are distinguishing the victim narrative from a victim careers perspective. What do we mean by narrative? As explored in Chapter 6, everyone is involved in what Giddens (1991) describes as a ‘reflexive project of the self.’ Every project is unique, comprised of a relation with significant events and the charting of a course that permits engagement with and/or a reappropriation of desires, interests and aspirations. As Giddens and others have pointed out, the way people engage in this reflexive work involves some standard tropes or formulaic storylines concerning how events are plotted and thematised or given meaning. As is well-known, self-medication is often an adaptive measure taken by victim-survivors in temporary or indefinite support of onto-existential necessities. Giddens (1991, p. 180) notes that ‘therapy is an expert system deeply implicated in the reflexive project of the self.’ He adds that it is ‘a methodology of life planning’ that may either ‘promote dependence or passivity’ or ‘permit engagement and re-appropriation’ (p. 180). In turning to AOD use after trauma, individuals may qualify or amend the view of their own recovery narrative or way forward. Taking note of what Giddens (1986) maintains about active agents—that is, that people are situated actors who try to manipulate affordances, or structural ladders, in response to their situation—our approach is to provide a nuanced account of victim-survivor careers by way of the subject’s reflection. The tools and pace of recovery are those chosen by each individual. Self-medication may serve the purpose of dulling or displacing engagement, akin to taking time out from the work of recovery. It may be

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instrumental and a necessary antecedent or co-requisite of a unique recovery path, and thus ought not to be dismissed. That is to say, and as we shall see in Chapters 5 and 6, self-medication is a strategy deployed by victim-survivors that at turns engages and disengages them in their proactive efforts to integrate their daily habits on a pathway according to an affirmative belief. Unpacking their partaking of a recovery narrative is of particular importance for our understanding of their recovery. In sum, an assessment of the views of both victims and counsellors on AOD self-medication suggests the need for this more nuanced account. Narratives of survival emerge from the accounts captured in this research.

The Self-Medicating Victim AOD use and misuse has been of longstanding interest to criminologists and policymakers because it is concurrent with crime, delinquent behaviour and ‘disorderly’ conduct (Goldstein 1985; Dingwall 2005; AIC 2006; Bennett and Holloway 2009; SAPOL 2010). AOD use may well be directly linked to thrill-seeking or other behaviours that are criminalised (Hovarth and Zuckerman 1993). In turn, early childhood trauma is related to thrill-seeking and this is related to AOD consumption. Early trauma predicts not only possible transit to the criminal justice system as an offender, but also future victimisation (Smith 2017). There has been far less investigation of AOD consumption in victimology, but the picture emerges as follows. It is well known that self-medication, whether through alcohol, licit or illicit drugs, is linked to victimisation, especially unresolved trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Frieze et al. 1987; Ullman 2003; Morrison et al. 2011; Jordan 2013). A handful of empirical studies internationally have examined the experiences of victims in relation to their substance or alcohol use or abuse (Jacobsen et al. 2001; Logan et al. 2002; Grayson and Nolen-Hoeksema 2005; Schuck and Widom 2001; Ullman 2003; Ullman et al. 2007). There is a link between victimisation, mental health problems and AOD use (Dore et al. 2012; Kaysen et al. 2007; Morrison et al. 2011; Resnick et al. 2007). AOD use is associated with

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a range of concurrent risks related to the health, safety and security of victims (Morrison et al. 2011). For instance, victims of trauma will experience greater vulnerability to drug crime deprivations (Laslett et al. 2015; see also Kaysen et al. 2007; Morrison et al. 2011). We are beginning to learn more about the use of AOD as a coping strategy. Including AOD use, victims of crime cope with PTSD by turning to a variety of mechanisms. As self-medication, AOD is explored as a means of disengagement (Flynn and Graham 2010; Guggisberg 2010; Morrison et al. 2011). To dull or defer engagement or in the modulation of vulnerabilities (Khantzian 2009), self-medication is adopted by traumatised individuals to manage their daily routines and goals. Through our fieldwork, we have collected data that suggests that AOD consumption following victimisation increases and is more frequent (de Lint et al. 2017). It is known that, as with many social problems, the nature of the social support and specialised community support networks is crucial to victim assistance (Budde and Schene 2004; Latta and Goodman 2011; Liang et al. 2005; Lugton 1997).3 There is a positive link between social support networks and violence and victimisation (see Budde and Schene 2004; Murray and Graybeal 2007). How formal and informal support networks function to reduce the prevalence of behaviour that leads to victimisation, revictimisation or future criminal behaviour (Latta and Goodman 2011; Murray and Graybeal 2007) is a matter of some importance on which current research hopes to shed light (de Lint et al. 2017). The validation received through formal and informal supports is linked to real, potential or perceived benefits and consequences for victims (Kunst et al. 2015). The evidence collected in this book suggests that reliable and consistent support is most likely to be found in the victim’s informal network. At the same time, we need to know more about how victims perceive AOD in response to their victimisation (see also Gray et al. 2008; Lurigio 1987; Skogan 1987). While various victimology studies have identified the importance of the attribution of responsibility in this context (including victim-blaming), a close look at the literature in this area reveals that only a handful of empirical studies internationally have examined reflexive responses in relation to substance abuse and

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victimisation (Morrison et al. 2011; Flynn and Graham 2010; Ullman 2003; Smith 2017). There has been little examination of actual victims’ experiences with and reflections on AOD use (of relevance, see Guggisberg 2010, 2012), and certainly not enough attention on this matter from a criminological viewpoint. In this regard, the recovery narrative is a relevant but under-researched aspect of self-medication by victims of crime. Recovery depends upon engagement with formal and informal social support networks as part of a reflexive engagement that shifts from retrospection (concerning injustice) to prospection (concerning dignified survival). The analysis presented in this book is intended to augment the recognised but still empirically under-unexplored association between self-medication, victimhood and victim self-reflection. It will also consider victim support services as an augmentation of victims’ support networks. Identifying features of the recovery pathway through an analysis of the accounts of a variety of victims requires dedicated time and resources. Victim support services may assist in enhancing understanding of victim motivation for AOD use and its impact on future behaviour. They may play a role in non-judgmentally alerting victims to milestones in their recovery pathways. In this, they may be assisted by the refinement of this conceptual terrain that the present work seeks to provide. In 2011, Victim Support Services (VSS) of South Australia approached the researchers at Flinders University to explore ways to access evidence-based knowledge that could help their everyday interaction with crime victims. In the appendix of this book, we provide the text of a brochure that we believe may be of value in reaching out to potential clients of victim support services.

Simple Victimisation, Simple Poly-victimisation and Complex Poly-victimisation It is known that, as with offending, victimisation is skewed so that a relatively small group of recidivists accounts for a disproportion of all incidence (Farrell and Pease 1993). As is also well-known, prior victimisation is a good predictor of future victimisation. Victim ‘proneness’

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(Hindelang et al. 1978) has been conceived in terms of this ‘risk heterogeneity.’ Thus, as per ‘flag theory,’ victim routines (including ­ guardianship, exposure), lifestyles (involvement in risk activities) or even anxieties (fear of crime) may be correlated to increased proneness to criminal predation (Eck 2001). In support, Murphy (2008) identified that youth who reported being physically abused before grade 6 had a significantly greater chance of being subject to violent victimisation and intimate partner violence (IPV) in early adulthood. This is distinguished from ‘boost theory,’ by which it is hypothesised that previous victimisation increases the risk of subsequent victimisation primarily because the victim is objectively or externally perceived as a vulnerable target (Farrell 1995). This suggests that not only must victim-survivors navigate through or around significant obstacles or events, but also that these obstacles or events will tend to transfer victimological properties to the victim, making the person more victim-prone. Although recent work by Tillyer (2014; see also Ousey et al. 2008) has provided confirmation (cf. Farrell 1995) of the factors driving repeat violent victimisation, it is still fair to say, as per Farrell et al. (2001), that ‘the study of victim careers is in its infancy.’ The study of victimisation over the life course is, as Farrell et al. suggest, important to criminological understanding. These authors affirm that it can support (and has supported) improved crime prevention practices. Indeed, there is a strong correlation between victimisation and offending, referred to as the ‘victim–offender overlap’ (Schreck et al. 2008). Tillyer (2014, p. 563) has found that ‘violent victimization prevalence, onset, and persistence during earlier stages of the life course can predict violent victimization risk in adulthood, and whether these relationships are observed independent of current violent offending.’ Menard (2000, p. 568) has found that repeat victimisation may not be captured unless a long time span is used to capture the events. In our survey and interviews we asked victims about their experience of victimisation over the whole of their remembered history. As noted above, while we pay attention to agency, and review AOD use as expressive of agentic properties, we do so also paying heed to the weight of the burden of historical or childhood trauma. This burden of

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trauma is, as is now known, also physiological. Knowing that childhood trauma impacts the frontal lobe and self-management means that these impacts also shape a victim’s reflexive recovery. In providing a ‘thick’ account of victims’ reflections on their AOD use in the context of a recovery narrative, we hope to contribute to and support the quantitative findings of others in this area. In this regard, we are distinguishing simple victimisation from simple poly-victimisation and complex poly-victimisation. A person who has been the object of a criminal depredation is a victim. However, as is well understood there is a subjective component to the concept that is of utmost importance. Many people have been the object of theft or burglary, but most people who experience such events will quickly recover from the shock and feeling of violation and experience few if any enduring traumatic disorders. However, when we consider crime against the person involving violence or the threat of violence, it is understood that the trauma may be more severe, depending on its viciousness, randomness and abuse of trust, to name some prominent factors (Guma and Henda 2004). Although we do acknowledge that for the victim this may be subjectively devastating, where a person experiences the trauma of interpersonal violence for the first time as a mature adult, this is referred to as simple victimisation. In this regard, our survey and interview samples included people who have reported to VSS as a consequence of a single episode of criminal predation, usually a physical assault. In addition to simple victims, poly-victims are people who have been subjected to more than one episode and type of victimisation (Finkelhor et al. 2007). As per flag and boost theory, it is an interesting observation that people who have been subjected to one type of victimisation are prone to repeated victimisation, and of a different type as well. However, in assessing our sample, we found that the most significant distinguishing factor in the recovery and recovery narrative is whether a victim has been subjected to criminal physical and/or sexual abuse in childhood. Trauma, including childhood sexual and physical abuse, has psychological and physiological and developmental impacts. The latter includes that stemming from impairment of the frontal lobe

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(Glaser 2000; Andersen et al. 2008). In general, this and other literature (Finkelhor et al. 2011; Ford et al. 2010; Teicher et al. 2003) suggests the value of designating as a complex poly-victim someone who experiences repeat victimisation of a different type after childhood abuse. As per Fig. 1.1 (simple victimisation, simple poly-victimisation and complex poly-victimisation), there is a pathway from sexual and physical assault trauma experienced in childhood that produces developmental and physiological impairments. Since, as we also know, such research connects a relative lack of self-management with a greater predilection towards thrill-seeking and instant gratification (Choy et al. 2017), this tends to produce a pathway to AOD use that we see in complex poly-victims. This is not to make an argument in favour of a biological determination of victimhood. Although there is current research that revivifies a positivist view of criminogenesis (see, for example, Choy et al. 2017), we wish simply to point out that the obstacles to recovery are many and various. The attraction to self-medication by victims of crime may be partially explained by reference to biology and psychology and it is important not to discount the biological as presenting obstacles to recovery adaptations. That said, we have elected to focus on reflexive work that occurs to overcome disadvantage, especially for the complex poly-victim.

Fig. 1.1  Type of victimisation and AOD use in simple victimisation, simple poly victimisation and complex poly-victimisation

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Victimhood and Validation It is on some form of validation that both justice and recovery depends and it is what victims primarily want from criminal justice (Daly 2005; Clark 2010; Daly and Stubbs 2006). However, as we shall further explore in this book, the methods of criminal justice are unlikely to satisfy this quest for validation. It is true that in the ideal justice and validation can be almost synonymous (see, for instance, Durkheim 1982). Research on victims’ experiences of criminal justice tell us that the interaction with the criminal justice system is likely to conflict with the quest for a manageable survivor identity. In practice the retrospective standpoint of criminal justice revivifies not the resilience of the survivor but the shame and stripping of the victim. Victims of crime are stripped of the veneer of protective privacy that supports civic engagement or the relations between the individual with others in society. The breach of individual inviolability by criminal predation challenges the connection between an individual and a civilised order, so the failure to suture the rent has consequences for the community and society, and its moral and ideological supports. Where the criminal justice process proceeds by instrumentalising the victim as a more or less compliant, reliable and credible complainant and witness, there is a stripping of dignity in what is known as secondary victimisation. As we shall see, many victims view the quest for justice as linked or enjoined and implicated with the nursing of the wounded identity. Validation with justice thus represents a need and concept that exceeds what the criminal process can deliver except in rare occasions. The individual victim is forced into the unenviable position of having to work to re-embed into and re-validate a just social world. The quest for validation through engagement with the formal networks of the criminal process is perilous. The obtainment of some version of post-victimisation equanimity in the survivor identity depends upon a positive, prospective view of a future and a complementary adoption of the means to achieve milestones. It is most reliant on the social support networks and interventions of the therapeutic community.

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Dignity and Resilience When victimologists refer to the transition from victim to survivor, it is the self-identity of the traumatised person that is being reconfigured. The work undertaken to achieve this transformation (recovery or discovery of identity) has been thoroughly analysed by the therapeutic community, but one aspect of it that may benefit from further exploration is the reflection on ‘big ideas’, including self-identity narratives. It is understood that this process requires prescriptive definitions which can be stultifying or misleading, as well as affirming. In this regard, how ‘dignity’ and ‘resilience’ modify these prescriptions is instructive. Many people today speak about the importance of resilience. According to Holling’s (1973, p. 17) influential work, resilience is, in ecological terms, ‘the persistence of relationship within a system and is the measure of the ability of these systems to absorb changes of state variables, driving variables, and parameters, and still persist.’ It has also been defined as ‘the ability to persist in the face of challenges and to bounce back from adversity’ (Reivich et al. 2011, p. 25), and as ‘a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity’ (Luthar et al. 2000, p. 543). It ‘involves the ability of something or someone to recover and return to equilibrium after being confronted with an unexpected, perhaps existential, threat’ (de Lint and Chazal 2013, p. 160). As de Lint and Chazal (2013, p. 163) point out, at the ‘low altitude’ of the street and its potential criminality the concept of resilience supports a universally adaptive template of self-identity, one that is consistent with or aligned to neoliberalism. As an ‘entrepreneur of oneself ’ (Cruickshank 1993; Rose 1999 in O’Malley 2010, p. 505) the resilient individual is self-sufficient, calculating, responsible, autonomous and unencumbered (Isin 2004, p. 217). Resilience is popular within neoliberal discourses because it places the onus on effected subjects ‘for their experiences of adversity and encourages them to adapt to the unpredictability of neoliberalism and become entrepreneurs of themselves’ (de Lint and Chazal 2013, p. 161). Entrepreneurial resilience is also found in positive psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT),

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which seeks to optimise the psychological flexibility of patients or clients in response to adversity and change (Reivich and Shatte 2002). As O’Malley (2010, p. 503) states, resilient employees have a set of capacities that includes ‘being adaptable, intuitive, innovative, independent, skilled, confident and optimistic.’ But as Cruikshank highlights, ‘techniques to enhance subjectivity are also practical techniques for the subjection of individuals’ (Cruikshank 1993, p. 327). Citizens ‘make themselves governable’ (p. 327) by ‘quietly plac[ing] themselves in the hands of society and [by mobilising] themselves in society’s interest.’ If a resilient self-identity is attached to a version of self-reliance that is consistent with the biopolitics of neoliberal subjectivity and places the onus for change on the affected individual, dignity4 draws from the discourse of inalienable rights to place the onus on social structures and processes. As per Leon Kass (2002), dignity is ‘what is common to all humans in terms of what gives them moral status.’ Human dignity provides that individuals are ‘not to be perceived or treated merely as instruments or objects of the will of others’ (Schachter 1983, p. 849). They are ‘ends in themselves rather than ... means to extraneous ends’ (Kelman 1977, p. 531). Accordingly, every individual has intrinsic worth, and ‘inherent dignity’ is the capacity not to be deployed as usevalue for others (Schachter 1983, p. 849). In the present research, we are interested in the intersection of dignity with ‘capabilities, functionings and social interactions’ (Ashcroft 2005, p. 279). The concept of the dignified subject may be simplified by highlighting two dimensions of agency: inviolability or autonomy, and the protections that promote conditions of autonomy or distributive interdependence (Beyleveld 2001; Kelman 1977). The first dimension gives priority to individual choice and distinct personal identity, reflecting the importance of autonomy and responsibility for achieving human dignity (Schachter 1983, p. 851). A dignified subject derives from a continuous and stable sense of identity (Kelman 1977, p. 532). This requires inviolability, which is what is threatened or lost with victimisation. By inviolability, we refer to a person’s freedom from coercive or unwanted interference by another person or actor. Proponents of human dignity argue that individual freedom is interdependent with community, social equality and membership among a group of equals.

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It is on distributive justice and equality that an individual may gain a sense of self-worth (Schachter 1983). As Kelman (1977, p. 533) highlights, ‘individual freedom and social justice are inseparable and interdependent conditions for realizing human dignity and each of its components, identity and community.’ Applied to the victim-survivor, the discourse of resilience is double-edged. As noted, and as we shall see in the victims’ accounts in ­subsequent chapters, the desire not to adopt too retrospective a viewpoint is consistent with the ethic of resilience. However, a strong tension arises insofar as the quest for validation involves recounting and re-experiencing. Likewise, it is acknowledged that the transition from victim to survivor involves a ‘letting go’ of a self-identity; the restorative justice work implied where there is a reference to a dignified subject’s relation with a community of social equals is also in this way arguably too retrospective. As we noted above, the requirement of justice is often at loggerheads with the therapeutic agency of victimhood. A dignified identity is threatened where a person, instead of serving one’s own ends, is forced into deployment as use-value for others (such as the ends of a justice system, neoliberalism) (Schachter 1983, p. 849). What this brief exploration of dignity suggests to us is that there is a fragility to human life that is too easily pushed aside in the talk of resilient subjects, and perhaps even in the presumptive world of relations that ought to be built on ascribed dignity. In victimology generally and in this work particularly, researchers can only interview the survivors who volunteer—those, as we acknowledge, who are sufficiently resilient and dignified to be available to share their stories. As we shall see, survivors narrate that survival any way they can, sometimes drawing upon a store of self-respect, at other times drawing upon a fragile determination.

Prospective, Retrospective and Restorative Justice As mooted above, justice is largely retrospective. Most systems of justice rely upon the victim as a complainant who plays an essential role by making representations as a wronged party. As is well understood,

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by wronging them offenders place a double burden on victims of crime. First, and as we will explore in this book, they often push victims off their anticipated life course. Second, they place victims in an unenviable position regarding the function of justice and a justice system. Victims are expected to come forward and assist the prosecution, but often are not adequately supported to do so and face challenges (sometimes in a public courtroom) to their account of events. As per Zehr and Mika (2003, p. 41), alongside affected communities, primary victims are key stakeholders in justice, and the ‘search for restoration, healing, responsibility and prevention’ cannot take place with their exclusion. Ideally, as per Zehr and Mika (2003, p. 41), victims ought to be supported by a system that restores and empowers them to define the obligations of offenders and the community at large, but practice most often falls short of this ideal. Institutionally, the justice community is often at loggerheads with the therapeutic community. First, in the justice system, police and prosecutor practitioners will often measure success by rates of conviction. Yet, as Daly and Bouhours (2010) found in a comparison of rape cases across Australia, Canada, England and Wales, Scotland, and the United States, only 30% of cases went to prosecution and only 6.5% of cases resulted in a conviction on the original crime. Much pressure is placed on police and prosecutors to present strong cases based on reliable witness testimony, but most cases result in outcomes that are unsatisfactory to victims. According to Konradi (2007) and Campbell et al. (2001), up to half of women report being revictimised after presenting as witness, as well as experiencing anxiety, fear and anger. Second, the style of truth determination (which includes open court and cross-examination) is daunting to many trauma victims. Yet defence barristers make the reasonable argument that physical barriers aimed at concealing the defendant from the complainant or victim may be prejudicial to the defendant (Temkin 2000). And many claims to protect the complainant as a witness may be viewed as an attempt by the prosecution to conceal the weakness of evidence and prevent the witness from a robust cred­ ibility probing. Third, the pace of justice may not be attuned to the pace of victim recovery. Furthermore, Ellison and Munro (2008) found that reporting that is delayed by as little as three days seriously weakens a prosecution’s case. Public prosecutors have been found to believe

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that a ‘genuine’ rape victim would report to police sooner than is the experience of most victims (Stewart et al. 1996). Where the prosecution does reach the stage of sentencing, it has been found that the victim impact statement (VIS) may be more beneficial for the prosecution than the victim. Some studies (Lens et al. 2015; Pemberton and Reynaers 2011; Sanders et al. 2001) have found that the exercise of completing a VIS may be experienced by the victim as counter-productive to recovery. A study by Lievore (2005) sampling sexually assault victim satisfaction with experiences with the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) identified predominantly negative perceptions of information needs, outcome, treatment by the DPP staff, court and case preparation. This is not to say that for victims, the institutional interests of the criminal justice process will always prove deleterious. As per the findings of Daly and Sarre (2017), even where their case was discontinued or finalised on a lesser charge, some victims still held a favourable view of the prosecution process. Yet even when a legal remedy or court victory does occur, it may only be partial, may not include an apology and may fail to meet the expectation built up for it. It can revivify ‘victim’ and stultify ‘survivor.’ For victim-survivors who have not been able to heal from the psychological trauma caused by criminal predation, formal adjudication can and often does serve to arrest the development of prospection, and sometimes dignified survival. As we shall see, victim-survivors are on a pathway that is more or less linked to daily routines and a belief system. The victim who maintains the view of a trauma caused by a crime as an obstacle that must but cannot be removed from their pathway has been impacted by the event and also is stymied in the ongoing response to it. They may linger on the bittersweet nostalgia over a lost innocence rather than decamp for a new view on themselves. In contrast, often because they have had many positive early childhood experiences on which to build their self-regard, some people are able to use, as Allen and Leary (2010, p. 107) put it, ‘positive cognitive restructuring’ to provide themselves with the ‘self-compassion’ needed to overcome traumatic events. As per Neff (2003, p. 224), self-compassion refers to ‘being open to and moved by one’s own

1  Victims of Crimes, Self-Medication and Narratives of (In)Justice     15

suffering, experiencing feelings of caring and kindness toward oneself, taking an understanding, nonjudgmental attitude toward one’s inadequacies and failures, and recognizing that one’s experience is part of the common human experience.’ As discussed by Allen and Leary (2010), people with self-compassion are able to maintain an attitude of self-caring or non-self-denigration even after things go wrong. Importantly, they are also able to see the event in light of the play of humanity—that is to say, in the context of the sometimes arbitrary distribution of hardship that challenges the will and resolve and for which there is no extrinsic metric by which to evaluate proper balance or compensation. This ties into another feature of self-compassion—mindfulness—interpreted as a ‘balanced perspective’ on one’s emotions and situation, such that one does not ‘dwell on the negativity of the situation and wallow’ (Allen and Leary 2010, p. 108). In this regard, too much retrospection may be associated with dwelling on negativity and wallowing or being stuck with or by the traumatic event. The matter is complicated where the victim does not receive adequate validation from informal and/or formal networks of support (Maercker and Muller 2004, p. 345—refer to ‘social acknowledgement’). As per Conroy and O’Leary-Kelly (2014, p. 67), a stabilisation of identity requires a ‘validated narrative around both the lost self and emerging self.’ Where validation has not been forthcoming or experienced, the pathway to recovery may be more arduous. Where the emerging self is stymied by the need to attend to the lost self, the recovery arc may be flat. The victim-survivor is confronted by challenging conditions when seeking to find a balanced perspective. As indicated by the term ‘restorative,’ in restorative justice (and it is almost impossible to imagine criminal justice without an element of restoration) the victim is invited to provide an account of their self-identity that supports an action against an offender, which may in turn demonstrate the operation of a system of justice. Despite the use of the term ‘restorative justice,’ the intervention will not restore the status quo ante, as whatever innocence (that is, lack of experience of corrupting influences) the victim may once have possessed can never be brought back or returned.

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A therapeutic narrative is in this way inconsistent with at least a good part of the justice narrative, as practised in most places, most of the time. As above, a therapeutic narrative requires that the survivor pushes forward after a period of mourning, accepting the loss of a self-identity too innocent or un-resilient. The justice narrative requires the positing of an adversarial condition in which the victim is subject to open scrutiny and their account is given as a contested version of an official record.

This Book This first chapter has introduced this book’s self-medication and coping devices, self-identity in validation and dignity and linked this to self-identity. A preliminary account of the concepts or themes that are used to understand these phenomena has been offered. In the remainder of this book, we explore the intersection of victim self-medication (as a coping device), dignified identity and recovery narratives. We follow the argument that a view of dignity is intimately connected to the victim or survivor identity. Additionally, an understanding of both retrospective and prospective justice is further developed’ through analysis of the dimensions of the recovery narrative. In this regard, we look closely at coping devices, means of validation and the management of a dignified identity. We also look at how these coping strategies interact with formal and informal networks, understanding that the victim/survivor as more or less networked across agencies that are loosely coupled and pursue distinct mandates that depart more or less from a holistic pursuit of justice. We take up the issue of how victims do meaning work or reflect on their existence as victim-survivors, with a particular focus on how they use reflexive interpretation to come to grips with their victimhood. Victim narratives are investigated as a series of ideal type adaptations of the victim narrative. The remaining chapters are organised as follows. In Chapter 2 we provide an account of data collection and methods, and our approach to victim reflexivity. The empirical data was collected in South Australia from 2012 to 2015 in collaboration with VSS. Alongside providing a description of our collaboration with VSS, we

1  Victims of Crimes, Self-Medication and Narratives of (In)Justice     17

also offer a snapshot of the VSS clients who agreed to participate in this project. Further, we address the triangulation researcher-VSS-victims, and the areas of learning for the Flinders University researchers involved in the project on how victim-researcher reciprocities are viewed, expected or applied. Chapter 3 investigates the coping mechanisms victims adopt in in the process of managing their chosen identity that aligns with their recovery narrative. The individual and social defence strategies adopted by victims are explored, with an emphasis on the connection between the avoidance coping strategy and the use of AOD (Jordan 2013). Yet, we acknowledge that self-medication plays a complex role within an unfolding victim-survivor narrative and that some form of avoidance or detachment may be adaptive (as opposed to maladaptive) for the negotiation of a survivor identity and for the achievement of short and long term goals. Chapter 4 reviews the impact of institutional, formal and informal attachments or supports and validations. Bearing witness to a victim offering and developing their narrative is key to validation, yet those receiving a victim’s testimony must be ‘suitable listeners’ (Bal et al. 1999) to allow the victim to find their personhood. The links between such validation and the construction of a recovery narrative have been less explored in the literature (Kunst et al. 2015). We address opportunities for or obstacles to validation and consider such reflection central to understanding the recovery process. In Chapter 5 we conceptualise crime victim narratives. Building on the work of Barnes (2013) and Jirek (2017) and relying on the distinction between complex poly- and simple victims that is revealed in our data, we seek to develop understanding of distinct narratives ideal types. Charting recovery pathways using empirical findings builds on understanding of victim ‘self-identity’ between the poles represented by resilience and dignity. They assume a retrospective or prospective view to greater or lesser extent. Chapter 6 addresses the concept of meaningfulness in the recovery trajectory. We explore how vulnerability and victimisation is also a product of two types of chances, social and casino chance. This helps to underline the problem of meaningfulness and meaning work, as recovering victims seek to tease some sense from their predicament.

18     W. de Lint and M. Marmo

In this light, recovery is understood as meaning work, involving the ­person’s adaptation to conditions that are mostly inherited. In Chapter 7 we offer some concluding remarks on the relation between victim narratives and formal processes and quixotic manifestations of justice. Starting with our self-reflection on the project undertaken, we take an opportunity to consider validation and chance in relation to justice. For us, the validation (or lack of ) from the criminal justice system, is a critical point for reflection in relation to the recovery narrative progress.

Final Considerations In supporting our analysis, we make liberal use of the interview and focus group transcripts. In order to convey the ideographic inclusive of the nuances of victims’ and counsellors’ narratives, we have chosen to provide extensive quotes. We are grateful for the time victims and counsellors have offered to this project remain respectful of their chosen individual paths to and pace of recovery. Those victims who met with us have already found, one way or another, and perhaps rationalised to an extent, a coping mechanism or set of tools to support recovery. We are acutely aware of the meaningful silence of those who did not want to meet with us. This book uses a mixed methods approach that consists of analysis from surveys of victims (N = 102), qualitative interviews with victims (N = 15) and focus groups (N = 2) with VSS counsellors. In relation to this dataset, there is a sequence in which the quantitative data has been augmented by qualitative data. We have deliberately aimed to provide a strong representation of our interviewees voices and hope that by doing so we have captured their unique voices. We aimed to effect a rebalancing of power and knowledge between victims, researchers and practitioners, but an evaluation of our success at doing this we leave with the reader. Finally, we also would like to acknowledge that AOD substances are not the only means used by victims of crime to cope with trauma.

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We encountered victim-survivors who mentioned food and sex, among others, in their narratives. The book has not got the space and the methodological tools to explore these other areas in a meaningful manner.

Notes 1. This book uses the terms ‘victim,’ ‘survivor’ and ‘victim-survivor’ according to the fluidity in the standpoint. We believe that a variable denotation best reflects relative dynamic properties in a given context. We are aware that there is varied usage of these terms within victimology (for a brief summary, see Walklate 2005, pp. 98–100). We address this point in more details in the conclusion and we hope the reader will consider the choice of designation when drawing meaning from sections of this work. 2. Victimisation is defined as ‘subjecting or threatening to subject a person to some form of detriment’ (Australian Human Rights Commission 2018 unpaginated). The attribution of ‘victim’ depends upon a contextualisation of these terms. Has someone been subjected to or threatened with some form of detriment? Which forms of detriment are sufficient? Who validates their sufficiency? Does a person need to believe they have been victimised in order to qualify, or is the designation objective, provided by a third party? 3. Some of this knowledge is produced in a multidisciplinary work (see Mitchell and Trickett 1980; Uehara 1990). 4. There are a number of distinctive groupings in the scholarly work on dignity (Ashcroft 2005, p. 679).

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Stewart, M. W., Dobbin, S. A., & Gatowski, S. I. (1996). “Real rapes” and “real victims”: The shared reliance on common cultural definitions of rape. Feminist Legal Studies, 4(2), 159–177. Teicher, M. H., Andersen, S. L., Polcari, A., Anderson, C. M., Navalta, C. P., & Kim, D. M. (2003). The neurobiological consequences of early stress and childhood maltreatment. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 27(1), 33–44. Temkin, J. (2000). Prosecuting and defending rape: Perspectives from the bar. Journal of Law and Society, 27(2), 219–248. Tillyer, M. S. (2014). Violent victimisation across the life course: Moving a “victim careers” agenda forward. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 41(5), 593–612. Uehara, E. (1990). Dual exchange theory, social networks and informal social support. American Journal of Sociology, 96(3), 521–557. Ullman, S. (2003). A critical review of field studies on the link of alcohol and adult sexual assault in women. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 8, 471–486. Ullman, S. E., Townsend, S. M., Filipas, H. H., & Starzynski, L. L. (2007). Structural models of the relations of assault severity, social support, avoidance coping, self-blame, and PTSD among sexual assault survivors. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 31, 23–37. Walklate, S. (2005). Criminology: The basics. Abingdon: Routledge. Zehr, H., & Mika, H. (2003). Fundamental concepts of restorative justice. In E. McLaughlin, R. Fergusson, G. Hughes, & L. Westmarland (Eds.), Restorative justice: Critical issues (pp. 40–43). London: Sage.

2 Methods, Collaboration with VSS and Victim Reflexivity

Introduction To prompt a broad understanding of the use of alcohol and other drugs (AOD—including licit and illicit drugs) as self-medication among victims, this research utilised the mixed methods approach to data collection and analysis (Creswell and Zhang 2009), which included a survey instrument, interviews with victims and focus groups with counsellors. The research was conceived through collaboration between victim advocates and academics aimed at enhancing support for victims and their relatives. The project was aimed at building knowledge around victims of crime as well as providing a platform for reflection on victimisation outside the criminal justice system or health practitioners’ circles. The research project started in 2011 and received ethics clearance in 2012 by the Flinders University Social and Behavioural Research Ethics Committee. The data collection was conducted over a number of years, from the end of 2012 to the end of 2015. All the empirical methods— the survey, interviews and focus groups—took place at the Victim Support Services (VSS) premises in Adelaide’s central business district. The choice of setting for the survey and interviews was particularly important—they were © The Author(s) 2018 W. de Lint and M. Marmo, Narrating Injustice Survival, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93494-5_2

27

28     W. de Lint and M. Marmo

conducted in an environment already familiar to victims and where they had ready and immediate access to a counsellor, in case they requested one. The aim of the initial quantitative survey was to explore the self-medicating behaviour of victims who had presented at VSS, and were selected based on a random sample strategy for the survey (de Lint et al. 2017). The survey instrument tested two hypotheses: first, we aimed to identify whether self-medication increases post victimisation; and, second, we tested the relationship between receiving formal or informal support and AOD self-medication. In the case of the first hypothesis, the results suggest that poly-substance consumption did increase after the crime for the victims surveyed. The results also showed a taking-up of substances by half of those respondents who declared that they had consumed no AOD substance prior to the crime event. Further, among those who had previously consumed AOD, the frequency of consumption increased noticeably as a daily experience after the crime event. The marginal findings of the survey were then deepened with a second data set deriving from our interviews with victims. In this regard, McGarry and Walklate (2015) encourage academics to study victims’ experiences through victims’ own narratives (see also Walklate 2018). Encouraging ­victims to reflect on their experience and trajectory allows a subjective viewpoint to take shape. When the interview is loosely structured, the victim can take control of the narrative; the pace, level and type of disclosure; and the construction of their own victimisation. For the purposes of this study, we were interested in hearing the victims’ self-reflective account of their experience of crime, self-medication and network support. We had in mind the tension between the ideographic, or historically particular, approach and the nomothetic, or generalisable, approach. Briefly, we wanted to permit the individual elements of the victim experience to be a source and ground of a recounting of a unique journey, but we also sought to place the resultant varied biographical accounts within extant templates, as per previous work by Barnes (2013) and Jirek (2017). The third method of data collection was the use of focus groups. We organised two focus group sessions with VSS counsellors at the VSS offices (one conducted on site, the other by teleconference). At these focus groups we explored some of our preliminary observations concerning the two major themes of the study: how VSS clients use AOD substances and their formal or informal support networks in response to or in the context

2  Methods, Collaboration with VSS and Victim Reflexivity     29

of victimisation trauma; and how they report changes in their reflexivity or self-understanding around coping with trauma and AOD use. Based on interviews and focus groups, we also explored the tensions between the various institutional discourses (therapeutic and academic) as revealed in the unpacking of victims’ narrative accounts. Overall, the main limitation of this study rests in the number of respondents. Initially, the survey—which is an entry point to the present study—was regarded by the VSS as an ongoing mechanism to collect data across a number of years. Unfortunately, repeated changes at the senior level of the VSS structure together with losing staff in their research unit, which at the time of writing is still non-existent, has not allowed the VSS to continue their independent data collection. As much as being not ideal (as it would have produced interested data on the issue at hand), this is the reality of many governmental and non-governmental agencies. As discussed by Sridharan and Gillespie (2004), sustaining connections with any organisations is a difficult task due to a number of constraints. In this case, the VSS capacity to collaborate cross-institutionally or to sustain the planned ongoing mechanism was not dependent on financial constraints but on fast turnover of staff. We find however an opportunity towards the end of this chapter to reflect on how studies on victimhood need not to be reduced to a passive concept of numbers to fix dimensions of pain. We respect that each single victim we met is going through a unique journey in search for (more) validation. They negotiate on a daily base the reality of their lives and how they see themselves into that reality. We entered briefly in the victims’ lives and were offered a snapshot of their routine and self-medication consumption. We are aware that we can only offer to this book’s reader glimpses into the reality of the victim-survivor’s world.

Collaboration with VSS In 2011, VSS invited Flinders University researchers to collaborate on research into self-medication by victims of crime. The agency had identified the problem anecdotally and decided to ask scholars to explore the issue in more depth. On the basis of an initial literature review undertaken by the Flinders University team in 2011, it was clear that

30     W. de Lint and M. Marmo

the relationship between victims and substance use/misuse as a coping mechanism had not been established empirically in Australia, with the exception of a PhD thesis submitted in 2010 by Marika Guggisberg (see also Guggisberg 2012). This underscored the need for locally based empirical research that might enhance understanding of the victims’ motivations for AOD use. Further, it was established that only a handful of empirical studies internationally had examined the experiences of victims in relation to substance abuse following their victimisation. While there had been some interest in this area (Morrison et al. 2011; Flynn and Graham 2010; Ullman 2003), prior to this research there had been little or no examination of victims’ experiences of AOD use as described by victims themselves. Much of the previous literature had focused on causal and temporal analyses of violence perpetration and AOD use. Information regarding the relationship between victimisation and AOD use as a coping strategy is limited. For example, a Canadian research project conducted by Morrison et al. (2011) examined the circumstances faced by victims experiencing substance use problems; however, this information was provided by ‘key informants’ who were human service providers (counsellors and social workers). At the time when this research began, no analyses focusing on the experiences of actual victims had been undertaken; and at the time of writing very little new research can be found on this subject. VSS is a state-wide, not-for-profit organisation in South Australia, founded in 1979 to assist victims and witnesses of crime (for a detailed history, see Robinson 2004). Each year the organisation reaches out to as many victims as possible, offering services such as information and advocacy, counselling, practical assistance and support. VSS operates in urban Adelaide and rural South Australia, with seven offices distributed across a vast territory (984,377 km2). The population of South Australia currently stands at over 1,600,000 (out of over 23 million people living in Australia—Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] 2018). Over 75% of the population is concentrated in the metropolitan area of Adelaide (over 1.3 million). Hence, most resources, including services for victims, are concentrated in the city. Still, VSS makes a big effort to provide services to rural areas, with the VSS staffer working in the rural offices often fulfilling a number of roles, such as counselling and administration.

2  Methods, Collaboration with VSS and Victim Reflexivity     31

According to data collected by VSS and discussed in detail with the Flinders University research team before the beginning of the study, in 2010 an average of 150 new clients per month were serviced in metropolitan areas, and an average of 50 new clients a month were seen in rural areas (see Fig. 2.1). In 2011, the South Australian Police (SAPOL) was the organisation that provided the highest number of VSS referrals (see Fig. 2.2).1 200 150

169 141

133

150

168 143

154

141

150

135

146

148

51

60

110

100 50

173

155

42

59

56

39

58

60

63

56

64

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

50

47

47

69

0 Jan-10 Feb

Mar

Apr

New Clients - Adelaide

Oct

Nov Dec-10Jan-11 Feb

Mar

New Clients - Regions

Fig. 2.1  New clients in Adelaide and regions (based on VSS 2011)

ϴ ϭϴ

ϰ

ϭϯ

ϱ

^ŽƵƌĐĞŽĨZĞĨĞƌƌĂůƐ ϭƐƚYƵĂƌƚĞƌϮϬϭϭ

Ϯϲ

ϰ Police

Ϯϭ

Family/Friend/Self Criminal Legal System

Ϯϰϭ

Counsellor/Psych Govt Agency nes Other

ϭϬϲ

Work Medical WEB/Email Internal VSS

ϭϬϰ

Fig. 2.2  Source of VSS referrals in 2011 (based on VSS 2011)

Community Agency Media

32     W. de Lint and M. Marmo

In more recent years, VSS new clients reached a peak of 3191 in 2014–2015, with an increase of over 60% (de Lint et al. 2017). This was partially the result of the creation of a Memorandum of Understanding with SAPOL and of a free state-wide helpline in 2014 (VSS 2016). By 2015, however, the collection of empirical data for the present project had come to an end. At the beginning of the study, in 2011, we also reviewed a snapshot of new clients against type of offence (see Fig. 2.3), categorised by: property crimes (extortion and theft); simple crimes (harassment, stalking and physical assault); sexual crimes (all types of sexual assaults); and serious crimes (home invasion, aggravated assault and homicide).

26 151

103

229

Serious crime All sexual assault Fig. 2.3  New clients by type of crime

Simple crime Property crime

2  Methods, Collaboration with VSS and Victim Reflexivity     33

Surveys To gather information from victims about their experience of self-medication and network support, a questionnaire was developed by the research team in consultation with VSS (paid and voluntary) staff members. The role of VSS in shaping the survey was crucial in ensuring that the questions were appropriate for their clients and within the scope of what was agreed in the preliminary meetings held between the researchers and VSS. The VSS presence also allowed for cross-institutional input (therapeutic and academic) into the framing of questions. From a therapeutic input, VSS counsellors offered feedback which ensured that the questions would not re-traumatise or fatigue victims. Further, a presence of a counsellor as a stand-by procedure for immediate intervention was injected into the practical aspects of the project. From an academic input, the designed aims and objectives of the study were synchronised with VSS’ expectation of the project’s outputs. Further, academics held a training program with those VSS personnel who would contribute to the project. For example, VSS volunteers functioned as the intermediary in the collection of survey data, being responsible for contacting victims via telephone and assisting them with the completion of the survey either over the phone or face-to-face,2 between the end of 2012 and 2015 (de Lint et al. 2017). Therefore, the training program aimed at sharing appropriate knowledge and skills relevant to the research content, method and ethical parameters. The training session which aimed to unpack the meanings of questions and their rationale was also important to the legitimacy of the research process, ensuring that those delivering the survey and the respondents had confidence in the survey instrument and its implementation (Saunders 2006; Creswell and Plano Clark 2007). The survey was aimed at eliciting self-reporting of experiences of victimisation. The structure of the survey followed the content-order-response choices sequence (Bachman and Schutt 2008) and was comprised of open questions to encourage the respondents to provide detailed explanations of their experiences. The survey included Likert scales (Creswell 2003) to allow for numeric evaluation of statements. For the analysis component, we used Chi-squared tests and a series of McNemar’s and McNemar-Bowker’s tests.

34     W. de Lint and M. Marmo

The questionnaire contained 41 questions designed to collect information on demographics, present and past experiences of crime victimisation, self-medication consumption behaviours before and after the crime event, and access to formal and informal support networks. The questionnaire was constructed to collect data on the trigger crime event, or the crime for which the victim had been referred or self-referred to VSS, and also to ascertain whether the individual had experienced victimisation prior to that event. For a number of reasons, including that some respondents did not give the VSS volunteer enough time to address that part of the questionnaire, the historical section presented incomplete data. The agreement with VSS included that the Flinders University researchers be given access to their records in order to draw a sample of respondents from their client pool. In total, 102 individuals completed the survey. Eligibility to complete the survey was determined based on whether the VSS client had completed a new Client Registration Form. Completion of the VSS Client Registration Form by VSS clients was crucial for recruiting these clients, as without these forms contact was deemed in breach of client confidentiality. Unfortunately, this provision was only put in place in December 2012, with the inclusion on the form of a statement asking explicitly whether clients gave their consent to be contacted for research purposes. Previous to this change, VSS had no mechanism for using their pool of clients to collect research data. This modification thus impacted on the number of victims the research team was able to contact. In total, 411 clients gave their consent to be contacted for research between 2009 and 2015. We therefore surveyed one in four eligible VSS clients. As VSS proceeded to contact the eligible clients to enquiry whether they were available for this study, it was immediately apparent that most VSS clients were untraceable. Despite the fact that they had consented to VSS contacting them in future as needed, their contact information had changed, without which we had to exclude them. ‘Moving on’ or changing the address and phone number are not uncommon for crime victims (Zorza 1995), and this was the single highest cause of missed contacts, followed by unavailability to participate in the survey. Those who declined to participate did so for reasons about which we can only speculate; but invariably these reasons will be significant, and may vary profoundly (for example avoiding emotional upset, shame, safety, and/or

2  Methods, Collaboration with VSS and Victim Reflexivity     35

loss of anonymity), as has been established in previous studies of trauma research (Baker et al. 2005; Rosenbaum and Langhinrichsen-Rohling 2006; Campbell and Adams 2008). As this research has also experienced, the window for talking about trauma is sometimes open only narrowly and briefly. Considering all the above points, it is therefore common for crime victims to become untraceable by service providers, and this represents an ongoing challenge for VSS and other victim support agencies. Parallel to the recruitment process, the local newspaper (The Advertiser ) published a story on the problem of self-medication among crime victims and the project run by Flinders University and VSS (Hegarty 2013). This was followed up in 2015 by a story on this issue run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) TV national news (Founten 2015). As a result of this publicity, some former VSS clients contacted VSS and asked to meet with the research team. However, these former clients could not be contacted for research purposes if they had not completed the relevant VSS paperwork. In a few cases, VSS staff was prompt in asking the former clients to complete a form to provide their consent. The cohort that took part in the survey consisted of 59 females and 43 males. Their ages varied from 20 years to 72 years, with a mean of 44.7 years (the median age in South Australia is 39.9—ABS 2018). The vast majority identified themselves as Australian (81.4%), including four respondents who classified themselves as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. The remaining were of European heritage (9.9%), or from South-East Asian (2%), Middle Eastern (2%) or African (2%) background. This more or less mirrors the population in Adelaide, since the 2011 ABS census reported that 25.7% of the residents of Adelaide are foreign born, but that the numbers in rural South Australia are far smaller than this. In terms of education level, a third of the sample group had completed at least secondary school (30.3%), if not higher to include undergraduate degree at 26.5%, vocational/trade qualification at 24.5% and postgraduate degree at 11.8%. Seven respondents declared having completed only primary education (6.9%). In relation to occupation, a third of the respondents declared that they were working full-time (30.4%), and a fifth were working part-time (16.7%). Of the remaining respondents, they were unable to work due to disability (9.8%), studying (7.9%), engaged in casual work (5.9%), retired (6.9%), or volunteering or caring for a dependant (9.8%). Both

36     W. de Lint and M. Marmo

the educational and occupational figures suggest that the sample of respondents was a comparatively heterogeneous group, according to the ABS data (ABS 2016). However, among the respondents the rates of full- and part-time employment were lower than those of the total 2016 South Australian population aged 15 + (55% and 37%, respectively). The type of crime victimisation depended on the trigger crime or the reason for the victim’s referral to VSS. The data on crimes and referrals was analysed and the crimes were grouped into four broad categories: property crimes (extortion and theft); simple crimes (harassment, stalking and physical assault); sexual crimes (all types of sexual assault); and serious crimes (home invasion, aggravated assault and homicide). Each respondent was assigned to one of the four categories, even if they were not the direct victim of a crime—for instance, where the respondent was a relative of a murdered victim. Five respondents reported victimisation to property crimes (4.9%), in contrast with 49% of the sample who reported victimisation from simple crimes. A further third of respondents reported a serious crime (32.4%), while more than 1 in 10 (13.7%) experienced sexual assault (see Fig. 2.4).3 When comparing type of victimisation across demographic characteristics, not surprisingly it was found that respondents’ victimisation was gendered, with a greater proportion of females experiencing sexual assault and serious crime, compared with males who were more likely to experience simple crime and property crime victimisation. This is in line with the common patterns of offending and victimisation reported in the literature (Davies 2007). In case of multiple crimes, the most recent and serious offence was used to classify the primary victimisation, as that was the motivation for the referral to VSS. Historical victimisation emerging from the survey was not used to classify the respondents into categories. For the majority of respondents, the trigger crime was also the first experience of victimisation (simple victimisation). Only 1 in 5 respondents (19.6%) reported complex poly-victimisation (multiple, different forms of victimisation). However, a third (34.3%) had experienced repeat victimisation of the same type (simple poly-victimisation), with two respondents experiencing the same type of victimisation more than four times (see Fig. 2.5).

2  Methods, Collaboration with VSS and Victim Reflexivity     37

Property crimes (extortion and theft) Simple crimes (harassment, stalking and physical assault) Serious crimes (home invasion, aggravated assault and homicide) Sexual assault (all types of sexual assaults) Fig. 2.4  Victimisation by type of crime

Complex poly-victimisation

Simple Poly-victimisation

100%

56.1

50%

34.3

Simple victimisation

19.6 0% Fig. 2.5  Simple, simple poly- and complex poly-victimisation

38     W. de Lint and M. Marmo

We also cross-checked the data on multiple and/or repeat victimisation with demographic characteristics, which revealed no clear association between these types of victimisation and gender, employment or living arrangements (that is, whether they lived alone). However, those who were younger at the time of victimisation and who had a lower education level were significantly more likely to experience multiple and/or repeat victimisation. Almost three-quarters (72%) of the cohort was victimised more than a year prior to their referral, including 1 in 5 (21.5%) who were victimised more than three years prior to their presentation. The frequency of AOD consumption and type of substance consumed were analysed, both before and after the trigger crime. In relation to substance, a four-part scale was used comprising doctor-prescribed drugs, non-doctor-prescribed drugs, alcohol, and illegal drugs. The frequency was calculated to include weekly (once a day to every 2–7 days), fortnightly (8–14 days to once a month), sporadic (a few times a year) and non-consumption responses. To measure the respondents’ perception of support they were able to access after the crime experience, the type of network support was categorised as either formal or informal. Formal support referred to that provided by government and non-government agencies that offer help, including police, generic and specialised doctors, counselling services and victim support services; informal support included that provided by family, friends and work colleagues. The results of the survey are discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. However, considering the number of respondents in the survey, and the resultant lack of statistical power, it was believed that a more nuanced approach had to be sought in the second part of the study, by focusing on validation and informal or formal support during the interviews.

Interviews Drawn from the respondents who gave their permission to be contacted for this purpose, a sample of the surveyed victims was interviewed. As with studies of other hard-to-reach populations (Creswell and Plano Clark 2007; Lord and Cowan 2011), in victim research a funnelling of numbers between surveys and interviews is common. While more than two-thirds (71 out of 102, or 69.6%) of the respondents ticked ‘yes’ to

2  Methods, Collaboration with VSS and Victim Reflexivity     39

the survey question indicating that they agreed to be contacted for a follow-up interview, when we sought to re-engage them in 2014–2015, a high percentage were reluctant to have a one-to-one session, resulting in only 15 interviews in total being conducted by the end of the project. As we did with the survey, we gathered feedback from VSS counsellors and social workers on the interview structure and questions, as part of the therapeutic and academic cross-institutional input, to determine the strength and impact of the proposed line of enquiry. The aim of involving the partner industry in this way was to create an interview instrument that would enable the victim to ease into the encounter as the interview progressed. We believe that there is much to be gained from creating an environment where the respondents want to engage more actively with the project: this has supported an approach that capitalises on knowledge exchange. In this regard, in-depth interviews permit access to the complexity of victims’ narrative accounts of their victimisation and treatment history. In support of this, we embraced a responsive interviewing model, as per Rubin and Rubin (2012), which allowed a degree of flexibility in following the narrative and pace set by the interviewee. This flexibility in the design of the interviews permitted questions to be changed and pace to be altered. Interviewers thus made adjustments to pace, structure and depth of probe according to the perceived demeanour and level of engagement of the interviewee. Further to this, the interviews were conducted in a face-to-face format at the VSS premises so the respondents would find themselves in an environment perceived familiar and safe. A counsellor was organised to be on a stand-by. On three occasions, after the interviews, this mechanism of support was used. In all of the three cases, the victims were women with a history of severe physical and sexual forms of abuse, and heavy AOD consumption over many years. In one of these cases, the interviewee had never disclosed her childhood history of abuse. Interviews were conducted by three Flinders University researchers, which included a female member. On a number of occasions, the female member was specifically requested by some male and female respondents. Drawing from trauma research on victims’ reflections about their reasons to participate in research studies (Campbell and Adams 2008), we offered AU$50 compensation voucher to each respondent plus reimbursement of travel expenses.

40     W. de Lint and M. Marmo

The interview questions were divided into three parts, reflecting the three focal themes: recent and past victimisation, self-medication and network support. The aim of this structure was to collect more nuanced evidence of the extent and nature of the problem of self-medication. In particular, we aimed to explore the causal, motivational and situational determinants surrounding self-medication. We also sought to probe why network support did not appear to have a correlation to self-medication. We felt that it was likely that the survey instrument did not capture the connection between feelings of attachment and alienation or isolation. Out of the 15 interviewees, 8 were males and 7 females. Table 2.1 offers a summary of their victimisation. Based on their disclosure, their victimisation is divided into: simple victimisation (one-off incidence of crime); simple poly-victimisation (repeat and different victimisation); and complex poly-victimisation (repeat and different, with historical ramification). In the process of conducting these interviews, we realised that, for at least some of the respondents, the interviewer was placed in their reflexive understanding of their own recovery narrative as discussed at more lengths at the end of this chapter.

Focus Groups The third data collection method was to hold two focus groups with VSS counsellors. At the time of writing, there are eight operative counsellors in the VSS metropolitan office, and seven regional counsellors in rural locations (metro = 8, rural = 7). This proportion was represented in the composition of the focus groups. For the metropolitan group, eight counsellors met with researchers face-to-face in the VSS office, while the seven rural counsellors joined us via a conference call from their various locations. The structure of the counsellor team in the metro office differs from that used in the rural areas. In the metro office, the counselling team meets on a fortnightly basis, and each counsellor is formally supervised on a monthly basis. Thus, counsellors work independently but also engage in peer group supervision. The regional team is organised differently, such that each counsellor works as a single unit in each of the seven rural offices. The frequency of counselling sessions depends

Gender

Male, 30

Male, 57

Female, 50s

Male, 50s

Male, 50s

Female, 43

Male, 50s

Male, late 20s

Male, 50s

ID

ID001

ID002

ID003

ID004

ID005

ID006

ID007

ID008

ID009

Simple poly

Simple

Simple

Complex poly

Simple poly

Simple

Complex poly

Simple

Simple

Type

Murder, brother killed in a home invasion (two other brothers had died), remaining sister heavy drug user, sister’s daughter and granddaughter living with interviewee Simple assault; knockout punch in public place Assaulted by known person twice, who also home invaded the victim, had previously long history of abuse (forgetful, lost job, disengaged)

Attempted murder—warehouse floor manager stabbed multiple times by wife and declared dead Simple assault—healthcare executive sprayed with capsicum spray by stranger in public street Domestic assault (burglary [multiple], child abuse)—by family member Murder—daughter killed by her boyfriend (wife assaulted on wedding day) Aggravated assault, gay-bashed suddenly in a shopping centre. Previously a victim of a road accident (bad recovery mentally and physically) and bullying (probably also linked to sexuality) Simple assault by stranger on a public street; previous history of abuse

Victimisation summary

Table 2.1  Summary of interviewees’ case studies

(continued)

Minimum to moderate alcohol, no increase; no other drugs Increased use of alcohol, cannabis and other medicines like Panadol

No alcohol or prescription; increase in marijuana use (20/day) Increased alcohol use, no other drugs

Little to no alcohol; anti-anxiety prescription (seven or eight years)

Mild, no increase; prescription anti-anxiety, increase Increased intake of alcohol

Moderate, increased slightly (14 per week)

Social, not increased; painkillers during rehab only

AOD use

2  Methods, Collaboration with VSS and Victim Reflexivity     41

Gender

Female, 55

Female, 60s

Female, 70

Male, 58

Female, 47

Female, 26

ID

ID010

ID011

ID012

ID013

ID014

ID015

Table 2.1  (continued)

Complex poly

Complex poly

Complex poly

Complex poly

Simple

Complex poly

Type

Physically and sexually abused as child, difficult recovery

Physically and sexually abused as child, many years of therapy

Child sex abuse by family, family friends, catholic priests and nuns. Took heavy drugs. Gave birth at 16, child given away (and still suffering for this) to what became an abusive family. Currently not working Abduction and murder of nephew many decades ago, sister (and mum of kid) still in denial so no conversation on it Workplace sexual abuse; long history of abuse (physical and sexual) and drug use (all sorts of drugs) Assaulted by known person (lodger) resulting in severe injury (50 bones broken) and adding to a difficult family situation (feeling isolated); history of neglect and sexually exploited

Victimisation summary

Moderate to heavy alcohol (three or four drinks per day) and two pipes of marijuana, down from previously (self-described as alcoholic) Heavy (including forced) AOD consumption for prolonged periods Heavy AOD consumption for prolonged periods

Heavy AOD consumption for prolonged periods

Heavily dependent on prescribed drugs

Heavy AOD consumption for prolonged periods

AOD use

42     W. de Lint and M. Marmo

2  Methods, Collaboration with VSS and Victim Reflexivity     43

on a range of factors, such as the recency of the crime, the client’s symptoms and the timing of any related court case. Counselling could involve weekly contact, but more likely fortnightly to monthly, and occasionally annually, according to when cases come up before the courts. The focus groups were held after the survey and interview phases were completed, and were designed to probe some of the insights captured from the other data. First, we wished to further explore the question of hidden historical trauma. From the survey and interview findings, it had become apparent that a number of people in this study, who were responding to a referral offer from the police or other services following the most recent trigger crime, were primarily seeking support: the victimisation was a triggering event, but at the time of the referral disclosure of the antecedent trauma was only just beginning to emerge. The focus group brought with it many years of experience in victim counselling that could provide expert confirmation on whether this pattern was consistent with their experience. Second, through the focus group we sought to explore the variety of recovery narratives and how moments of client/victim self-discovery figure in those narratives. Both focus groups were conducted to elicit discussions, including agreement or disagreement among counsellors through a ‘round-robin’ exercise (Clark 2009) on a number of points as emerged from surveys and interviews. The interaction element of our focus groups allowed for comprehensive conversation among experts of topic fed by us, and allowed for meaningful analysis of the issues at hand, which would not be otherwise possible to achieve in one-to-one interviews (Morgan and Krueger 1993).

Reflexivity and Victim-Sensitive Research The collaboration between Flinders University and VSS brought both a therapeutic and an academic perspective to the question of victim recovery knowledge generation (de Lint et al. 2018). VSS functioned as the intermediary in the preliminary phase of the project set-up, and in facilitating the collection of data. The Flinders University–VSS connection, established before the beginning of the self-medication project

44     W. de Lint and M. Marmo

through small consultancies and students’ internships, was maintained over the long period of data collection, despite changes in personnel at the VSS senior levels. VSS was an intermediary trusted by the recovering victims and by the research team, and represented a focal point of reference. In this triangulation of relationships, the researcher becomes a foil or third party in the interaction between the victim-survivor and counsellors. And the therapeutic community has a different set of stipulations for normative engagement from that of the academic research community. One of the areas of learning for the Flinders University researchers involved how reciprocities are viewed, expected or applied. The research team did not expect to play a role other than collecting and analysing data causing as less re-traumatisation as possible. Nevertheless, some of the recovering victims appeared to be keener to tell their story to us, an audience or listener different than social workers, counsellors or police. During the interviews, some victims shared with us their thoughts on the opportunity to self-reflect on their story and recognised it as an empowering moment, because we—differently from police or other service providers—did not have a ‘role’ in their reality. We entered their lives free from labels and attachments already known to them. It is probably for this reason that one victim disclosed her historical abuse for the first time. The academic literature on research on marginalised community often talks about power disparities and exploitative research to the disadvantage of the powerless subject (Dupont 2008; Lynch 1999), which in this study it would be the victim population. Yet, we found ourselves not just in a position to recognise that victims possessed power of knowledge (regarding for example their self-medication) but also the capacity to use the situation to self-actualise (see Deckert 2017). Further, the researcher is often construed as the powerful party in marginalised population research (van Dijk 2001). In the triangulation researcher-VSS-victims, the researcher did not hold more power than VSS, who is a well-established non-governmental agency with evident socio-political influence on these matters in South Australia. In this context, if the victims had externalised doubts over the research interaction or protocol, they would have had an immediate venue (VSS counsellors)

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to communicate their discontent, jeopardising the remaining of the project by tampering the trust between VSS and the research team. Therefore, this experience allowed us to think about the involvement of all three parties, and how, in taking note of the other party’s roles and expectations, each confronts and sometimes adapts to a further opportunity to reflect upon how each person’s perceived role and identity conform to particular institutional protocols (de Lint et al. 2018). Of course, this was also an explicit aim of the research, as it developed beyond the capture of data on victims’ experiences of self-medication—we wanted to understand how victim-survivors viewed or reviewed the formal networks they encountered as part of their recovery. This meant that service professionals, including police, doctors and therapeutic support workers, were among those whose interaction with our subjects we wanted to know about. What we did not initially realise was that knowledge about recovery narratives is born of an iterative process that requires or at least benefits from repeated playback against an audience or audiences that reflect institutional variety. In relation to the above, the following insights need to be noted. Learning benefits from variety, there will be a tendency within a particular type of research or institution towards insularity and self-affirming hypotheses. Institutional knowledges surrounded by strong gate-keeping practices may suffer in the same way that cultural isolation can produce a narrow view of propriety. This is perhaps an overstatement of the importance of between-institution reflexivity, but it provides the gist of what we came away with after the first series of interviews.

Closing Reflection: Victim-Sensitive, InstitutionCritical and Reflexively Appropriative Research Research of any kind may involve the claiming or reclamation of some valued social or cultural good. The protocol for appropriation is set out in professional or university ethics standards, but to acknowledge that work has been conducted in compliance with such bodies is not to discount that there will be unanticipated consequences of the appropriation. In drawing on our interview transcripts, we are endeavouring,

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in part, to present and explore a survivor’s journey through painful experiences, including improbable and seemingly impossible obstacles and jarring self-discoveries. We acknowledge that in offering this representation, we are fetishising the ‘purity’ of this personal journey and suggesting the conversion of the ideographic into the nomothetic. Such scholarly work must be placed somewhere on the shelf for consumption, with a label and in a section or genre, recognisable to academic victimology. The process deliberately disguises and obscures identities, and in so doing substitutes the ‘native’ voice for one that is represented. In discussing the new ethnography, Denzin (1997, p. xxi) notes that a ‘text must move the self and other into action.’ However, the power of the text to produce action is also its power to distort. Since the narrative turn in the social sciences, as Denzin summarises (1997, p. xx), analyses have involved semiotic, thematic, dramaturgical, rhetorical, topological as well as other narrative strategies, but they ‘falter at the moment when the recorded or analysed text is taken to be an accurate (visual) representation of the worlds and voices studied.’ Similarly, Altheide and Johnson (2011, p. 581) argue that ‘how knowledge is acquired, organized, interpreted, and presented is relevant for the substance of those claims.’ As these authors note (Altheide and Johnson 2011, p. 581), the true nature of lived reality is somewhat dependent on epistemological construction. This is because the real world with which we engage is not mirrored but represented through the distortions of our situated, conceptual frameworks. In seeking to understand the social world or social life, it is necessary to take into account meaning work, or the situated ways of interpreting what is experienced of the real world. Taking these observations on board, we note that victim of crime self-medication is a lived reality but shaped and interpreted through institutional discourses and conceptual frameworks or the meaning work done by victims, counsellors and researchers. In the first instance, it is about the question of how many or how much. How much AOD? How many of the victims? Although we come up with a representation based on our sample, something is lost when we leave the issue with a number. First, and most relevant to this section, we appear to uphold a view of the victim and the significance of AOD use that probably, all things being equal, perpetuates mainstream views of victimhood

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and substance use. As Govier (2015) states, victimhood ought not to be reduced to a concept that revolves around passivity, by providing numbers intended to fix dimensions of pain and remedy and reducing reflexive action to some sort of quantitative receptacle. Gross quantitative categories do not capture how situated individuals negotiate unique situations using the tools at hand. And those tools cannot be understood without reference to the individual’s style of engagement with their lived reality, or their interpretation of it. In asking about network supports and traumatic events, we merely scratched the surface of this lived reality. Beneath that, quotidian values are attached to ways of seeing oneself in the world. As per Altheide and Johnson (2011), there is an ‘ethnographic ethic’ comprised of questions about the rhetorical or authorial style; the role of the reader or audience; the assumed point of view of an observer; the relationships between observer, observed and setting; and the relationship between what is observed and the larger cultural and organisational contexts. In this study, particularly concerning our engagement with and analysis of the interview and focus group data, our use of this ethnographic ethic has been evolving. We take on board that we may only offer glimpses into the reality of the victim-survivors, whose recovery narratives and relationship with self-medication form the object of this study. We are attempting to assume that the reader will be somewhat indulgent regarding the shifting angles and shadows produced by the use of multiple data sources and their assumptions. We also expect that our attempt to provide some ideal-type constructions on the basis of the narrative accounts will fall short, and that there are other dimensions and factors that could be developed out of our material or out of the data provided by other respondents. Finally, we are aware that there is no certainty regarding how the interview subjects will view the rendering of their narratives and accounts. It is likely that the distorted representations will be too many and too deep in at least some of the interpretations that we provide.

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Notes 1. As background research in terms of criminalisation rate, we took notice that according to the SAPOL annual report (SAPOL 2015), from 2011 to 2012, there was a decrease in crime of 8.6% (10,084 offences). In the 10 years from 2005–2006 to 2014–2015, the decrease in reported crime was by 29.7% (45,180 offences). This information has not influenced the flow of victim’s clients, in fact the number increased over the same period of time, probably for the reasons explained in the next paragraph. 2. The literature on preferred data collection methods of victims is contradictory as some claim that phone or computer data collection methods are preferred because they allow for anonymity, while others claim that face to face contact is preferred (Campbell and Adams 2008). We decided to let the respondents choose their preferred method. 3. We have categorised crimes differently from VSS. We categorised assault as ‘simple/physical’ and ‘aggravated’, and placed them into two different categories (‘simple person crimes’ for simple/physical and ‘serious person crime’ for aggravated assault). Further, since this survey only contacted participants above the age of eighteen, the data on sexual crimes do not include child sexual crimes as in the VSS data.

References Altheide, D. L., & Johnson, J. M. (2011). Reflections on interpretive adequacy in qualitative research. The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4, 581–594. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2016, May). Education and work. Canberra, Australia: Australian Government. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2018). South Australia. http://stat.abs. gov.au/itt/r.jsp?RegionSummary®ion=4&dataset=ABS_REGIONAL_ ASGS&geoconcept=REGION&datasetASGS=ABS_REGIONAL_ASGS& datasetLGA=ABS_NRP9_LGA®ionLGA=REGION®ionASGS= REGION. Bachman, R., & Schutt, R. (2008). Fundamentals of research in criminology and criminal justice: With selected readings. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Baker, L., Lavender, T., & Tincello, D. (2005). Factors that influence women’s decisions about whether to participate in research: An exploratory study. Birth, 32, 60–66.

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Barnes, R. (2013). “I’m over it”: Survivor narratives after woman-to-woman partner abuse. Partner Abuse, 4(3), 380–398. Campbell, R., & Adams, A. (2008). Why do rape survivors volunteer for faceto-face interviews? A meta-study of victims’ reasons for and concerns about research participation. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24(3), 395–405. Clark, L. (2009). Focus group research with children and youth. Journal for Specialists in Pediatric Nursing, 14(2), 152–154. Creswell, J. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Creswell, J., & Plano Clark, V. (2007). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Creswell, J. W., & Zhang, W. (2009). The application of mixed methods designs to trauma research. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 22, 612–621. Davies, P. (2007). Gender, victims and crime. In P. Davies, P. Francis, & C. Greer (Eds.), Victims, crime and society: An introduction (pp. 146–166). London: Sage. Deckert, A. (2017). A level playing field: Conceptualizing an empowering research framework for criminologists who engage with marginalized communities. Critical Criminology, 25(4), 559–575. de Lint, W., Marmo, M., Groves, A., & Laughton, V. (2018, July). Knowledge exchange: Collaborative reflexivity on self-medicated victims of crime. Current Issues in Criminal Justice. de Lint, W., Marmo, M., Groves, A., & Pocrnic, A. (2017). Crime victims’ self-medication: Findings from a South Australian study. International Review of Victimology, 23(2), 159–177. Denzin, NK. (1997). Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic practices for the 21st century. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Dupont, I. (2008). Beyond doing no harm. Critical Criminology, 16, 197–207. Flynn, A., & Graham, K. (2010). “Why did it happen?” A review and conceptual framework for research on perpetrators’ and victims’ explanations for intimate partner violence. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 15, 239–251. Founten, L. (2015, April 6). Flinders University study finds crime victims often increase alcohol, drug use without realising. ABC. http:// www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-06/study-finds-crime-victims-rely-onmore-alcohol-drugs/6373422. Govier, T. (2015). Victims and victimhood. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press. Guggisberg, M. (2010). An exploratory study of the association between intimate partner male-to-female violence, mental health problems and substance

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use among victimised women. Ph.D. thesis, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. Guggisberg, M. (2012). Sexual violence victimisation and subsequent problematic alcohol use: Examining the self-medication hypothesis. International Journal of Arts & Sciences, 5(6), 723–736. Hegarty, A. (2013, February 11). Victims of crime falling back on drugs to cope with ordeals. The Advertiser. http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/ south-australia/victims-of-crime-falling-back-on-drugs-to-cope-with-ordeals/news-story/784c72d796ac808ffe4ceedf22f7b678. Jirek, S. (2017). Narrative reconstruction and post-traumatic growth among trauma survivors: The importance of narrative in social work research and practice. Qualitative Social Work, 16(2), 166–188. Lord, V., & Cowan, A. (2011). Interviewing in criminal justice: Victims, witnesses, clients and suspects. Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett. Lynch, K. (1999). Equality studies, the academy and the role of research in emancipatory social change. The Economic and Social Review, 30(1), 41–69. McGarry, R., & Walklate, S. (2015). Victims: Trauma, testimony and justice. Abingdon: Routledge. Morgan, D., & Krueger, R. (1993). When to use focus groups and why. In D. Morgan (Ed.), Successful focus groups: Advancing the state of the art (pp. 3–20). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Morrison, B., Doucet, C., Thomas, B., & Peterson, P. (2011). Practice-based perspectives: Victimization and substance use. Victims of Crime Research Digest, 4, 15–21. Robinson, J. (2004). Crime, it can happen to you: The story of victim support service. Kent Town: Wakefield Press. Rosenbaum, A., & Langhinrichsen-Rohling, J. (2006). Meta-research on violence and victims: The impact of data collection methods on findings and participants. Violence and Victims, 21(4), 404–409. Rubin, H., & Rubin, I. (2012). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Saunders, M. (2006). Gatekeeper. In V. Jupp (Ed.), The Sage dictionary of social research methods (p. 126). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. South Australian Police (SAPOL). (2015). Annual report. https://www. police.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/244517/sapol_annual_ report_20142015.pdf. Sridharan, S., & Gillespie, D. (2004). Sustaining problem-solving capacity in collaborative networks. Criminology & Public Policy, 3, 221–250.

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Ullman, S. (2003). A critical review of field studies on the link of alcohol and adult sexual assault in women. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 8(5), 471–486. Van Dijk, T. (2001). Critical discourse analysis. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 352–371). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Victim Support Services (VSS). (2011). Staying home staying safe. h t t p : / / w w w. v i c t i m s a . o r g / - / v i c t i m / l i b / u p l o a d e d / b r o c h u r e s / Staying_Home_Staying_Safe_4pp_DL.pdf. Victim Support Services (VSS). (2016). Annual report 2014–15. Retrieved April 15, 2017, from https://view.joomag.com/vss-annual-report-14-15/ M0954750001442490404. Walklate, S., Maher, J., McCulloch, J., Fitz-Gibbon, K., & Beavis, K. (2018). Victim stories and victim policy: Is there a case for a narrative victimology? Crime, Media, Culture, online first, 1–17. Zorza, J. (1995). Recognizing and protecting the privacy and confidentiality needs of battered women. Family Law Quarterly, 29(2), 273–311.

3 Self-Medication and Avoidance Coping

Introduction In this chapter, we discuss coping strategies and how they contribute to the recovery narrative, according to the reflexive responses provided by our interviewees. Many victims develop individual and social defence strategies or what we refer to as ‘shock absorption’ during the ‘impact disorganisation phase’ (Frieze et al. 1987, p. 301), which is the phase that immediately follows a crime. It is recognised within the literature (see, for example, Green and Roberts 2008) that the selection of strategies by the victim in the aftermath of the crime and consequent period is of vital importance for their emotional wellbeing, but that strategies available to them are limited by their own unique situational demands. Lazarus (2006, p. 10) refers to coping as being ‘concerned with our efforts to manage adaptational demands and the emotions they generate.’ Such effort can be both ‘conscious and unconscious’ and can take the form of thoughts and actions (Green and Roberts 2008, p. 43)—thus cognitive and behavioural efforts aimed at forming coping strategies.

© The Author(s) 2018 W. de Lint and M. Marmo, Narrating Injustice Survival, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93494-5_3

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Therefore, coping after a crime event requires not only adapting to a new reality for the victim involved, but also such adaptation depends on the existence and strengths of their inner and outer social circles. Lazarus (2006, p. 19) states that coping is a part-whole relationship— hence the importance of the surrounding environment. This point is touched upon in this chapter as we tackle the issue of coping strategies and will be discussed in more depth in the next chapter on validation, which explores the role of formal and informal support in shaping the narrative of recovery. The first section below discusses the mixed messages society is currently sending to victims—expecting victims to suffer in silence against a backdrop of literature agreeing on acknowledging that the development of positive coping strategies occurs in the immediate and with the support of the outer social environment (Lazarus 2006; Cole 2007; Walklate 2007; Fassin 2012). Using extracts from victim’s interviews and counsellors’ focus groups, the second and third sections focus on engagement strategies and disengagement strategies. The fourth section considers self-medication as a coping method. It starts with the analysis of the survey’s results to then move to the reflection of victims and counsellors. In this section, it is noted that the interview findings mostly support the literature on self-medication which identifies it as a maladaptive strategy; still, our findings do not entirely support this interpretation of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use, revealing that the issues are far more nuanced and dependent on many factors, such as simple victimisation, simple poly-victimisation and complex poly-victimisation.1

From Macro-Analysis to Micro-Analysis of Coping Strategies In the current context of a security and control society, the victim, argues Cole (2007), has been redefined as the one who is expected to suffer in silence and display no weakness. This change in how we see the ‘true victim’ is evident at the socio-political and cultural-legal levels

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(Walklate 2007), as we are invited to ‘overcome a victim mentality’ (Walklate 2007, p. 2). This ‘anti-victimism’ mentality is explained further by Cole (2007, p. 5) as embracing a ‘noble victim,’ described as the individual who ‘suffers with dignity,’ ‘refrains from complaining’ and does not ‘display weaknesses’ (Cole 2007, p. 5). Cole (2007, p. 6) claims that, within this view of anti-victimism, the ‘truest victims’ are those who ‘refuse to be victims.’ The paradox of this new positioning of the so-called ‘real’ victim is highlighted by Walklate (2007) through a reflection on how the state has ‘embrace[d] more effective rebalancing of the criminal justice system in favour of the (crime) victim’ (2007, p. 3). The contradiction between the imposed silencing of the real victim and a more prominent role for victims in the criminal justice process can be seen as another schizophrenic act of the state, which pulls in different directions (Garland 2001). This contradiction may lead us to question whether the services provided by the state to crime victims are in reality a masquerade to appease the critics and that the underlying neoliberal concept of true victimhood is what matters most to the state. A combination of personal responsibility as the key precipitating factor of the crime event together with an expectation about displayed ‘dignity’ in the aftermath of the crime could be indicative of a shift in the way suffering is seen. The display of pain goes hand in hand with a judgement of the individual: those who claim victim status, Cole (2007) argues, are seen as weak, passive and/or manipulative. This is a clear departure from what Fassin (2012, pp. 41–42) observes on the importance of seeing collectivism and victimhood as parts of a whole: ‘suffering is no longer something that should be hidden from others or concealed from oneself: it is something that can be legitimately described in others and oneself.’ This schizophrenia defining how the victim is seen through the lens of blaming theory, and the expectation of how the victim ‘should’ react to crime—with displayed dignity, does have an impact on the way the crime victim traverses the different coping strategies. Coping strategies do not occur in a vacuum. In this regard, Lazarus (2006) theorises the importance of the interpersonal context and the immediate and larger environment in contributing to the victim’s coping ability. Lazarus claims that ‘coping should never be divorced from the persons who are

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engaged in it and the environmental context in which it takes place’ (2006, p. 19). Therefore, coping strategies are dynamic and develop through an interactive or transactional process with the surrounding environment. Coping is not just an internal process and cannot be reduced to an action-reaction situation. Lazarus (2006, p. 14) talks about emotional encounters as ‘a continuous flow of actions and reactions,’ and coping as an ‘integral feature of the emotion process’ (p. 19). Further, coping is impacted by the constant verbal and nonverbal feedback the victim receives as she navigates the different phases of adaptation. In this context, it is impossible to disconnect the broader socio-cultural and legal-political environments from the victim’s immediate social and emotional surroundings. Therefore, the contradiction and negativity of current politics on ‘true victims’ are relevant in that they create a duality of messages, whereby the victim is assured that expressing their emotions and asking for help is the ‘right’ path to recovery, yet at the same time the act of claiming victim status is frowned upon. The absurdity of such a paradox produces a negative environment in which the government offers services to support victim recovery and adopts more inclusive, victim-centred criminal justice processes, while the socio-political climate also works to silence victims.

Coping Strategies The treatment of victims clearly has repercussions for victims’ narrative recovery and selection of coping strategies. This is because the types of coping strategies adopted are influenced not only by the personality and health of the victim, but also by the types of social reactions they experience upon disclosure of crime events and upon their admission on own ability to manage or not (immediate coping strategy) to their family, friends and broader society. Inevitably, a victim’s ability to manage the event and its aftermath are ‘judged’ by his/her inner and outer social circle and categorised according to coping mechanism adopted. In this context, it is noted that if the category where the victim has been placed is ‘approved’ by the observer, more avenue for support is offered. For example, in their study, Mitchell and Hodson (1983) highlighted

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that those ‘seen’ as doing something to cope with their trauma, such as problem solving and social support coping, receive more support than those who use avoidance coping strategies. This creates a vicious circle of maladaptive coping strategy, whereby the victim who receives less approval for what is perceived as a ‘chosen-but-wrong’ path to recovery is left more isolated. This leaves victims of particularly traumatic events or poly-victims with less avenues to receive support. Using again the study by Mitchell and Hodson (1983) as a way of example, it was observed a connection between the greatest severity of intimate partner violence (IPV) and the less support received by a victim due to their limited attempts to make contacts with any support networks. Understanding the dynamic relations within the coping process is considered important as it can lead to more effective interventions and thus contribute to the wellbeing of people in stressful situations. The research findings agree on supporting the need for such understanding when looking at the longer term recovery, while in the immediate aftermath of the crime the literature only offers inconclusive evidence about the impact of coping strategies on wellbeing (Green and Roberts 2008, p. 43). Also, recognising that coping strategies are shaped by the broader socio-cultural context (Lazarus 2006; Green and Roberts 2008) does not deny the existence of personal preferences for certain coping strategies, which inevitably influence the ability to access more or less effective interventions. The literature categorises different ways of coping as a ‘processorienting model’ (Lazarus and Folkman 1987; Green and Roberts 2008; Wilson et al. 2012) in which, according to Iverson et al. (2013, p. 103), two prominent coping strategies emerge: the engagement and disengagement mechanisms of coping. The engagement strategies include active methods to manage the trauma and may include a problem-focused coping strategy or an emotion-focused coping strategy. In the problem-focused coping strategy, the person makes an effort to minimise stress in a cognitive effort to reduce or remove precipitating/ stress factors. This gives the person a sense of being in control of emotions and other cognitive elements. In these cases, it is expected more positive emotional outcomes as the person focuses on small steps to

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adopt solutions so they may find a way to move forward to a normal or amended routine. These strategies may include planful problem solving, cognitive restructuring, and confrontive coping (Wilson et al. 2012, p. 590). In the emotion-focused coping strategies, the person tries to manage or regulate emotions by focusing on some stressful aspects. These strategies may include self-controlling, positive reappraisal, and escape-avoidance (Wilson et al. 2012, p. 590). Like problem-focused cognitive restructuring, the emotion-focused strategy rotates around the goal setting and reinforcement concepts, to help and evolve ­adaptation to a former or new routine as emotions change (Wilson et al. 2012). Problem-focused and constructive emotion-focused coping s­trategies are considered positive and engaging ways to cope adaptively to the trauma. Psychological interventions and counselling sessions may encourage the adoption of such empowering tools for the purpose of minimising stress and taking control of the situation. Techniques to bring about these methods include self-verbalisation and active problem solving, combined with strategies to reduce maladaptive coping behaviours (Wilson et al. 2012). Often, personal perception, inner and outer social circles, and individual coping skills are key factors influencing the victim’s reactions to stress, and not just to ‘stressors’ themselves (Wilson et al. 2012). Wilson et al. (2012) note that as the positive strategies replace the maladaptive ones, there is an increase in seeking social support and a reduction of escape avoidance, through an increase of ­planful problem solving. Further, as the victim’s perception of self improves so does their response to victimisation. And the more the victim selfreflects on own improvement, a better support recovery takes place via cognitive and/or emotional adaptive coping. In contrast the above, the disengagement coping model includes passive strategies, such as withdrawal, self-criticism and avoidance (Iverson et al. 2013). An avoidance-based strategy is categorised as part of the broader emotion-focused coping strategies, yet is recognised as a maladaptive strategy (Parker and Endler 1992).

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Engagement Coping Strategies Engagement coping involves the victim taking active steps to deal with the traumatic event, and includes strategies such as cognitive restructuring and problem solving (Iverson et al. 2013). The existing literature (Gutner et al. 2006; Iverson et al. 2013) suggests that engagement strategies contribute to the development of better mental health post victimisation by identifying protective factors, such as taking active steps to reduce the risk of revictimisation. Gutner et al. (2006) in particular point out that the use of cognitive restructuring and increased emotional expression is correlated with a decrease in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. The interview extracts presented below illuminate the problem solving approach adopted by a number of victims. In the vast majority of one-off victimisation cases, the victim is more prone to look ahead to the future, find solutions to small problems and reorganise their routine accordingly, in contrast to simple an complex poly-victims, who may take longer to establish cognitive or emotional strategies of coping. This is the case across different variables, such as age, sexuality, education and type of crime. However, among our pool of interviewees, it was found that the male victims who were subjected to one-off crimes were more inclined to rationalise and strategise forward in small steps, as opposed to other interviewees who were poly-victimised. The case of interviewee 001, who was stabbed nine times by his then wife, may be considered an example of a problem-focused strategy. When asked about how he coped with the trauma, the ensuing stress, and the health and mental implications, ID001 told us that: I have a motorcycle for that [type of coping], so I’d strap my helmet on and go for a ride and everything seems to disappear.

However, based on further discussion with ID001, his situation and his coping mechanisms were more complex layered than this, as the following extract highlights. Still, to adopt an immediate mechanism such as this one, which on the surface may appear to align with the

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disengagement typology (‘everything seems to disappear’), would support emotional coping by allowing the victim to ‘recharge’ and refocus on small strategies, like relearning how to swallow or how to move forward with short-term goals in a problem-solving orientated approach: I:  […] how you coped with that situation, would you be able to describe your coping mechanisms or how you dealt with that process? ID001: Well, when I left the hospital, I was taking eight Panadeine Forte, three blood thinners and a sleeping tablet every day. I had a nice blood clot in my forearm, so I had to get that out. And I was stabbed in my arm, my bicep, my cheek, multiple times through my back and my shoulders, I had nylon string in the back of my head where the blade went under the back of my skull and hit my brain stem. All of the muscles were cut in my neck, I had an artery from my leg in my neck … so every time I turned it would be tight and pull and everything, because my throat was full of stitches … yeah, I was always hungry because my haemoglobin count would take weeks to get back up … I used to have to hold my hand under my chin to support my head, if I was sitting down I used to end up putting my head on the table because I just couldn’t hold it up. I: So how did you cope with that? ID001:  I’m the worry-about-it-when-you-get-there kind of guy, it was just life and it’s what I had to do … I had to learn to swallow differently because my throat was a different size now, so food I would normally chew, chew, chew and swallow … I could feel my throat expand to get it through. I applied for therapy through my doctor and a mental health assessment in May and I didn’t get into see a therapist until August and I had two sessions with the therapist, but according to them I didn’t really need therapy. Umm … they stated that I’m one of those lucky people that can deal with the situation on their own. I: Do you agree with that assessment? ID001:  Yeah, I believe that I feel fine. They stated that I might not need therapy until we are right into the trial stage of days and days of it, being dragged through it and ripped apart. But according to here [VSS], I believe that the court is meant to provide me with counselling for that anyway. But don’t get me wrong, this is my whole situation, my wife tried to kill me and I had to fight to get my son back and now I’m in pain every day, drugged out of my brain just to get up

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and walk around and then I had a lot of family on my back, and then I got my son back … and then I thought that I needed to see somebody, but after the eight-week period between when I applied for it and when I got it, I was fine and I am now.

The gradual step-by-step approach displayed by interviewee ID001 as an example of engagement coping that allowed his situation to change and be more in charge of his situation. The pinnacle was when he mentioned that he ‘got his son back’ as a great achievement, given the overall physical and emotional circumstances. In another example of engagement coping, interviewee ID002 adopted a strategy of planning in small steps through pigeon-holing. He was randomly capsicum-sprayed while heading to an exam and he admitted that his initial reaction was anger—an emotion that, if not overcome, may facilitate maladaptive strategies. Pigeon-holing may be criticised for putting things into categories that are too narrow, and therefore be seen as disengagement strategy, but it can allow the victim to move on and get organised and reoriented in a constructive manner, which is more typical of an engagement coping method, as suggested by ID002: ID002: I suppose I felt that I actually coped pretty well at the time, because part of my make-up is that I pigeon-hole things, so in a crisis you deal with the crisis and you’ll get through. And I did exactly that, I went to hospital and sorted it out, contacted who I had to contact … umm … then fortunately, the people that I had to contact at the university were able to come and meet me, and bring my gear with them, so that was no real problem.

Engagement coping was also adopted by male interviewee ID004, whose daughter was killed by her partner. ID004:  I’m a very structured and logical person. I’m disciplined … in some regards, perhaps a little obsessive-compulsive … not to any degree of needing to be medicated, but my career and my … and the way I conduct myself as a person in society has always been very pragmatic in that I look at the pros and I look at the cons, I look at the relationships and I try to draw logical and intelligent conclusions

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from that and then learn from it and move on. So, that’s how I have been successful in my working environment and I tried to apply a similar approach in trying to understand what the hell happened, because I was separated from my wife at the time … I wasn’t part of the family unit in terms of close contact with my kids, and in particular my daughter that was murdered.

ID004 goes on to identify rationalisation, evidence-gathering and compartmentalisation as characterising his coping mechanism: So, from the time we got to the hospital and got ushered into a side room and briefed on what was happening, it was very critical … to getting upstairs to where my ex-wife had been waiting, I walked in the room just as the doctors were telling my ex-wife that she had passed away … so, I think I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent there with regard to the circumstances, but my coping mechanism for that was that it went from cool and casual to completely shocked and unprepared and that the following days, weeks and months I was trying to dissect how I went from being completely ignorant of what was leading up to how it all happened and the various roles that people had to play in it. Umm … I was trying to gather my own evidence from whatever sources I could, which was limited, and piece it together in terms of the timeframes because I’m actually a professional planner so timelines are everything to me in terms of working out cause and effect and determining interactions and so on … And I tried to dissect it, reassemble it, digest it and evaluate it and all of those things and through some of that I got some clarity and through some I got obsessive. And not necessarily obsessive about understanding the event, but also obsessive about some of the other things … like, I’ve never been involved with a funeral and I had to learn that quickly … the etiquette, the protocols, the eulogy and paraphernalia. But I also got a bit obsessive over a shrine … and how and what I would hold onto as far as remembering her … I got a little bit obsessive in my work as a distraction, probably distanced myself from my girlfriend a bit. I struggled to reconcile the differences in my approach between my two children, and how they were dealing with it. […]

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I try to compartmentalise, and that really is my coping mechanism. It is part of me, it is something that I am comfortable with. It is something that I do naturally and I do quite well, eventually.

Victim ID004 also talked about the importance of opening up and vocalising thoughts as a natural aspect of engagement coping: Because I do firmly believe it myself, that the more I talk about it the stronger I get in processing it, you know. It is a bit like exercise, to me anyway. The more you exercise, the stronger you get in dealing with it.

It is clear that ID004 imposed a structured, temporal order on the crime and events surrounding it as a means of developing a sense of control over the traumatic occurrence. This is opposite to the intrusive and scattered flashbacks that are more commonly associated with PTSD (Frieze et al. 1987; Ullman et al. 2013) and tend to augment fear. Victim ID005, a man who was gay-bashed suddenly in a shopping centre, talked about engagement coping as a better way to deal with victimisation than disengaging and doing nothing. But at the same time he referred to a problematic aspect of engagement coping—while there is a willingness not to ‘stop’ living, there is a need for predictability: ID005:  Because as a victim … you learn to live with the victimisation, you don’t sit in the corner crying. I mean a lot of people do obviously, but a lot of people don’t either. A lot of people have a bit more respect for themselves. But the weaknesses that come out of that become natural as well. You know the wanting to be aware of predictability of life, knowing the party that you’re going to be going to, you’re going to know everyone that’s gonna be there, you wanna know what will happen in the next hour … you do want some kind of, um, settlement in everything you do. And I still have that. I still find it hard to go to a party and feel totally comfortable. Go to a dinner party and feel totally comfortable. I’ve got to know what I’m going into. I’ve got almost like reconnoitre. It sounds mad, but it’s true.

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ID005 also spoke of ‘feeling stronger’ as his counselling sessions progressed and he increasingly focused on his studies as a way to progress towards achieving specific aims: Because I was studying cultural science, studies and social studies, and um, sociology. And it made me … If I didn’t have this I wouldn’t been objective enough to do that kind of study. So now actually, I’m stronger as a student, doing sociology than I am … than I was because of it, which is great. So you gotta see the good things of it … than the bad, because then, you know, you’d just be a victim to it.

Showing a range of emotions, including sadness expressed through crying as a way to externalise one’s feelings, was the coping strategy adopted by interviewee ID010, representing an example of a constructive emotion-focused coping adaptation. ID010 is a poly-victim with a complicated history of abuse, who adopted a mixed approach to coping via both engaging and disengaging strategies. For example, she acknowledges the occurrence of flashbacks, which are typically described as a paralysing emotion causing detachment from routine and sometimes from reality, but also she immediately details how she would tackle it: ID010:  I have a lot of flashbacks […], so I tend to ring helplines at one in the morning and some of them aren’t great either, but at least it’s someone.

Below we see the interviewee ID010 reflecting on the societal coding of tears and crying as negative or weak; but, as shown in the extract above, there is a sense of resoluteness, in this case it is about her sharing with us the importance of openly expressing feelings as a therapeutic aspect of recovery. Indeed, the interviewee expressed her regret for not having cried enough, probably as an indirect response to perceiving the behaviour as weak or to receiving signals from external parties that such behaviour is not acceptable, in line with what discussed above in the macro-analysis of coping strategies.

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ID010:  Unfortunately, I didn’t keep the crying up … that’s been one of the main things that has helped me has been crying. I mean, people see that as a weakness and I get upset when I see on TV when people cry when something bad has happened and they say ‘sorry’ … I just don’t understand why they are apologising, because they are just doing a natural thing. I: And it’s your way of coping in many ways? ID010:  Yes, it’s like they’re feeling bad because they’re crying and well, actually, I can see why they say that because, in society’s eyes, they are showing a weakness or whatever, but actually it is really good—bottling it up is the worst thing.   […], it is like a natural anti-depressant because I only believe that a lot of depression isn’t a chemical imbalance in the brain, it’s just a lot of stuck grief because there would be a lot of people—this is just my opinion—but there’s a lot of people everywhere who haven’t grieved for losses and then they wonder why they’re crying and ‘what’s wrong with me?’, and it’s actually … there’s not anything wrong.

As in the previous case, resilience was often touched upon, whether directly or indirectly, by victims who embraced an engagement coping strategy, especially those with a long history of victimisation. The case of ID013 is exemplary here—a male complex poly-victim whose most recent trauma involved a domestic assault by a known person. ID013 reflected on his ability to adopt a positive narrative, a positive label—in this case the label ‘survivor’—as a constructive way to move forward: I: How much of your recovery would you credit to your own resilience? ID013:  […] In being kind to myself, I would say around 60–70% of my recovery has to do with my mental resilience, my character. I even wrote—I still [write a] journal quite a lot—and I remember, in fact I pulled it out of my wallet only today a piece of paper where I wrote ‘I am a survivor,’ and so that is how I see myself now, which is a contrast to always wanting to see myself as that I shouldn’t [be] alive, to know that I’m a survivor. It’s a very different way of seeing oneself.

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The ability to accept oneself and one’s own thoughts is also part of the narrative of focused strategy of coping, as evident in the case of interviewee ID015, a woman who was abused as a child and spent many years in therapy searching for ways to cope: ID015: CBT [cognitive behavioural therapy] yeah, basic mindfulness. Sort of a ACT [acceptance and commitment therapy], sort of letting the thoughts, accepting the thoughts, letting them exist, instead of pulling away from them or panicking from them or trying to shut them down, which creates this obsession with the one thought, just being like, ‘Oh yeah cool thinking about death, great that’s fine, I can think about death as well as the kettle’ and you just sort of—It naturally moves away instead of being your base of thought. So yeah it worked, I mean it didn’t cure everything but the difference was so noticeable just from major panic attack to anxiety of having a panic attack, and still to this day it’s an issue for me … But having those tools on board changed my entire life in perspective and other areas I didn’t expect. My relationships got better, I made better choices for myself, I started to just have emotional regulation and develop emotional maturity and intelligence.   […]   I have a role in protecting myself from all sorts of circumstances by choosing better options for myself. Without taking on the blame of the abuser’s actions.

For ID015, resilience was developed over time and through her experiences, to build, as she put it, ‘value for myself ’: ID015:  As a child it was survival sex working, shoes, clothes, safe places to sleep. And then as I got older I became aware of the sex industry as a cash exchange and that also played a huge role in combination with my therapy. Some of my therapy costs were covered by sex work, sex work also contributed to my ability to place value on my body and my time which had been taken away in child abuse and which obviously comes with its own set of complexities.   […]

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  I was able to learn how to say ‘no,’ how to negotiate, that I can say ‘no’ because I didn’t think that that was a thing. So I met with a lot of women who were like, you just say no, you just say this, you set this, you own the room. So I learnt all these skills around consent and developed value for myself that stopped me needing to seek out sexual gratification to prove my template or you know like do any of that, and I used that money to funnel into more therapy.

This case study is significant in highlighting the importance of time in the analysis of recovery strategies. Crime can cause a disequilibrium of emotions and expectations, and the situational demands can vary significantly from person to person. This is especially the case for complex poly-victims, among whom a reflexive narrative of coping (through rationalising next tasks and internalising small achievements) may be less prevalent or developed over a longer period of time. Raising awareness and teaching clients how to develop coping strategies has become a priority for counsellors, who can see that a long-term commitment to any therapeutic regime is not sustainable for many clients for various reasons (such as time constraints, other commitments, limited money and external influences, to cite a few). As Focus Group 1 (Adelaide) discussed: I:  So one of you before mentioned that the target is not the long-term counselling but is the education and wellness. So teaching coping strategies, is that what other people would agree with? FG12 VSS004: I would agree, generally yes. That there’s lots of psycho-education that we do as well as supportive counselling. And I do some therapeutic counselling. And have had a couple of clients that I’ve had on and off and from when they disclosed, they are both adult survivors of sexual assault clients, so from when they disclose to the end of the criminal justice process. So both of those clients have been, um, up to two years, but at times there’s no regular contact it just depends what’s happening for them. They may disengage for a little while and then engage again when something is starting to proceed or they need some additional help.

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It is therefore critical for counsellors to engage with clients in what they called ‘psycho-education,’ to enable the client to build the tools required for engagement coping without the need for external counselling.

Avoidance and Disengagement Coping Strategies Disengagement coping refers to non-action or passive strategies aimed at managing the trauma; typically these behaviours include self-removal from potential ‘stressors,’ self-criticism and avoidance (Iverson et al. 2013). The aim of these behavioural strategies is to reduce the opportunities for the harm to be repeated and perpetuated. Therefore, in the aftermath of the crime, the victim may experience an ‘impact disorganisation phase’ (Frieze et al. 1987, p. 301), where disengagement strategies, most of which are avoidance mechanisms, are adopted in the shock absorption phase. However, avoidance coping is understood to become ‘maladaptive’ over time and difficult to overcome (Wilson et al. 2012, p. 589). The literature agrees that these avoidance strategies slow down and limit recovery because they may reinforce distress and augment fear (Gutner et al. 2006), for example, with the recurrence of flashbacks. Selfisolation is also an important element in this context as irrational or distorted beliefs are not shared with, and potentially addressed by, formal and informal support groups. Negative feelings can cause, paralysis, including the inability to resume one’s routine, losing one’s job, and the inability to attend medical appointments or even leave the house. One of our interviewees, ID009, was assaulted by a known person twice. His removal of stressors is explained as a form of protection against harm by others around him, but he lost his job as a result of ’ losing his self-confidence: ID009:  I never used to feel vulnerable but since then [the first assault] I do. And then this other one, that makes me feel vulnerable now even in my own house. That’s why it is so bad. And everything I’m doing is to try and get out of there, but it’s hard because I’m chasing my tail

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… my income’s going downhill, and … I don’t know what to do, I really don’t. If I had any hair I’d pull it out. I:  So what do you feel are your coping strategies? How do you best cope with all of these events? ID009:  A lot of it is just denial or hiding it. You see, I got bashed on the 4th of August and my dad’s birthday is on the 10th of August and he’s eighty-seven now, so we do tend to get together for that. And we all had it planned that we were going to go to his birthday, but after the bashing my eye was so black, my eye was red and so I just make an excuse, you know, I rang my dad up and said that I wouldn’t be there because I had the flu. I: So you didn’t tell him about the bashing? ID009:  No, I couldn’t let him see me like that, because he would have had a heart attack I reckon. And I didn’t tell my son until he invited me up for tea one Wednesday night and it was actually … I think it was a Thursday … anyway, I said I couldn’t make it because I had something on. And he asked what it was and it was the day I went to the hospital to have my eye fixed, and he pressed me, ‘What’s on? What are you doing?’ So, eventually I had to tell him because I didn’t want to lie and so I told him that I was going into hospital and of course he wanted to know what I was having done. And so in the end I told him that I got bashed, so that was the first time he had heard about it and that was probably about ten days after, or maybe two weeks after. I:  What I am hearing from you is that how you coped with that situation was to keep it within? Is that something you would have done previously to try to insulate or protect your father or your son? ID009: […] He [the son] thinks that there are so many things happening down here [where the victim lives] and so why don’t you get out. So I just don’t tell him things. I just figure that I will deal with it myself.

Interviewee ID006 was also a case in point in relation to paralysis and avoidance. She was the victim of an assault by a stranger in a public street and had a previous history of abuse:

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ID006:  No, he [husband] doesn’t come with me to any of the [medical] appointments with me … he’d drop me off, but at first I wouldn’t go anywhere unless my son was with me or he [husband] was with me.   I basically lost two jobs because of it, because I wouldn’t go. […] you can’t trust people after something like that. You can’t be around that many people.   […]   I still don’t go very far and I don’t go out at night-time, even though I got bashed during the day … and I very rarely come to the city [centre].

I:  You say that you haven’t been able to see a psychologist about this yet? ID006: No, I want to go though, because I really think that I need to.

Fear and avoidance usually have deep roots. This victim (ID006), for example, revealed during the interview that she was physically assaulted on many occasions as a young child in foster homes. When she returned to living with her mother as an early teenager, her step-father physically assaulted her. She was later ‘thrown out’ of the house, aged fifteen, because she fell pregnant. ID006:  Who are you going to tell? Basically, I grew up in kids’ homes when I was a kid. In foster homes, welfare homes … whatever you want to call them. Family group homes … whatever … And there was abuse in them, like physical abuse. I remember that I was hit when I was about three or four years old. And then when I was about twelve or thirteen I went to live with my mum and I got abused by her partner, so yeah … there’s my life.

What emerged in this study is that complex poly-victims like ID006 are more prone to adopt a disengagement coping strategy. This is confirmed by the experiences of our other interviewees, such as ID012, who was a victim of sexual abuse with a long history of victimisation and drug usage (complex poly). During the interview, she read extracts from her diary of two decades ago, from which it emerged that she felt powerless and wanted to block out reality and sleep through life:

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ID012 (diary entry for Friday): saw … a psychologist, [I’m feeling] very depressed and suicidal. I phoned a friend and talked to her. Put the cats in animal welfare so they have a chance at living—because I had three cats at the time—buy a bottle of Scotch and take pills and sleep the weekend away. Hopefully I won’t wake up. [Name] phoned back with numbers for … crisis care.   Went to markets, did some shopping and bought a bottle of Scotch. [name of psychologist] phoned me and reassured me—umm … feel better but exhausted, went for a walk then went to bed. Saturday: slept badly and unable to concentrate on paper, even unable to listen to science show. Can’t concentrate on anything. Went to the city to buy birthday present for friend, absolutely exhausted and dragging my feet. Laid down in the afternoon because I started feeling dizzy, forgot to eat, I keep doing that.   Exhausted but very agitated, can’t settle down. I can’t do anything and am very confused. Developed a cold sore—went for a walk to calm down. Sunday: slept very badly … umm … woke at 10 a.m., four cups of coffee, very agitated—no wonder. Went back to bed at midday. Awoke at 1:15, cleaned house … Looked for brown bears [?] in the garden … 4–4:30…[..] started dinner and fed cats—5:30. Panic attack started. Monday: exhausted and slept late, terrified about going to the hairdresser in case I see [name]— ID012:  And that was what life was like. The panic attacks were terrible—I’d end up in places and not know how I got there, or how long.

Interviewee ID014 is another example of a complex poly-victim with a long history of severe trauma who has adopted disengagement coping strategies. Born in another country and adopted together with her brother by an extremely abusive Australian man, she recollects years of ordeal, including sexual and verbal abuse and forced drug intake, both while living in the adopted house and after she left it: ID014: He took me from [country], illegal adoption, I know it’s illegal adoption. He smashed my head into concrete. He broke broomsticks over me and my brother’s bodies. He used to make us eat vomit from the carpet. He used to try and drown us in filthy bath water. He broke broomsticks over the soles of our feet and our hands and

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our body and jump on us. So I have a lot of memory loss, because I’ve been kicked into brick [inaudible ] and glass and that. […] So I’ve got a lot of memory loss. I used to be loved in my country, but the moment he came and got me, it’s like he just destroyed everything of me and my heritage. I was really loved, I lived on temple food, I grew up [in the] temple atmosphere and was on special diet. I never had egg, I never ate meat, anything except for temple ‘presade,’ that means bless offering. So, when this person came, he broke every rule, he started giving me egg, he gave me meat, he would give me bacon, he gave me this. Of course when I came to Australia I throw up.   […]   I’ve been abused, tied up, gagged, raped up my ass, all this shit-raped by kids and raped by adults, had drugs forced onto me, I didn’t know what anything was, actually this person that I met he was a junkie and I didn’t know anything what a druggie was, didn’t know what a junkie was, didn’t know nothing, he acted bourgeois, I travelled the world, I lived in France, so I was very, you know, spoke with air and grace you know. But he was a junkie and he must of [sic] used all my money because back then I didn’t use to spend any and I didn’t have much, had some dumpy thing but I got paid and when he came along it was like I had nothing and he was popping me, [inaudible ] Rohypnol, [inaudible ], and he must have drugged me, he drugged me actually I remember the first night he drugged me.

ID014 took years to scramble together a daily routine that provided her with a sense of safety; yet her disconnection remained evident in many ways, including through her inability to recount her daily routine: I: Do you have a daily routine, a routine every day? ID014:  Yeah I’m starting to, I’m trying to go to sleep early everyday by 8:30 p.m., we used to go to sleep at the temple, they closed the curtains at 8:30 p.m., and I go to sleep and then the deities, are Krishna, they are statues but to me they are real, some people pray to Jesus, they might have a statue or a cross and to them it’s real, you know, to me god is real and so in the temple they have certain rest times so I’m starting to, [inaudible ] gives me rest and things, so when I go home, when I finish from here I see [VSS counsellor name] first, after and

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I’m just gonna take rest and have a sleep and I go into a deep sleep, I’ve been going into bit of a divine sleep.

After the interviews with the victims, the counsellors in the first focus group (Adelaide) were asked to discuss the most prevalent negative feelings or avoidance behaviours among their clients: I:  [Let’s talk about] key elements of dealing or coping with that trauma. Are there other things that come up? Other emotions or sort of dayto-day activities … What would be the most—obviously sleep is one, um… FG1 VSS007: Intrusive thoughts, flashbacks. FG1 VSS005: I think anger. FG1 VSS003: Anger. FG1 VSS005: Anger is discussed regularly with clients.

This point was further discussed in the second focus group (regional). What emerged is that there are not many victims who have no strategies or coping mechanisms at all, but many of the strategies they do adopt are deemed not appropriate for their recovery or for advancing their recovery narrative: FG2 VSS006:  There’s no clear amount you can say what I see, you know, clients with no strategy mostly. I don’t think that’s the case. I think that sometimes even though they clearly have strategies that aren’t working for them. To us, it’s affecting their ability to function or not function, that’s what they’ve learned to do. They see that as actually having a strategy. So, I don’t know, that’s just my thought but, um, it’s actually hard to say that we see because we see them across the board. Probably not so many that don’t have any particular strategies. A lot of times by the time we get them they are linked in with some other services—but sometimes and not always. FG2 VSS002:  And what I was just thinking there is sometimes that a client may talk about a strategy that they have, but it might also be one that they have developed on reflection. Now whether or not that’s particularly useful or, really, but it’s part of their process that they are going through. So they’ll talk about ok, so ‘how I’m thinking about

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addressing things.’ You know, ‘how I’m coping with things or how I’m moving on.’ Sometimes as a counsellor there is that decision about how far you can kind of perhaps, um, I’ll use the word ‘challenge’ their strategy. I mean […] you know, it may not always look so useful. But then again it’s their process and how you facilitate their process. So yeah, it’s um, kind of varied there. I agree with [VSS004] that it’s very varied in terms of the sort of clients that you have. And I’ve just recalled one, and I’m going back a bit, about a client who … Initially when she sought help it was both from a domestic violence service and ourselves it was because of domestic violence. But as time’s gone on she has been reflecting on what’s been happening to her and trying to make changes in her life. She’s also recently revealed that she suffered a child sexual assault at the hands of her father, as a very young child, several times. And she was the eldest girl and how she protected her sisters and things like that. And it’s really interesting watching her because she now, and she was definitely using alcohol and talked about her use of alcohol, and also her use of food. Eating as a strategy of coping which kind of hasn’t come up because it’s not a substance as such or a drug. But then eating is definitely something that people use as a coping strategy. So she’s been really reflecting a lot on how she in fact—and talking about strategies about how when she has the thought, how she might interrupt that. And sort of talks to herself about using a better way to deal with it. So she’s using journalling as a way of doing that. Writing she’s finding extremely useful.

Re-establishing the routines and do/don’t rules for the purpose of changing one’s narrative is an important element of the therapeutic progression, as highlighted by the first focus group (Adelaide): FG1 VSS006:  One thing that I use a lot with clients is the concept of the trauma-world rules versus the now-world rules. Identifying and drawing it, and in particular cases of DV, ‘when I did this, this would happen to me,’ and identifying that they are still living by some of those rules although the consequences aren’t there anymore, and that can be really powerful to identify those differences and comparisons. FG1 VSS007:  I think often there is a real sense for women in those situations that hanging on to those rules will keep them safe. They’re really attached to those ideas. And if they let go of those ideas, ‘what’s

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gonna happen?’. ‘If I don’t stay on alert, if he ever does turn up again then I’m not going to know what to do.’ And so part of working those situations is educating people, that ‘fight, flight or freeze,’ it just exists in you. If you need it, it will happen, it’s not going to not happen. But you don’t have to live with that at the ready all the time. You can actually live differently. And that’s really tricky. I remember I had a client who really articulated it and wrote it out in a map: ‘If I blame myself then I know what to do. If I don’t blame myself then I’m not in control. And then I have to accept that this world might be okay, but sometimes bad stuff happens and I’ve got no control when that’s going to happen.’ And that’s really tricky. So that kind of holding onto that, you know, ‘at least here I know what to do.’ FG1 VSS005:  And that sort of ties in with some people’s shame identity. The shame identity is used as the cover and protection and it’s a self-medicator, for exactly those reasons. ‘I know this world, this is how it protects me, this is how it makes me think, feel, behave … I’m gonna stay here.’

Self-Medication as a Coping Strategy In the literature, self-medication has been associated with avoidance coping (Khantzian 2003, 2009; Weiss et al. 2009; Hall and Queener 2011; Smith 2017), especially in the case of poly-victims who adopt a disengagement coping mechanism (see, for example, Ullman et al. 2013 on lifetime trauma exposure and sexual abuse severity in childhood). Khantzian (2003, 2009) proposes two self-medication hypotheses in relation to AOD consumption. First, that those individuals who would misuse AOD substances may experience higher levels of psychological distress compared to those who do not abuse such substances. Second, individuals would consume AOD substances, do so to alleviate specific symptoms. Starting with the first hypothesis, the survey has shown us an increase in poly-substance use and a halving of the proportion of respondents who did not consume any AOD substance after the crime incident. Before the crime event, 57.8% reported at least one substance use, with 15.7% reporting poly-substance use, and 26.5% reporting no substance

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ONE SUBSTANCE USE

P O L Y- S U B S T A N C E U S E

26.5

13.7

15.7

29.4

56.9

57.8

Pre (%)

NO SUBSTANCE USE

Fig. 3.1  Overall patterns of consumption

use. After the victimisation, just over half (56.9%) still reported the use of at least one substance, yet the figure for poly-substance use doubled, at 29.4%, while the proportion of respondents reporting no AOD use halved, at 13.7% (see Fig. 3.1). Further, in proportion, more male victims (95.3%) had increased their AOD consumption compared to their female counterparts (79.7%). However, minimal (p > 0.05) connection was found between increased AOD consumption and other demographic characteristics, such as age, education and employment status. More specifically, the use of each single category of AOD substance increased after victimisation. The consumption of doctor-prescribed drugs increased from 33.4 to 54.9%; the consumption of non-doctor-prescribed drugs rose from 8.8 to 15.6%; the consumption of alcohol increased from 37.2 to 48.1%; and illicit drug use rose from 12.7 to 14.7%. This data was intersected with other demographic characteristics and, again, the most notable finding was the different consumption levels of males and females. Male victims increased their consumption of alcohol and multiple substances, while female victims used a greater proportion of nonprescribed drugs compared to male victims (see Fig. 3.2). In terms of degree of change in consumption habits before and after victimisation, the most notable level of increase occurred in the daily consumption, moving from a pre-victimisation consumption of 9.8%

3  Self-Medication and Avoidance Coping     77 Post (%)

29.4 16.7

13.7

14.7

12.7

8.8

15.6

25.5

33.4

37.2

48.1

54.9

Pre (%)

Fig. 3.2  Patterns of consumption before and after crime by AOD type

to 48%. This increase is almost five times the initial percentage. The consumption of AOD substances decreased marginally after victimisation in the other categories (weekly from 23.5% to 21.6%; monthly from 17.6% to 11.8%; yearly from 9.8% to 4.9%). Further, we registered a noticeable change in frequency of consumption among those who did not have a routine of using AOD substances (categorised as ‘never’) prior to the crime event, from 39.2% to 12.7%. This means that less people ticked the ‘never’ category than prior victimisation and therefore there was a large increase post victimisation in frequency of consumption, indicating the use of new substances among non-users or poly-substance users. In summary, the survey demonstrates that AOD consumption increases after victimisation in terms of both type of substance and frequency of consumption (see Fig. 3.3). In reference to the second hypothesis proposed from Khantzian (2003), that AOD consumption occurs to alleviate specific symptoms, the current literature on trauma refers to AOD consumption as a dulling or deferring element typical of the disengagement coping strategy (Flynn and Graham 2010; Guggisberg 2010; Morrison et al. 2011). This point is looked at through the result of the interviews and focus

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12.7

17.6

4.9

9.8

9.8

11.8

23.5

21.6

39.2

48

Pre (%)

DAILY

W E E K L Y ( 1-7 DAYS)

M O N T H L Y ( 8-3 0 DAYS)

YEARLY (FEW ALMOST NEVER TIMES A YEAR)

Fig. 3.3  Patterns of consumption before and after crime by frequency

groups. Disengagement and AOD consumption were seen by the counsellors interviewed for this study as a spiralling combination: FG1 VSS003: Usually if they’ve been drinking or self-medicating for a long time it creates more isolation against other people then it increases the ‘no-one understands me, no-one gets me,’ and then it further leads to a kind of reliance on substance, you know in order to kind of get by, because it creates as many more problems as the trauma itself.   […]   When I was working with [position and organisation named] they would often come two, three years after the death [of relevant person] and say, ‘I don’t know why I don’t feel better. It’s two years after the death and I still can’t cope with it, and just realised that well, just now I’ve stopped using my anti-depressants or whatever, and all of a sudden these emotions are fed, so maybe I should go back and get some more.’ Um, and it’s that talking to clients and informing them about what is actually happening, for the first time that they’re actually feeling. Very often informs them as to what has happened in the past because the GP has not … in my experience do not convey that information.

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Further, as revealed by the focus group discussions reported in the previous section, anger emerged as a key element within disengagement coping strategies. One counsellor in the Adelaide focus group observed that anger and self-medication are often seen in combination, particularly among male victims: FG1 VSS005:  Anger is discussed regularly with clients, um, and I think anger and some of the self-medication goes together for some of them. Um, I think the clients I have seen here, probably some of my male clients … probably see that because they’re in a mindset where they shouldn’t be, you know, seeing these things or they shouldn’t not be coping … Um, they’ll tend to use their alcohol and things to help with that, because it masks it and then they can just be one of the boys again. I’ve had a cluster of fellows like that.

To add to the experience of the counsellors in our focus groups, the vast majority of our one-to-one interviews with victims support the literature findings about those adopting a disengagement mechanism are more prone to consume AOD substances as a coping strategy. During the ‘impact disorganisation phase’ (Frieze et al. 1987, p. 301), those victims who would later adopt an engagement coping mechanism, augment their consumption. As a point in case, ID004, who have later rationalised and focused his responses and actions in a more engaging and constructive manner, initially began to consume one bottle of Scotch per week after his daughter’s murder. He reflected on the adopted drinking habit: ID004:  […] I don’t think it is excessive, but the doctors will probably tell you that none is better. I don’t know. I’m not concerned about it, but I’m mindful of it, but again that’s my process. I’m looking at cause and effect … I don’t think it is getting worse, and there was probably a period where I was drinking more heavily … and that would have been in the first six months. But since then I am back to what I think is a reasonable level.

Additionally, it has been observed that those who consume AOD substances to cope with distress, or because they believe it will reduce their

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stress or help them achieve certain targets display more PTSD symptoms. And this would be the case across the spectrum of simple/complex poly- and simple victimisation. Examples of each are considered below. What emerges from the present research is that in most cases the victim has increased their consumption of alcohol and/or other drug substances, whether legal or illegal. But they have incorporated the consumption into their routine and rationalised it in different ways. Starting with simple victimisation, as opposite to poly-victimisation, we look at two cases in particular. In the first case, the male interviewee had a history of depression, a brother who was killed in a home invasion, and a sister who has struggled to cope and turned to drugs. At the time of the interview, he was looking after his sister’s daughter over the school holiday period and had been caring for his sister’s daughter’s infant baby for a number of months. He explained: ID007: When mum passed away she [sister] had a bit of a bad spell, then got over that and she was doing alright until my brother was killed and then she just lost it. She’s turned to drugs and drinking.   […]   Well, I started hitting the bottle a bit […] just after the funeral [of my brother].   […] I: But your wife thought that you were drinking too much? ID007: Yeah. I: So how much would that have been? ID007:  Ah … probably … I usually would have, like because I go out on a Wednesday night I would have a can of Bundy … Bundaberg [rum] and cola … and that would be all that I have all week. But just after my brother’s funeral, I was drinking three to four nights a week, for about six months. I: And how much would you be drinking a night? ID007: I would have drunk about three or four cans of the Bundy. I: Right, but that was a lot for you? ID007: It was. Through this, my wife had come to Victims of Crime.

The following extract provides another example of disengagement coping by a simple victim, where the interviewee discussed her long-term

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consumption of prescribed drugs. Her nephew, the son of her sister, was killed when was still very young. The death of the boy has never been a topic of conversation in the family and it is all bottled up, as the interviewee observed. She had been prescribed sleeping tables and taken them for three decades: ID011: They gave me the sleeping tablets. I had the sleeping tablets and if I could just go into a deep sleep at night and not dream, not think then I was ok, I could manage during the day. My GPs that I saw didn’t really want to talk about it, they were happy to give me script and didn’t really want to talk about it so I happily went on year after year with the scripts and I have not slept without those tablets for thirty-two years.

We now move to consider examples of poly-victims, and their avoidance coping and AOD consumption. Interviewee ID009, a simple poly-victim, reflected on his AOD consumption as a coping mechanism that formed part of his disengagement recovery strategy: ID009: I know that’s exactly what it is. I’ve got no motivation, and you know, the coping mechanism—the alcohol—I’m smart enough to know this, but I can’t get out of it … it’s been eighteen months now and I reckon in that eighteen months I’ve probably spent maybe a dozen days or evenings sober since then … maybe a little bit more, but it wouldn’t be much.   […] I:  Since the bashing, you have felt that each of those categories [alcohol, marijuana, medication] has increased substantially? ID009: Yeah, all of them. I: For the purpose of what? How would you say that you use those things? ID009:  To numb the pain yeah, the physical pain … and well the pain of being, of feeling lonely and alone … See, even at home I screwed the door shut. I: Is that something you do every night? ID009:  Yeah. I undo it in the morning so I can get in the back door, when I come home if I have to go in that way.

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We now move to complex victimisation case studies. Interviewee ID006 admitted that her consumption of AOD had increased after the traumatic event: ID006:  [before the event] I’d smoke a bong … and maybe have about twenty in a day, easy.   […]   After I got bashed I was just constantly smoking, like all of the time. I:  So comparatively, how many a day? ID006: Maybe fifty a day, something like that … it just stopped my mind thinking so much… I: And how long did that go on for? ID006: Umm … probably like a year.   […]   I still get anxiety attacks depending on where I am and what I am doing … something will trigger it and I’ll have a little panic attack. But yeah, I don’t always run a bong to fix it, you know. You can’t always do that, because I’m not always at home.

ID012 represents another example of a complex poly-victim who has adopted a disengagement coping strategy in response to a long history of trauma and AOD consumption. She is a poly-victim with a long history of sexual and physical assault. The extract below suggests that the interviewee, on reflection, sees her AOD consumption as an important coping mechanism to accomplish other life-important tasks such as schooling, training and eventually being employed in a stable position. I: And how did you cope with the stress? ID012: Drugs. I: What kind of drugs were you taking? ID012:  Street drugs, marijuana, magic mushrooms … whatever I could get my hands on. It was just so I didn’t feel anything anymore. Every day. Really, up until … umm … I went to … overseas in 1978, and I got very sick overseas and so sick in fact that I couldn’t use drugs anymore … or drink. I caught some cholera … so I was so sick that I couldn’t use drugs or alcohol for quite some time. So that was a period of time that I couldn’t use … I just couldn’t do it. And ah, but eventually once I’d recovered somewhat, I started using again but

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not quite to the same extent. Except until the final exams came and I started using heroin… I: So what happened next? ID012:  I tried to commit suicide, and ended up in Hillcrest [hospital] for just a short time, a few days … and ah, but then the heroin was out of my life at that stage and so I eventually just went back to marijuana and stuff like that I could cope with. But that was my second time with heroin addiction, because when I was in Melbourne at the university and arts school I got an addiction then. I: So what is your understanding of self-medication? Why were you doing it? ID012: Blocking out … just forgetting … pretending that it didn’t happen. I: And did it work for you? ID012:  It did. Otherwise I couldn’t have studied … I couldn’t have … like, I started working in the public service in ’83, and I couldn’t have done that otherwise. I: And so when you were out of the drugs, how did you cope then? ID012: I was never out of the drugs, except heroin, I depended on somebody else for heroin. I: So you never used prescribed drugs? ID012: Oh yeah, I used prescribed drugs [too].

In the above cases, the victims see the purpose of AOD consumption as either to block memories or to achieve short-term and, in some cases, long-terms goals. Since ‘disengagement coping’ involves disconnecting the individual from the victimisation, self-medication plays a complex role within an unfolding victim-survivor narrative. In this context, self-medication acts as dulling or deferring tool that may be utilised to the advantage of the user. For poly-victims, as we have seen above, self-medication as a form of avoidance or detachment has played role in adopting and negotiating a survivor identity (Jordan 2013). Therefore, how an individual responds to trauma is linked to a unique life trajectory. In reference to ID012, for example, a comment made by a counsellor in the regional focus group helps with understanding that, even in the most distressing situations, AOD substances can function as a surviving mechanism and help the user to achieve certain goals:

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FG2 VSS005:  I think that there are also other clients that see their, let’s say, for example, alcohol use, as a surviving mechanism as well. So [they] actually see their recovery as quite positive. And the use of alcohol is actually part of what they do to survive. You know, so the recognition around what they might be doing isn’t necessarily an unhelpful coping mechanism but it’s what I actually what I need to do to actually make sure I get up tomorrow or make sure I survive the next week or, you know, have different kinds of lenses on what that means.

This aligns with the opinion of most of the counsellors in both focus groups. Counsellors were asked to reflect on the prevalence of AOD consumption as a coping mechanism, based on their professional experience and observations. The responses below refer to AOD as a memory-blocking mechanism as well as a way to cope in the short or long term: FG1 VSS008:  I think it’s really dependent on the crime. So, like, you were saying about recent homicide, those people are supported and told about all the different services they can access pretty much from the get-go. When you’ve got adult [survivors] of child sexual abuse, they’ve been dealing with the shame and the guilt and the embarrassment for so many years. And, they’ve tried to find a way to get through each day, let alone get through those years, that maybe some of that shame and guilt comes up in them not being able to disclose what [AOD] they’ve been taking because they haven’t known the supports to access, there’s … and they’ve lived a lot longer trying to … holding all that trauma with them. I think it really depends on the type of crime that someone’s experienced as to whether they’re blocking stuff out or coping day to day. FG2 VSS003:  To me it’s coping, and I find that some of them use it to escape the memories, you know, of the trauma and abuse. FG2 VSS001:  I have had a client who, um, avoids … she self-medicates otherwise, because alcohol would actually relax some of those barriers she had put up, and she could actually remember a lot of the child sexual abuse she endured.

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In the second focus group (regional), it was also pointed out that AOD consumption may be more prevalent at risk times, for example when the court hearing was approaching, allowing the victim to cope with the hard times: FG2 VSS004:  And I guess for me, it’s about how it [AOD] affects their [victims’] ability to function. At times it can vary depending on what’s happening in their life. Particularly if it’s leading up to criminal justice, which I’ve just had an example of—a trial. A lot of people find that their coping around that time is, um, a risk time for them. So there may be additional self-medication that’s happening. If it’s certainly ongoing and spiralling out of control and they’re not able to control what’s happen[ing] I refer them to a DASSA [Drug and Alcohol Services South Australia] nurse that we have here in [mentions region] or another program.   […] FG2 VSS004:  I can use a current client as an example that I’ve worked with on and off for a couple of years. She had quite a few suicidal attempts and she was admitted and detained and worked with several professionals and continued to seek some support here. Also leading up to the trial we have … we’ve done preparation for court and those sorts of things, but she has made quite a deal of progress in that time, but as I’ve said, if something happens in the process where perhaps the perpetrator is not been [found] guilty, and there’s that feeling of not being believed and self-loathing that she has about herself, she returns to self-medicating. But having said that, she has come a long way with that, and is seeking medication with the DASSA worker. And was quite positive about going to court, even come to the point where she’s forgiven the perpetrator. However, now that she’s down there and given evidence now it’s cross-examination and she’s not coping at all. Because it, again, brings up those thoughts and beliefs about not being believed. Just a reliving and disassociating in court when she’s being cross-examined, and just feeling very, very vulnerable. So I guess it just depends on what’s happening in their life at the time. And total lack of support in any other form from this particular person, which I think just with the adult survivors, I’ve noticed with most of them that I’ve worked with in experience in this job is isolation and lack of other substantial support from family or friends.

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Still, it emerged that most of the counsellors expressed the view that self-medication does not help with the shift from a disengagement coping mechanism to an engagement coping mechanism, as is evident in the extract below: FG2 VSS006: I can’t think of any person that I have supported that has shifted from victimised mentality into survivor mentality. That it’s always remaining one or the other. And as a very, very generalised observation that the, um, self-medicating tends to fall under the category of the people that are holding onto, you know, seeing the world through that victimised mentality and not so much the survivor mentality. That could be quite an overgeneralisation, but reflecting on some of the clients that I can think of, [who] do self-medicate and their mindset, it’s very much still in the victimised mentality.

Nevertheless, the situation may change according to a number of variables (including type of crime, personality, validation and network) as highlighted by the counsellor below: FG2 VSS004:  I think the clients with complex trauma certainly seem to have more … self-medicating … Although it’s hard to say. It depends. You can have a client come in, depending on their background and their ability to cope or function, with less complex trauma, and isn’t as great as those with complex [pause] … I don’t know, I don’t see anything there that in my experience can indicate that one is more than the other—if that makes sense. But there are certainly, in terms of patterns of behaviour, those risk times when something’s happening, particularly in the criminal justice system, for instance, or an adult survivor of sexual assault, when court’s approaching or the perpetrator may be going to be arrested. Those risk times can affect their ability to function. Which has just happened with one client over the last week. She’s at court at the moment, but she has been detained because she was going to self-medicate overnight, and suicidal ideation because she didn’t think she could continue but um … So I think, other than that, leading up to that time she had been doing really well. And when she decided that there was an issue and that she wanted to start drinking again and the trial approached, she was referred to a professional to help with that, so we work in conjunction with that other professional.

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This extract suggests that the provision of support to victims during risk times represents the way forward to reduce self-medication and support the stability of the victim-survivor mentality.

Conclusion This chapter has examined engagement and disengagement coping strategies, and applied it to the context of self-medication. From analysis of the findings of our interviews with victims and counsellors, it emerged that self-medication is a dulling and deferring tool that may be used to achieve short term and long term goals. All the interviewed victims have developed individual and social defence strategies to deal with the trauma they have experienced and their everyday routine. However, some have adopted avoidance coping mechanisms, which includes AOD consumption. In these disengagement coping scenarios, self-medication often—but not always—plays a significant role in preventing the victim narrative being transformed into a survivor narrative. As expected, each situation has its own complexities and each individual responds in line with their age, sex, life experience and validation through their network. As it emerged in our studies, the presence of a suitable listener which can offer validation of the victim’s experience and narrative, is a point worth of further consideration. The next chapter looks at support in more detail.

Notes 1. This terminology is explained in Chapters 1 and 2. Simple victimisation is a one-off incidence of crime, simple poly-victimisation is a repeat and different victimisation, and complex poly-victimisation is a repeat and different victimisation with historical ramifications. 2. ‘FG1’ refers to Focus Group 1 and ‘FG2’ refers to Focus Group 2.

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References Cole, A. (2007). The cult of true victimhood: From the war on welfare to the war on terror. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fassin, D. (2012). Humanitarian reason. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California. Flynn, A., & Graham, K. (2010). “Why did it happen?” A review and conceptual framework for research on perpetrators’ and victims’ explanations for intimate partner violence. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 15, 239–251. Frieze, I. H., Hymer, S., & Greenberg, M. (1987). Describing the crime victim: Psychological reactions to victimization. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 18(4), 299–315. Garland, D. (2001). Culture of control: Crime and social order in contemporary society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Green, D. L., & Roberts, A. R. (2008). Helping victims of violent crime: Assessment, treatment and evidence based practice. New York: Springer. Guggisberg, M. (2010). An exploratory study of the association between intimate partner male-to-female violence, mental health problems and substance use among victimised women. Ph.D. thesis, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. Gutner, C. A., Rizvi, S. L., Monson, C. M., & Resick, P. A. (2006). Changes in coping strategies, relationship to the perpetrator, and posttraumatic distress in female crime victims. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 19(6), 813–823. Hall, D., & Queener, J. (2011). Self-medication hypothesis of substance use: Testing Khantzian’s updated theory. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 39(2), 151–158. Iverson, K. M., Litwack, S. D., Pineles, S. L., Suvak, M. K., Vaughn, R. A., & Resick, P. A. (2013). Predictors of intimate partner violence revictimization: The relative impact of distinct PTSD symptoms, dissociation, and coping strategies. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 26(1), 102–110. Jordan, J. (2013). From victim to survivor-and from survivor to victim: Reconceptualising the survivor journey. Sexual Abuse in Australia and New Zealand, 5(2), 48–56. Khantzian, E. (2003). The self-medication hypothesis revisited: The dually diagnosed patient. Primary Psychiatry, 10(9), 47–54. Khantzian, E. (2009). The self-medication hypothesis of substance use disorders: A reconsideration and recent applications. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 4(5), 231–244.

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Lazarus, R. S. (2006). Emotions and interpersonal relationships: Toward a person-centered conceptualization of emotions and coping. Journal of Personality, 74(1), 9–46. Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1987). Transactional theory and research on emotions and coping. European Journal of Personality, 1(3), Special issue, 141–169. Mitchell, R. E., & Hodson, C. A. (1983). Coping with domestic violence: Social support and psychological health among battered women. American Journal of Community Psychology, 11, 629–654. Morrison, B., Doucet, C., Thomas, B., & Peterson, P. (2011). Practice-based perspectives: Victimization and substance use. Victims of Crime Research Digest, 4, 15–21. Parker, J. D. A., & Endler, N. S. (1992). Coping with coping assessment: A critical review. European Journal of Personality, 6, 321–344. Smith, P. (2017). A qualitative examination of the self-medicating hypothesis among female juvenile offenders. Women & Criminal Justice, 1–18. https:// doi.org/10.1080/08974454.2017.1377673. Ullman, S. E., Relyea, M., Peter-Hagene, L., & Vasquez, A. L. (2013). Trauma histories, substance use coping, PTSD, and problem substance use among sexual assault victims. Addictive Behaviors, 38(6), 2219–2223. Walklate, S. (2007). Introduction and overview. In S. Walklate (Ed.), Handbook of victims and victimology (pp. 1–10). Cullompton: Willan. Weiss, R., Griffin, M., & Mirin, S. (2009). Drug abuse as self-medication for depression: An empirical study. The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 18(2), 121–129. Wilson, D. R., Vidal, B., Wilson, W. A., & Salyer, S. L. (2012). Overcoming sequelae of childhood sexual abuse with stress management. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 19(7), 587–593.

4 Validation—Informal and Formal Support in Narratives of Recovery

Introduction As a result of experiencing a traumatic incident, a victim’s perception of self undergoes a process of significant and ongoing transformation, which is influenced by many factors, both internal and external. The potential loss of trust and faith in others—including those in one’s closer social circle as well as people in the wider society—is one of the key direct effects of victimisation, as identified by Shapland and Hall (2007, p. 178), together with other consequences such as the emotional impact (for example, fear, anger and depression) and changes to one’s lifestyle and routine aimed at avoiding or minimising further victimisation. Therefore, the presence of others in the victim’s life becomes a central point of reference, and the type of support they receive—and how such support is perceived—is crucial to the development of the victim’s recovery narrative. This chapter engages with the validation that stems from a victim’s relationships with others in the context of both formal and informal networks. The chapter understands informal and formal support, respectively, as support received from the inner circle of family © The Author(s) 2018 W. de Lint and M. Marmo, Narrating Injustice Survival, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93494-5_4

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and friends and that provided by agencies, such as police, health and counselling providers, and victim support services. Interaction with other parties becomes of symbolic importance to the victim in that their status can be approved, denied, possibly reoriented and reorganised according to the victim’s experience of the collective, or endorsed through criminal justice proceedings, counselling therapy and other encounters. Seeking validation and a recovery narrative is often a lonely journey, even in the context of encounters with others of a formal or informal nature, but being listened to is a validating experience that helps the victim to establish a recovery narrative. There is consensus in the literature that finding a recovery narrative is a constructive step towards incorporating and assimilating the victim’s traumatic experience into their life and routine, as it helps the victim to reflect on and shape their identity and has a positive impact on their mental health (Androff 2012; Barnes 2013; Frieze et al. 1987). This ‘realigning of the self ’ (Abrahams 2007) is considered crucial for dealing with the trauma, processing the facts and emotions related to the trauma, and potentially finding a way to move forward. In such a process, having anyone to bear witness to one’s abuse and losses in a positive and constructive manner is necessary and therapeutic (Abrahams 2007). For the victim, finding one’s recovery narrative is different from giving testimony in support of the traditional aims of the criminal justice process (McGarry and Walklate 2015). Yet Wemmers (2009) refers to the expectations of recognition and validation that victims frequently have when entering the criminal justice system. This expectation of being offered a platform for reconciliation and therapy is in sharp contrast with the reality of the role of victims within the criminal justice process (Fenwick 1995; Kirchengast 2006; Doak 2008). Restorativebased interventions have sought to introduce a more meaningful experience of the criminal justice process for the victim (see, among others, O’Mahony and Doak 2017). Yet, despite the progress made in restorative justice, it remains challenging to reconcile the victim’s need for validation through a therapeutic experience. This is especially the case in the current socio-political environment where restorative justice has not managed to shift the focus of the neoliberal aims underpinning the criminal justice system: ‘as the demands of neo-liberalism have taken

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hold, so has the need to ensure that the legitimacy of, and support for, justice is maintained’ (McGarry and Walklate 2015, p. 140). In such a climate, the victim’s needs and expectations would still come second to the just-deserts and similar individual responsibility’s concepts rotating around the role of the offender. The first section sets up the basis for the discussion on formal and informal networks with reference to the findings of the survey. It moves on to discuss formal and informal networks in more detail using the interview and focus group results. Here we see that the victims’ expectations of validation through encounters with the police and other formal agencies of the criminal justice system are a tangible outcome of this study, as discussed in the second section of this chapter. In the third section, the discussion then considers the victim’s search for a recovery narrative through informal encounters. This chapter concludes with the finding that both formal and informal networks play a crucial role in supporting the victim’s incorporation of their trauma into their life and, potentially, achieving a form of recovery. The evidence collected in this study suggests that informal networks represent a more reliable and consistence source of support.

Formal and Informal Networks Developing one’s narrative is an important step in the victim’s journey towards an incorporation of the trauma into one’s life and possible recovery. The need for validation is a direct result of the feeling of violation caused by the traumatic experience with the perpetrator (Elliott et al. 2014). Feeling disempowered, disconnected and a lack of control over one’s own life and narrative is a potential consequence of a traumatic experience, and victims, through their narrative, often see themselves as objects of the perpetrator’s perspective, rather than active subject in shaping their life narrative. This can be so internalised that the vocabulary choice of the victims renders themselves a passive reference of the perpetrators’ ‘speech,’ removing themselves from being object of their own speech (Androff 2012; Bal et al. 1999). Grounding the self in the present and maintaining a routine are important steps

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in the process of recovery. The presence of a suitable listener—a person who is emotionally and attentively able to listen to the victim’s account of their trauma, and its impact on their mental and physical state—is also essential for the victim’s recovery. This is because one’s narrative has been broken and needs to find a way of restoring the personhood. Bal et al. (1999) talk about a ‘suitable listener’ as ideal for this constructive exchange. The ‘listener’ may belong to a social circle of family, friends or colleagues (an informal support network), or to an agency that provides support to the victim via a formal network, such as the police, courts, victim support agencies and health practitioners. The findings on validation offered by a suitable listener, whether via an informal or formal network, is a topic that has been addressed ambiguously in the literature, especially in reference to the benefits and consequences of validation for victims (Kunst et al. 2015), and is in clear need of further research. For the purposes of this research, we also aligned alcohol and other drug (AOD) consumption pre and post trauma with validation gained through support. The starting point was to consider whether there was a direct or indirect connection between any type of support and AOD consumption. In previous studies, it has been suggested that social support contributes in a positive way to reducing or delaying AOD consumption, rather than preventing it altogether (Danielson et al. 2006; Dore et al. 2012; Ullman 2003). This position provided a benchmark against which to test the collected empirical data. To explore and test the relationship between forms of support, the value of listening, and validation, the survey and interview questions were designed to elicit answers on these matters. In this section, the survey results are briefly outlined before a discussion of the interviewees’ responses is presented. According to the survey results, the vast majority of participants (81.4%) actively sought a form of assistance, with most of this group seeking a combination of informal and formal support. A small percentage of participants sought either only formal support (11.8%) or only informal support (3.9%), with a small number (2.9%) not seeking any type of support. The characteristics of the pool of support seekers cut across a number of variables (demographics, type of AOD and frequency of consumption, single or poly-victimisation) (see Fig. 4.1).

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any support sought

only formal support

only informal support

no support sought

Fig. 4.1  Support sought by victims

From among the participants who sought assistance emerged a positive perception overall of the type of support received, with informal support being assessed slightly more favourably (at 66.7%) than formal support (at 60.8%). The remaining participants within these two datasets offered a more fragmented view, depending on the type of support—a point that is significant in reflecting further on the determinants of validation. In the case of informal support, the remaining 33.3% of participants were split almost equally between reporting a negative experience (11.8%) and reporting mixed perceptions (11.8%), with 9.7% not responding. In terms of formal support, a higher number of remaining participants reported mixed perceptions of their experience (25.5%) or a negative experience (11.8%), with 1.9% not responding (see Fig. 4.2). The survey found a very low association (p > 0.05) between type of support, perception of support and level of AOD consumption. And this result cuts across demographic variables such as gender, ethnicity and level of education. This means that the survey instrument alone was not able to demonstrate that a more positive perception of support is associated with a lower or delayed level of AOD consumption, thus not supporting the initial hypothesis formulated for this research (see Chapter 2) based on the existing literature. The current literature

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Fig. 4.2  Perceived response to type of support

(Danielson et al. 2006; Dore et al. 2012; Ullman 2003) highlights the importance of social network in reducing, or delaying, the severity of AOD consumption. Therefore, some level of support may reduce the development of AOD habit, which, as we have discussed in Chapter 3, is linked to avoidance coping strategies (Ullman 2003). Our lack of statistically meaningful connection between type of support, perception of support and level of AOD does not deny the existence of an increase of self-medication after the crime. The survey demonstrates that more than half of the participants (55.9%) either began consuming AOD substances or increased their AOD consumption level after the trauma, while 40.2% did not change their consumption habits. Such behavioural changes were explored further in the interviews. This offered us an opportunity to explore the type and perception of support received to test in greater depth whether the presence of a network was a factor influencing the modification of behaviour.

Formal Support The presence or lack of formal support is important in terms of validating elements of the victim’s narrative. The potential for secondary victimisation is often raised in relation to the distress experienced by the

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victim as a result of their involvement in the criminal justice process. This does not refer only to the victim reliving their traumatic experience when offering an account of this experience in trials or police interviews. It also encompasses a broader sense of the victim being ‘let down’ by the authorities—for example, by not being treated sympathetically, kept informed or believed (McGarry and Walklate 2015). This ‘let-down feeling’ frequently remains a strong and significant experience for victims throughout this process and shapes the construction of their narrative. And it is not limited to encounters with criminal justice agencies but also with other organisations with which the victim meets in a formal setting, such as counselling and health practitioners and victim support agencies. The section will now consider the point of formal support through the interview and focus group findings. The interviewees’ reflections on their formal encounters are divided into subsections below according to the type of support received and their perception of it.

Police Encounters with the police were often discussed by the victims in the interviews, far more than were other criminal justice agencies, and predominantly in negative terms—with a number of exceptions (see section below on ‘Police strategies for validation’). For victims, the police represent the gateway to the criminal justice process, acting as a first point of contact—hence the prevalence of references to the police in this study. The interaction with the police is of particular importance in supporting or undermining a victim’s self-esteem post victimisation: trust in the police, feeling that one’s voice and contribution to the evidence are important, being reassured of protection and other key elements play an important part in shaping the recovery narrative of the victim (Elliott et al. 2014; McGarry and Walklate 2015). Therefore, the initial and subsequent encounters with the police may have a positive or negative impact on the victim’s mental health (Kunst et al. 2015). In the first instance, the negative perception of encounters is analysed as a potential source of anxiety or of the ‘let-down feeling’ referred to above. This can lead to a perception that ‘nothing is being done’ by the police, which was identified a number of times during the interviews.

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Often the perception that ‘nothing is being done’ is closely related to a feeling of not being taken seriously. The following extract from interviewee ID009 is an example of this. The victim, when lodging a complaint with the police, realised that the police were not taking any notes. At a later stage, when another incident of assault took place, the victim found out that no record of the first episode had been filed. At the end of the quote below, the interviewee reflects on the possible reasons why he was not taken seriously—specifically his AOD consumption: ID009:  I did ring the police and I spoke to them pretty well out in front of my house and they talked to me, but they didn’t write anything down, nothing was written down. Two guys talked to me, but they didn’t write anything down. I said that I reckon he had been waiting for me, and I’m pretty sure that he was … and they sort of nodded and asked, ‘What do you want us to do about it?’ And so I said that I want you to arrest him … and they said, ‘No worries,’ and off they went and I never heard another thing about it. Now, when this second bashing happened, I queried them about it. I asked whether they had a report from the first one and she said, ‘No, there’s no report,’ so obviously they didn’t put any paperwork in, they didn’t do anything … they just sat on their hands. In their defence, I suppose, in some way it’s because I told them at the time that I’ve had a skinful, I’m not sober or anything…

Another interviewee (ID005) was taken aback not just by the lack of support he received but also by the feeling that the police were condescending: ID005:  The police … yeah, the police were really gruff with me. I found them almost like it was my fault … They came and saw me there, and they came to my place, and they treated me like I deserved it.   […]   I did ring the police that one day actually, to find out if they had found the people … and they treated me kind of … offputtingly. I: Right, so you stopped of course, further…? ID005:  I just stopped [reaching out to the police] yeah, I just didn’t [sic] be bothered. Because, you know, there’s a part of you that wants to know that those people have been caught.

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The second focus group with Victim Support Services (VSS) regional counsellors offered an opportunity to explore the issue of the relationship between victims and the police, and counsellors reported observing that victims frequently have quite negative perceptions of the police and limited knowledge of the role of the police: FG21 VSS002: It’s really interesting when you look at the police, for example. So, some of the clients, particularly DV [domestic violence] clients, you are connected with the family violence officers and are getting quite a bit of significant support with that. But then there are sometimes clients who say, ‘The police aren’t doing anything,’ and often that is because they really don’t understand the role of the police and also, while the police might arrest someone it’s not up to them to keep them in jail, that’s actually the magistrate. Sometimes I’ve found that I’m successful in explaining that to a client. But sometimes, it’ll be madness, they’re not even listening, you know they’re so angry or whatever, or frustrated but it’s actually very difficult to provide that kind of psycho-education […] sorry more education about the criminal justice system.

This resonates with the victim’s experience cited in the following quote, which reveals the victim’s expectation that the police’s role, duties and general capability to investigate contrasts with reality, contributing significantly to the sense of being let down: I: And so the police came? ID006: Yeah, and basically nothing’s ever been done about it. I: Nothing has been done? ID006:  Oh, I got bashed outside a toilet block that had a camera outside it, but I found out that the camera is a dummy camera … so that’s no help to anybody. They jumped into a taxi … I gave them the taxi’s number and they couldn’t find them and so that was the end of that.

In another segment of the VSS Focus Group 2, the counsellors reflected on how they have observed an improvement in the way that victims are treated by the police in cases where the victim had been previously identified by the police as an offender.

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FG2 VSS003:  I feel from when I started with VSS some years ago now, the relationship having improved from the perspective of working with police. I used to find sometimes in the early days that, particularly if somebody had a little bit of a history with police in committing a crime and then they have become a victim, it doesn’t matter if it was domestic violence or some other crime, there was a little bit of stand-offishness from police. And perhaps that person wasn’t always treated the way they should have been treated, as a victim, because they had done something in the past. I feel that has improved over time.

In contrast to the evidence of the negative impact of interactions with the police on victims’ recovery narrative, there were a number of examples of positive perceptions of such interactions, revealed in the quotes below. ID002:  The police was more about getting as much information as they could, and they were supportive in the way that they had to be in doing their role, and there’s nothing to pick on in terms of their role, they were quite good. ID011:  The police were very good, they were supportive as much as they could be, you know, in major crimes the detectives that worked on the case … umm … they did what they could. You know, they said, ‘We’re here if you need us’ … but I managed. ID013:  Initially I found the police … were very supportive and interacted with me very well. Strangely enough, it was enjoyable—I felt that it was a positive experience, the support that I received from the police.

The police have long embraced positive interactions with victims as a strategy to validate victim experiences. According to the extant literature (Elliott et al. 2014; Ruback et al. 2014, p. 592), these police strategies for validation include the following practices: • acknowledgement of the wrong done to the victim • non-acceptance of the crime • non-blaming attitudes

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• relating to the victim as a person, independent of the case itself • empathic listening, allowing victims to express their emotions and share their story • taking action to repair the lost feeling of safety. As evidenced in the quotes above, a victim’s experience of police (dis) interest is linked to their perceived credibility as a witness. Although some police may be aware of and begin to adopt trauma-informed care protocols when interacting with victims, the therapeutic and criminal justice communities comprise distinct institutional knowledges and demands that do not perceive victim-complainants through the same institutional criteria. With regard to taking up the quest for justice/validation through police reporting while at the same time seeking to avoid secondary victimisation, there is an argument that this leads to the development of various adaptations, depending on whether there is first and foremost an acknowledgement that the wrong occurred and the victim suffered the harm. Police and prosecutors may not perceive the acknowledged event as a crime or that the victim complies with the preferred purity demanded by the adversarial system. Even where police and prosecutors decline to pursue a case and therefore have no need to instrumentalise the victim as a credible witness, the manner of their interaction with victims beyond that instrumentality counts a great deal to victims, as we and others have seen. Victims are acutely vulnerable as they report and recount, as they can either have their dignity buttressed or kicked out from under them (Elliott et al. 2014, p. 592; Ruback et al. 2014, p. 160). At the same time, policing is bifurcated between service and law enforcement, and subcultural preferences that police act as ‘crime fighters’ and not ‘social workers’ will sometimes work against their solicitousness towards traumatised victims (Chelimsky 1981, p. 86). Additionally, while many victims’ rights reforms have been underway since the 1980s, their implementation has been ‘uneven’ and many crime victims are still not treated with respect (Wemmers 2013, p. 9). Doak (2008) found that insensitive treatment was a structural problem caused by working cultures and perceptions that fail to acknowledge victims as having

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a prominent role in the justice system. Parsons and Bergin (2010) ­support this finding, claiming that the adversarial system has a focus on contest and outcome which allows for aggressive questioning, confronting the perpetrator and the imposition of victim blaming which targets their credibility and validity. Dunn (2010) similarly acknowledges this, suggesting that a possible way to safeguard the rights of victims and avoid secondary victimisation is to have as their first point of contact an agency whose primary focus is victim recovery, such as victim support services.

Criminal Justice System Overall Satisfaction with the justice system is another important element to be considered when understanding victim recovery narratives. Kunst et al. (2015) have identified the positive psychological impact on victims of their positive perceptions of procedural justice. In contrast, the criminal justice system can also cause further trauma, often referred to as secondary victimisation. This is at times associated with the way the adversarial system is organised, such that the credibility of the victim can be doubted by the prosecutors and defence lawyers, whose aim is to control the dialogues and the silences, for example what is given voice to and what is not, and to bring to the surface any inconsistencies in the witness’s account (Laxminarayan 2012). But the causes of such secondary victimisation are broader than this. Participation as a witness in a trial, as well as the nature of their interaction with judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and other parties, is also of great significance to the victim, because of their experience and perceptions of justice and its impact on further traumatisation. And the victim’s expectation of achieving satisfaction or justice is often misplaced in a criminal justice system that is organised around the defendant. Thus, procedural justice as it stands cannot adequately address the consequences of victimisation that the victim seeks to rectify. Victim recovery is often bypassed in the justice process, where the expectations of the victim are modified, minimised and neutralised. In this regard, Parsons and Bergin (2010, p. 184) have categorised dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system into a number of elements:

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• disappointment with minimal civil settlements, especially among ­victims of domestic violence • disappointment in not receiving an apology • misunderstanding of the role of the defence lawyer as a victim’s advocate, in the same way that the prosecutor advocates for the accused • confusion about the external factors that may lead a case to be dropped or settled, such as excessive caseloads or performance targets. A number of interviewees expressed their dissatisfaction with how their case had been handled (ID005, ID001, ID006, ID009), or how their expectation of procedural justice was not met by the reality of their experience. Interviewee ID005 summarised this point in the following extract: ID005:  So, as happy as I was that it was over, I felt a bit ripped off … by the system. I wasn’t angry, I was just glad that it was over. But I was angry in a way that I didn’t get what I should’ve got. I: Did you feel disenfranchised with … ? ID005: Absolutely… I: … with the police, with the courts… ? ID005: Totally… I: …with the lawyers? ID005: Totally. Especially my lawyer. My lawyer acted like a lawyer should. Which is cold and to the point, and that’s fair enough. But, once we were in the … it didn’t happen in court it happened out of court. And it was between … and a room very similar to here, a boardroom. And it started off with my lawyer and their lawyer talking about the party they went to last night … all best friends.

Another interviewee reflected on the lenient treatment their former partner received from the criminal justice system after she stabbed him, in relation to conflict over the custody of their child. ID001:  It’s been really sad actually, going back to the magistrate … yeah the magistrate has allowed her to go to Melbourne with her sisters, allowed her to go to Queensland for two weeks … I’m sure if I did this [stabbing], I’d be incarcerated and I wouldn’t have made it even to home, and I wouldn’t have been allowed to leave the state at all.

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[…]   Y  eah, and the police apologised, they said, ‘Look, you’re the victim twice in the space of a month because you were attacked and then you had to fight to get your child back’ … it was weird, because my son … obviously ‘nanna’ looked after my son, which is fine because my mum was looking after me as I was in hospital and so it is still ‘nanna,’ but then it was like, ‘Can I have him back?’ And it was like, ‘Oh, no … you don’t have the paperwork’ … Sorry, what? And so my son was then given to his aunty for care and was released to his mum, but they were told that they can’t spend time together … but they were all living in the same house. This is how things fly, and so that’s why I scratch my head and wonder how the Magistrates’ Court fall down. I mean, I’ve got multiple examples of this … it’s the equality between men and women, I mean if I did what she did, there’s no way that I would make bail … no way I would have been out for this long, waiting for my trial.

Interviewee ID009 commented on how he felt forced into providing a victim impact statement, with which he was dissatisfied, as well as the lack of opportunity he was given to be present at the trial and to hear the sentencing stage. ID009:  They made me do this … well, they didn’t have my arm behind my back, but they made me do this victim impact statement. So, I don’t know whether it … I mean, I’ve gone back and read it again and it doesn’t read that well.   […]    I would have loved to have been there when he got sentenced. I would have been in the court, I would have sat right there. I wouldn’t have said anything, but just to be there … but they didn’t give me that opportunity. They never said that they think he’s pleading guilty and that he’s coming to court on this day.

Social Workers and Victim Support Services Social workers represent a significant mechanism for providing support to individuals facing challenges in their lives that impact on their

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wellbeing. However, the extant literature points out that some victims experience a degree of distrust and/or dissatisfaction in response to the selective manner in which social workers offer support, thereby demonstrating how social workers may either approve or disapprove of a victim’s choices. This inevitably has repercussions for how much or little social workers support and encourage identity management, impacting the actual victims’ validation and recovery (Barnes 2013; Keeling and van Wormer 2012). Keeling and van Wormer (2012), in their analysis of victims of domestic violence who have children, highlight how distrust in social workers linked to a fear of child removal means that there is often not a full disclosure of the abuse. This results in resentment towards a system that is in theory supposed to help the victim but in reality exacerbates the victim’s sense of powerlessness. Only where social workers approve of the victim’s goals is there evidence of a more positive association with this institution (Barnes 2013). In this regard, it should be noted that the observations on social workers provided by our interviewees was mostly about social workers from victim support agencies, such as our research partner VSS. Victims are often uncertain as to whether they want a more structured form of support and, indeed, are ambivalent about whether they need any type of formal support at all—as indicated in the following extract: ID002:  I was seeking victim support … I don’t [know] whether I felt I needed to or it was about knowing that there was support out there and I didn’t know what was going to happen and so I think it was a mixture of that. I didn’t really feel as though I needed it … I mean, one part of me said I really don’t need to and the other part said don’t be so bloody-minded, you should.

Going to a victim support agency is often the first, difficult step towards regaining one’s recovery narrative, insofar as the victim has acknowledged that they have to face the impact of the trauma. At times in our research, the ‘reward’ of challenging one’s own narrative by taking this first step and thereby pushing one’s boundaries was highlighted in the following interviewee’s self-assessment:

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ID007: It was because of the murder, she [the wife] came [to VSS] because of the murder. And, it helped her and she … it was nearly a year after the murder that she said, ‘Look, go see them.’ And I did, I came to see the Victims of Crime [VSS] and talked about what happened and stuff like that, and I found out that I did have a problem. And since then, I’m back to my regular one drink a week and that’s it. If we go out I might have a couple on the weekend, but we very rarely go out so…   […] I: So what changes have you noticed with that [going to VSS]? ID007: Oh, a lot. I’ve noticed that life is really … like, I’ve really opened myself up, I see more of my wife, I can do more. I’m not as reclusive as I used to be and with having young Jasper with us, it has really turned my life around. If this hadn’t happened, I probably would have ended up worse, so in one respect that this has helped me, but it has really—at the time—it has put a dampener on my life and sometimes I wish that I was dead because of this. In the few months after the funeral I kept asking, ‘Why wasn’t it me?’ I wished it was me … I wished I was dead … and that was one of the things that my wife didn’t like and that’s why she was telling me to come and see counsellors and stuff like that. Because, that was the only thing that I had on my mind—I wished that I was dead. But since coming to Victims of Crime [VSS] I don’t think like that anymore.

For some, a victim support service was seen as the only available option, as discussed by interviewee ID012: ID012: This is what’s happened to other women too, because my department was … well, there weren’t too many women in my department … mainly males. Certainly all of the senior positions were males, and nothing has changed. And ah … they offered him counselling, and left me to just … so in the end I came to the Victims of Crime service. I didn’t know what else to do.

In another case, an interviewee reflected on how they would have liked to receive support but that they were not classified as a ‘victim’ a few decades back, when the crime occurred:

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ID011: What happened was that, at the time, it was 1983 … the Victims of Crime had just formed and a lady by the name of [removed], whose daughter was a murder victim, she came to the house but it was to support my sister and brother-in-law, so, no, there was no great support … no specific support for me.

Building trust and a reliable relationship seems to be a crucial element in enabling recovery. One interviewee talked about the positive impact of social workers, one in particular: ID012:  They were good, especially one of the social workers … [name] … she was great. She was only trained as a social worker, but she was great. […] they loved having [name] coming to them because they didn’t have to train her, because she instinctively knew what to do.

This account contrasts with that of interviewee ID015, who did not trust any sort of service for many years: ID015: I didn’t trust the services, I didn’t trust the services because I thought the services were fronts for paedophiles and abusers to hide behind whereas now, with a bit more of a broader understanding of the world and the unfortunate reality that I entered a systemically abusive organisation and that’s not necessarily the people within it.

These two opposing perspectives were explained by a counsellor from Focus Group 2 as interconnected: FG2 VSS004:  I guess, um you know, it depends on the nature of the crime versus whether they are able to or want to interact with other services. For instance, with adult survivors of child sexual assault and Royal Commission [into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse] clients, a lot of them, especially if they’re older, it’s been living a lifetime of hoarding a secret of not being believed, and why would services believe them at that point. So they won’t share because there’s the shame and self-loathing and all that versus … an elderly man that I saw recently, in his mid-eighties, who had a trauma in his home and again it’s that generational ability to cope. You know, just different

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coping mechanisms and different crimes, where he didn’t really have an issue connecting [with a support service], did what he needed to do and off he went. And he [is] very well connected within his community and support groups, and neighbours and friendships, compared to the CSA [child sexual assault] crimes that are very isolated and are afraid perhaps that they won’t be believed … Until they connect in and, you know, realise that, you know … there is support.

Counselling and Mental Health Practitioners Taking up and participating in constructive counselling and other mental health therapeutic sessions is important for victim recovery (Campbell et al. 1999), such that a positive client–therapist relationship can have a positive impact on the victim’s recovery narrative. A number of interviewees talked quite positively about their experience with GPs, psychologists, counsellors and other therapists (ID0012: ‘he [the GP] was really supportive’; ID013: ‘I’m seeing a psychologist there, and a podiatrist and a GP. So I go there regularly, yes’; ID007: ‘Yeah, the counsellor from here [VSS], she was always helpful, very helpful’). A counsellor from Focus Group 2 similarly commented: FG2 VSS002: With regard to GP and health providers some of them seem to have quite good relationships with them, some of them will be seeing a doctor, you know reasonably regularly. Some of them might get a mental health plan [and] pursue that. [One of my clients] was seeing a regular psychologist, she just started that, so that was a really positive thing about exploring what had happened to her. So every client as we know, is different, you know in terms of their experience.

Counsellors in Focus Group 1 had an opportunity to reflect on what aspect of their dealings and exchanges with clients may have a more positive impact on in terms of transforming the victim’s narrative. One counsellor referred to the challenging but necessary step of disentangling from the discourse of shame and guilt:

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FG1 VSS007: When I’m working with people who are talking about shame and guilt, […] probably the most powerful movement I reckon, in the work I do with a client, is starting to disentangle from that shame. When you can disentangle from that shame and start and start to, um, feel like you don’t have a sign on you that says, come over here and do something horrible to me, um, that really changes someone’s ability to kind of move through the world, how they see themselves. Um, and that can be really tricky and really difficult and sometimes that can be, um, as hard as the actual trauma itself. Like moving away from that identity can be really, really difficult. So focusing on values and being able to relate with yourself differently is really important.

This resonates with the experience of interviewee ID005: I felt stronger and stronger as I went along [with the counselling sessions], and more relaxed. And I felt like … I could let myself feel victimised. I could let myself feel sad. I could let myself feel angry. Instead of just being a slave to them. Which was a great power to get. And to relax, it taught me how to relax … which was the major deal. And if I didn’t get that I don’t think I’d have coped with it, I still think I’d be sitting at home now. And would have gone through a year of school, of uni. But um, if it wasn’t for here I think my uni[versity] studies would have gone right down.

An issue highlighted by VSS counsellors in rural South Australia is the inability to have face-to-face sessions with clients and having to use the phone instead. Trust can be difficult to establish and develop further in this context, where communication is limited by logistics, as explained by a counsellor from Focus Group 2: FG2 VSS004:  Our region doesn’t have any public transport at all. The distance between some of our towns can be up to an hour. So if they don’t have their own mode of transport it’s really difficult to access some services that don’t attend each of the major towns. They’re set quite a distance apart and there are five of them, with lots of little ones in between. With lack of public transport, that can be an issue. However, a lot of services, like as our self, we do phone work. I know it’s not always ideal, but that can be arranged.

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Continuity of service provided is directly linked to these geographic constraints, with the majority of clients seeing the VSS counsellors only a few times and for limited tasks, as highlighted by a counsellor from Focus Group 2: FG2 VSS006:  I guess [the number of visits] varies on what we’re tasked for, um, per individual client because as regional workers we work across all the programmes of Victim Support Service, so we, um, provide support for someone who is writing their victim impact statement or going to court, or provide that supportive counselling. There’s quite a range of different things that we do. We might only be tasked to see someone under one capacity, doing a victim impact statement or something like that, and only see them for one, two, three times, um, whereas others we might on occasion see over a few months, it varies. I can say that I’ve only had one or two that I’ve seen over a good, you know regularly, for almost a year I think. I’ve only had one that has been that long-term, the rest maximum of a couple of months. The majority, just a few visits.

The interviewee quoted below reflected on their counselling sessions and his own passive-aggressive resistance towards them, which persisted until ‘it finally clicked’ with the realisation that owning a narrative is not about accepting responsibility for the traumatic events. This person also talked of the positive impact of formal support in terms of taking up or modifying AOD consumption, and clearly saw a direct connection between the two. ID014:  I’m glad I didn’t use drugs. I’m really, really, really glad I pushed through and found a counsellor that spoke to me. And it was weeks and months even before I actually understood what he was saying, it was just him saying do this and I was like ‘that’s fucking dumb’ and then one day it just all clicked and it was like this massive shift in my internal dialogue instantly that allowed me to actually not be a victim of the world and to just be okay. And to take accountability for my part in the trauma without taking responsibility for the trauma, just accountability for my part and my choices and how they impact what happens to me.

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However, distrust in and denial of therapists’ capacity, skills and ­general outreach abilities were raised as an issue in some of the interviews (ID010, ID011, ID012): ID010:  So, I got through … I managed to get through it all, mostly by myself. I have seen therapists since I was twenty, but actually most of them have caused more harm than good, to be honest. Because I’ve found that a lot of therapists have their own issues that they haven’t healed from and they end up messing up other people’s lives.   […]   I know I sound negative about counsellors but I’ve had a lot of problems with them too, so I start thinking … I get this from everywhere, so what is wrong with me? The way some of them have treated me hasn’t been good, like the main issue … they don’t like you talking about that because I think they don’t want you to get upset. They don’t want you to get upset, well that’s what has been explained to me. And I rang the Brisbane Rape and Crisis Centre and I also realised … and I am seeing a counsellor now, she’s an adoption counsellor and she’s a lot younger than me, but I think I overload her sometimes. I chat to her like I am chatting to a friend … I don’t have friends, but I have a woman who belongs. ID0011:  Well I did go to a psychologist. What happened was that when the court hearings started, it was very much about the gay scene in Adelaide and the underground gay scene in Adelaide I should say, and I was very affected by that. So I went to a psychologist at the suggestion of somebody—I can’t remember who, but they said perhaps you need to talk to somebody about this—and he was quite gay, and I found that after two sessions I didn’t want to talk to him. I: So, you never sought…? ID012: I can’t deal with it. I:  Have you ever talked with a specialist, like a counsellor or a psychologist? ID012:  Yes, but I can’t deal with that. And even with what happened at work … I couldn’t give them any details.

In Focus Group 2, a counsellor observed how refusal of help—which can be linked to denial or lack of trust—may be based in generational differences:

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FG2 VSS006:  There are a lot of victims who might not be linked to a counsellor or GP or … you can see they may very well benefit with long-term therapeutic assistance but are coming to the service and have the mindset of ‘I’m strong, I can handle it on my own. I’m strong. I can do this.’ And perceive accessing regular ongoing counselling support as being a, um, a weakness. That’s something that I’ve observed particularly in, um, generations that are thirty upwards. Whereas, this could just be my perception, but younger generations are more willing to talk or seek help.

Further, some counsellors reported that at times health providers are unable to understand victims and are ‘not getting the trauma.’ As one commented: FG2 VSS003:  Some GPs do seem to get trauma, some don’t. I was just thinking of a man, a recent Royal Commission [into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse] client; it was actually his partner who had her own experience with childhood sexual abuse. He started to recognise, ‘Hang on I think my partner was abused as a child.’ Um, so that enabled him to disclose. So after some time of going to the doctor and then being able to talk to the doctor about his experiences because he had been having support from his new partner, the GP actually said, ‘That explains a lot of things about what I’ve seen in the past with your physical and emotional health.’ There’s another Royal Commission client who went to the mental health service, he said, ‘They didn’t understand me, they couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’ He went across town to a mental health unit and spoke to a psychologist who hadn’t even heard of child sexual abuse. And he actually felt that he had to become protective towards that psychologist, you know, [and the client said the following:] ‘You know I think it was just the culture that he come from.’ Um so in this day and age that was a little bit of a concern. And I find if clients’ relationships with other agencies they’ve been in contact, once again that can be a little bit of a mixed bag as well. I think we all engage with people we feel a certain connectedness to. I think if clients come in contact with people, you know, that first appointment is really important because it’s about how you engage the client. If they feel, ‘Oh okay, this person is believing me, they’ve got some understanding of what I’ve been through,’ it

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lays a really good foundation of how things are going to progress. But if they find that there is a little bit of, perhaps, lack of understanding or uncertainty then that actually puts them on the back foot.

In some cases, GPs prescribing sleeping pills in response to a victim’s disclosure of their trauma was noted by counsellors. This was also a result of our survey, whereby the most significant AOD increase after victimisation was in relation to doctor-prescribed medication, with more than half of the sample reporting use. The counsellors reflected on the reluctance of victims to take up prescribed drugs because they were already self-medicating with other substances to include tobacco. Also, in some cases, the victim displayed awareness that prescribed drugs may link to further self-medication and additivity. As one counsellor observed: FG2 VSS001:  If clients do go and see their doctor within a week of the crime occurring, I do find the first thing they are prescribed with are sleeping pills. And whether that leads to an increase in self-medication and things like that I’m not sure. But it is a very general thing that doctors do in my experience.   My experience in particular with doctor-prescribed medication with … I find a lot of the clients that I see, especially with the sleeping tablets … I’ve come across so many clients that are reluctant or refusing to take them, um, because of the addictive concern. So I found that interesting, that even clients who would self-medicate with cannabis or cigarettes, but refuse to take the sleeping tablets that they’ve been prescribed.

In this vein, some of the counsellors reported a similar experience: FG2 VSS003:  Yeah, I’d agree with that from my experience as well. It’s that reluctance to take the medication that has been prescribed from the doctor because they’re concerned that they will get used to it, get addicted to it. But yes, on the first time they’re quite okay to use some cannabis or alcohol. FG2 VSS004:  I usually find the reluctance more on males than females and the cannabis use is probably more evident with males. Not saying it’s not with females, but that seems to be their mode of coping.

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Informal Support Validation and support provided by informal networks play a crucial role in externalising the trauma in narrative therapy (Abrahams 2007; Androff 2012; Bal et al. 1999; Keeling and van Wormer 2012), especially when the victim first seeks help. In most of the cases collected for this study, informal support was the only type of support the victim sought for a long period of time. In this regard, acknowledgement of the crime and the harm done and community denunciation of the crime are important for the victim’s validation (Herman 2005). At times, community validation is perceived by the victim as the most important factor shaping their recovery (Herman 2005). This finding is echoed by Androff (2012), who refers to public acknowledgement of suffering as a key determinant of the success of narrative therapy, and cites other elements such as respectful listening and thoughtful questioning as necessary for creating a supportive environment in which the victim feels comfortable disclosing their trauma. A supportive and empathic audience is therefore a recurring theme in terms of its importance for external validation, and for the narration and reincorporation of the events in a validated version of them (Bal et al. 1999, p. 46). The presence of family and friends is therefore an important part of narrative therapy, such that those with a strong social network are more likely to progress further with recovery. Gutner et al. (2006) found that an increase in social support was correlated with a decrease in symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while social withdrawal was related to less improvement in PTSD symptomology. Herman (2005) discusses the importance of validation from family, especially when victims have been isolated from them, supporting a reconciliatory therapy with the aim to (re)build a level of trust among participants. This point resonates with the experience of a number of our interviewees. One referred to the strong support she received from friends and family: ID001: Umm … I’ve found that just talking about it a lot with my friends, like my friends never tell me how bad their day is because they know that they can never top mine, though I still listen to them

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of course, when they have a bad day … I’m not a tool about it or anything, but it’s just the whole thing that for a long time they never used to tell me how bad their days were going because they knew my situation. I: I guess that is one of the good things about having good friends, they can listen if you need? ID001:  Yeah, and to be fair, they wanted to hear about it as much as I needed to talk to them, because who knows somebody who died and came back and had all these wounds and the doctors cut through more nerves than she did … I’m not disabled, I’m up and around. I: You’ve listed a number of people, but is there one person would be your primary support? ID001:  I use to say my mum, but I don’t know if that’s the right answer because she gets … like, up until the event, she gets really emotional about it because I’m her only son and I get that, but I’d be telling her about stuff and she’d end up crying … And then I’d have to end up consoling my mum, like I had to do that when I was the one covered in staples and stitches and I had to console my mum.

Interviewee ID006 reflected on how her family had been a primary source of support for years: ID006:  Basically I was abused as a kid. You can go all the way back there if you like. I: So how long ago was that? Or what age were you? ID006:  Mmm … probably about thirteen. So that’s like thirty years ago [and told no one for a long time].   […] I: When you got your own place what happened, did you start working? ID006: I was actually a stay-at-home mum for eighteen years. I:  So your hubby was helping with the bills, and you’re still with that person? ID006: Yep. I: Well that sounds like somewhat of a positive outcome…? ID006:  Yeah, I’m very much for fighting for what is mine and my family, you know. I’ve done that my whole life—I’ve fought to keep my family there, like my family is just me, my hubby and my two kids, so that’s it.

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The following interviewee referred to his colleagues as a primary source of support and validation: ID005:  I’ve basically got rehabilitation about ‘91. I went back to work for television in ‘92. Which was actually fast I must say. Because the group I work with, I actually had a group to work with, we were touring comedy festivals around the world. And they were so good that they actually brought me back into their fold, because they knew I could do it. They were sick of hearing people say I’ll never be able to do anything, they knew I could, so I was very lucky to have them. So I was brought back onto television, I was brought back into touring overseas. So, I was thrown … thrown into it without thinking, which is the best way.

Another interviewee spoke of a past friendship and related events, and how ‘catching up’ could bring closeness and advance his recovery narrative: ID004:  An example of that is when I was a young, draftee cadet—I was probably in my late twenties—my supervisor, his son had just graduated from Duntroon as an officer and he had a cardiac myopathy or something and he passed away in his sleep. And, my boss never fully recovered but he recovered. And I empathised with him because my son had just been born before that, and as a father I empathised with him as best I could … but until you lose your own child it is not quite the same. And he must be in his late sixties now but it is in the back of my mind that I wouldn’t mind catching up with him, have a beer, and reminisce on the times when we were together and maybe share a tear together. And again, that’s just me working through as many facets of my experiences [before, during and after losing my daughter]. Because obviously there is some overlap there and I always admired him and respected him, and I think he would have been torn between being, I suppose, a little resentful of bringing it up so long after the fact, but also hopefully a little happy that I would regard him so highly that I would make that effort.

In some cases, the interviewees had first accessed informal support before choosing to seek out formal support:

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I: Ok, so can you talk a little about the fact that, right after the event, you received a lot of support from your girlfriend obviously, and you went to VSS … how long after the event did you wait to go to VSS? ID008:  Maybe nearly a year, I can’t remember. I think I sort of left it and I thought look, I was of the attitude that it’s all done now and there’s not much I can do, all I can do is try to do the best from here, recover and this and that. So I tried to stick with that attitude and didn’t really think that VSS could offer me much more than that. But after a while, I thought that the service is there, so I might as well go and see if I can get anything out of it, you know.

We encountered a similar pattern of behaviour in another interviewee: I: And as you say, it happened just before you came to VSS, so in many ways it [informal support] could have been a stepping stone? ID002: Yeah.

In other cases, it was the family members who encouraged the victim to seek formal support: ID007:  It was my wife—she told me, if I don’t get help, she’s going to leave me. And that was the crux of it, because I didn’t want my wife to leave and I still don’t want my wife to leave. That was the turning point … she said, ‘I’m going to leave you unless you see someone and stop, there’s help out there—get the help or I’ll leave you.’

Factors like the nature of the trauma experienced and the personality of the victim can also influence whether informal support is sought and to what extent. Jordan (2013) suggests that the victim may feel more at ease if the details of their trauma are discussed without family members being present in cases where there is a familial lack of understanding. In this regard, having someone to ‘bear witness’ to the trauma requires that the listener be adequate and suitable (Bal et al. 1999, p. 41). On this point, a counsellor from Focus Group 2 referred to informal support as a ‘mixed bag’:

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FG2 VSS003:  Um, I think what I found with clients, it’s a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to family and friends. What I find is if family and friends are supportive and recognise that a person has experienced a trauma then their recovery is much better. However, if, on the flipside, they have people around them such as family and friends who think, ‘Okay. This has happened. You’ve had your couple of weeks, it’s time to get over that and move on.’ Um, their recovery isn’t quite so good because they’re thinking, ‘Well, hello, but I’m not over it.’ So it’s very much that mixed bag with, um, family and friends.

Examples of the informal network not providing support to the victim were present in the interview findings, in cases where family and friends were ‘fed up’ by the victim’s perceived inability to recover from trauma: ID004:  Whereas, I think my wife—through [VSS]—went onto something about balloons … something where victims release a balloon every year or something … she got into that group, but to be honest, I’m not sure if she has recovered at all. From what the kids tell me, she can’t stop talking about it, to the point where they are a bit fed up about it.

This resonates with the long-time lack of familial support experienced by ID010, as outlined below. I:  Is it something that occurs quite frequently, or did it taper off as you got older and moved away from your family? ID010:  Unfortunately no, it still … because I’m still being victimised by family, even though my sister and brother and my dad’s dead now— he died when I was fifty-nine—but my mum has done some shocking stuff. I mean … even though I understand that some people won’t believe this, but my mother has actually rung up and left messages that you would think a male stalker would do. I don’t want to say the word, but it starts with ‘m’, and then there’s lots of heavy breathing blah, blah, blah. My own mother did that. And it’s caused havoc in the family because I told them and no one believed me of course, but I know it was mum. And she more or less admitted it to me anyway, because she has been on a lot of psych drugs for many years too,

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which has affected her brain and destroyed her health. Even when I was a child she was on psych drugs and yeah, I am really against them even though I know that they can help people.

Interviewee ID015 had no access to informal support in the immediate aftermath of the traumatic event: So where were we? Oh, the way in which my networks have changed, a lot of my friends used to drink with [me], we used to try and tell each other how sad our lives were, we didn’t really support each other […] heaps and heaps of friends, absolutely nobody knew anything about me or my life, and if they did it was me drunkenly disclosing it.

Similarly, in another case the traumatic experience led to the victim choosing to isolate themselves from family: ID013:  I still spend time regularly each day assessing in my mind what happened and why I have very little interaction with my family. I:  Is it your sense that other people are assessing that too? Do you think your family is assessing why they have such little interaction with you too? ID013: I would strongly suspect that. Since the assault upon me, I pretty much have zero contact with my two ex-partners, my four children and also since the assault, family members whom I have been close with throughout life have passed away. My grandmother passed away—this is all in the last few years—my mother passed away, my sister passed away, my brother passed away… I’m not trying to sound tragic but it is … a relevant coincidence, the timing, and it heightened all my resolve to establish myself in a new manner, living independently. I don’t leave my unit much so it’s quite a big deal that I’ve come here. I think I’ve become probably deliberately, content spending most of my time with myself, which in itself is a huge contrast to the way I lived, or the nature of my character and the way I lived prior to the assault. I was a very social and interactive person; I did a lot of public speaking in high schools about youth issues, relationship issues … now, I’m quite content not talking. I: Did you have friends at the time that you were assaulted?

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ID013: Yes, and again … for reasons unbeknown to me, I don’t now have what I would call friends or mates whom I can lean on.

The choice between accessing formal or informal support was non-existent for those who had no family and friends around the time of their traumatic experience, as evident in the case below. I: Did you have friends or did you have family…? ID012:  I had no one. I was in a psychiatric hospital because I tried to commit suicide, umm, and I had nothing. I: So when did you come out of the hospital? ID012:  About … I’m trying to remember … a couple of months after the rape … I just packed my bag, crossed the golf course and caught the train to Brisbane. I went to what I knew was a safe house … I absconded.

But building an informal support network over the years has paid off for interview ID012: So yeah, we went there because we were celebrating Irene’s Order of Australia medal and he was supplying champagne – and when I say that, it was Australian champagne – and I remember him saying that I couldn’t have it. It was ‘a lemonade for Pauline’ … and Mark seems to know now that I can’t drink alcohol without having to go into all of the gory details, so they protect me. And if I put my drink down somewhere at a party, they watch it, so my friends do look after me and they are very supportive of me going to AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] and NA [Narcotics Anonymous].

Reciprocities of Formal and Informal Support and Validation We have noted that validation is perhaps the most important step in victim recovery. In this section we probe this a little further by exploring recovery narratives as a response to a trauma that, from the subjective point of view of the victim, has not been properly validated through

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their networks. As noted above, an absence of formal validation is quite synonymous with the concept of secondary victimisation. Victims will seek validation from informal networks in the first instance, but where supportive significant others are unavailable and formal validation is also not forthcoming, the road to recovery may involve many adaptations of affirmation, including potentially destructive indulgences. As illustrated in a variety of criminological accounts, particularly between the 1950s and 1970s following Merton’s (1938) famous reconceptualisation of anomie and expressed in strain and social control theories (Nye 1958; Cloward and Ohlin 2013; Hirschi 2002), people cultivate or slip and slide (Matza 1967) into marginalised or outsider groups when they are unable (and in some cases unwilling) to bond (Hirschi 2002) with highly integrated (mainstream) social networks. A complex poly-victim we interviewed for this study told us how she used her experience to help an abusive boyfriend who had just killed a Sudanese immigrant with a pipe (according to his description), in the aftermath of memorialising what would have been the due date of her terminated pregnancy by him. She was sixteen, he twenty-four and seeing many other young girls at the time. They were watching the news accounts of the homicide and she became suspicious that he was involved. Her account was not completely consistent; it is accurate about the fact of the murder, but not necessarily the extent of her involvement. ID015:  He walked around it for ages, and then when I said it he was all like, ‘Who told you?!’ and I was like, ‘You’re telling me very clearly with your actions right now, with the shifty meet-up in a public place. “I’m in trouble.” You’ve made it pretty clear, you’re watching the news, it’s happening on the street you were living at, I’m just gonna say that you’ve gone and bashed this guy.’ So then I gave him all my money and my healthcare cards for his other girlfriend at the time, and started to talk him through, ‘What have you got on your clothes? What were you wearing on the day?’, ‘Everything, you’ve got to get rid of everything, all of it’ because my foster mum, when she became a drug addict, that involved a bunch of criminal people coming in and out of the house so I’ve got a bunch of experience. (Emphasis added)

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ID015’s use of ‘experience’ may be variously interpreted, but we offer the following reading. As we know, the criminal justice system operates to reify victims and constitute or construct them in opposition to offenders. This is because the drama or narrative of modern justice demands a contest between equal and opposing forces and is compromised where that contest and contrast is diminished or washed out. And, as we hinted above, for victim-survivors, reflexive engagement with the institutional conditions of criminal justice involves aligning with this narrative drama. Recalling what she did at the age of sixteen, having recently escaped a sexually and physically abusive stepfather and drug-addicted foster mother, ID015 showed no inclination to go to the police. In recounting the crime committed by her former boyfriend to the interviewer, ID015 reviews the problem in terms of informal ‘outsider’ justice. In this, she provides a straightforward narrative ‘truth.’ Reciprocal support is offered to those in her informal support network. As Edwin Sutherland claims (Sutherland and Cressey 1978, pp. 80–82), criminal behaviour is learned inclusive of motives, attitudes and specific techniques. It is in the form of knowhow drawn from insights and techniques cultivated, although not necessarily dependent upon, observations she made growing up with her foster mother. ID015 may well have wondered what sort of preparation she was being offered in witnessing how criminals undertake to avoid the police, but here she is confronted with a familiar routine or pattern whereby someone in her intimate network will benefit where an application of techniques to avoid the law may be offered and exploited. She was then sought by the police: ID015: Took them a day or two, then they arrested him. Then they started looking for me, ‘cause I was a witness, even though I wasn’t there for the actual crime, I was in the area constantly liaising and met up with [the perpetrators] before they fled. And his other girlfriend, who was I don’t know sixteen and I was fifteen at the time, and his other girlfriend had told the police, or I don’t know done something so they were looking for me. I lied in my statement, just lied, lied, lied, lied. And then I was eighteen, it was still on going, it hadn’t even gotten to court, and I was eighteen and I made a new statement that was a bit more truthful.

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For ID015, as for many witnesses confronted with the protocols of the criminal justice system, the naturalised position is that of the outsider. When many of one’s most significant authority figures in early childhood and the teen years have been compromised or corrupted in some way, it is likely that authority itself will be regarded with scepticism or even dread. During the data collection phase of this research, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was hearing witness testimony. The commission was established in no small part because there was evidence that across religious and residential childcare institutions there was a lack of diligence by authorities in following up on allegations of child sex abuse. Robert Fitzgerald, one of the commissioners, made the argument that the criminal justice system pendulum was still tilted in favour of alleged abusers and that, in 2018, it has ‘barely moved’ from the position it was in when the historical abuses the commission has heard were occurring (Australian Associated Press 2018, see also Royal Commission final report 2017). ID015 noted that paedophiles cluster around children in care because they are not well supported or credible as witnesses to abuse. ID015:  Yeah there was a lot of stuff with the people I was hanging out with, was sexually assaulted a lot and I was beat on a lot, and foster carers when you report enough stuff to Families SA, they give a light briefing to the carers to say ‘be careful of her because she’ll make sexual assault allegations you’ve gotta make sure you’re always above board with her’ which is sort of a good idea in theory but it just alerts every paedophile in the vicinity to your existence and that you’re not taken seriously. I: Really? ID015: Yeah. Absolutely. I:  So, are you saying that paedophiles are particularly clustered around girls in care? ID015: Absolutely. I: That’s sort of a prime target for them? ID015: Absolutely. You’ve got no family, no one to be accountable to, it’s an office of people who don’t have personal connections to you [Emphasis added], not only that but you’re usually already groomed, you’re already oversexualised, depending on the type of paedophile, because

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paedophiles aren’t just bad bogey men, creeping in corners, you’ve got people who are opportunistic who wouldn’t otherwise, you’ve got a fourteen-year-old girl coming at you saying, ‘No I really want your dick in my mouth’ you know then they sort of get into a situation they wouldn’t of [sic] otherwise engaged in, definitely wouldn’t have actively sort out themselves, you’ve got people who would seek it out themselves and do, and of those people you’ve got people who think they’ve got meaningful loving relationships with children, you’ve got other people who think that they are just having a gratifying experience with the use of a child, you’ve got people who are sadistic and enjoy the fact that they are hurting someone, so there is such a bunch of subgroups—[Emphasis added] I: And did you have sort of the experience with all of those subgroups? ID015:  Yeah, I’d say so. I can’t speak for people who—whether or not people would seek it out or wouldn’t—because I was really oversexualised so I was often trying to engage older men in like sexual activities from, just forever, so I didn’t quite, like I couldn’t say whether or not they were gonna do it anyway.   […]    So where were we? Oh, the way in which my networks have changed, a lot of my friends used to drink with them, we used to try and tell each other how sad our lives were, we didn’t really support each other. I didn’t trust the services, I didn’t trust the services because I thought the services were fronts for paedophiles and abusers to hide behind whereas now with a bit more of a broader understanding of the world and the unfortunate reality that I entered a systemically abusive organisation and that’s not necessarily the people within it.

According to this reflexive recounting, ID015 is vulnerable because the formal networks she accessed offered her inadequate protection. Subsequently, she has been drawn to creating informal support networks in order to bolster her protection from predation. At the same time, and ironically, the repeated ‘grooming’ contacts by older men or paedophiles—she later came to view at least one of her boyfriends as a paedophile—also made her more vulnerable to the exploitative validations that are offered by such men.

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Conclusion For victims of crime, validation gained via informal or formal social interactions is an important aspect of victim recovery, which to date has been addressed in the literature. However, the links between such validation and the construction of a recovery narrative have been less explored (Kunst et al. 2015). Opportunities for or obstacles to validation are central to understanding the recovery process and this chapter has sought to address this gap by reporting the self-reflection of victims in relation to external validation and its impact on their recovery narrative. As put by a VSS counsellor (Focus Group 2), ‘the value of networks’ is fundamental to building a self-worth narrative: FG2 VSS006:  One analogy I find myself using with, um, clients, with people who, um, may not be linked in with services and I might be encouraging to link into services and create that network is talking about, giving the analogy of the rock climber climbing the mountain and each of the little things you put into the rock are your anchors that create this safety net. And one of those anchors that is very important is that valuable network, that community of help, and whether that community is within the family or the larger community connecting them with the police or Victim Support Service counsellors. By creating that safety net, that community network of helpers.

Further, some counsellors from Focus Group 2 highlighted that validation by external parties is important but its significance varies according to a number of factors (the personality of the victim, the nature of the traumatic experience and the person offering validation): FG2 VSS001:  I think there is a difference being validated by, this is just my personal experience, being validated by the worker and then being validated by the CJS and the police and things like that. FG2 VSS004:  And I guess that fluctuates, you know, on what’s happening for them. You know, maybe they’re feeling believed and validated, but then that can be you know… FG2 VSS002: Questioned!

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FG2 VSS006: Challenged! FG2 VSS004: Yeah certainly challenged when something else happens or revictimisation or the coping strategies fall off and they take a step back. But then that’s about reviewing where they’re at and what they’ve done in the past and you know that’s a step back not a leap or whatever that is, and focusing on the strengths and the progress that they have made.

Police are often the first point of contact for victims and therefore the quality of contact with the police is significant for the victim’s recovery from their traumatic experience (Elliott et al. 2014; Parsons and Bergin 2010). Elliott et al. (2014, p. 589) conducted qualitative interviews and found that there is symbolic value in police validation, in part because police are ‘prototypical representatives of the moral values of society’ (p. 589). Parsons and Bergin (2010) support this point, finding that many of the victims of intimate partner violence in their study who were able to report and pursue their case reported improvements in self-esteem regardless of the outcome. These results reveal that engaging the criminal justice system can be a ‘cathartic and confronting reminder of the original crime’ that supports recovery (Parsons and Bergin 2010, p. 182). Several repeat victimisation participants in Elliott et al.’s (2014) study, who were receiving care from mental health professionals, emphasised the importance of reporting to the police to obtain this symbolic validation, even if the perpetrator could not be caught. Victim reports to the police are also driven by a reaction to the confidentiality of reporting to the mental health profession. As per Elliott et al. (2014, p. 594), the therapeutic protocol of discovery and recovery has an unintended effect of making some victims feel ‘shrouded in secrecy, [and] shame.’ As discussed next in this book, victim accounts are structured by the values and interests that drive the protocols of various institutional discourses (see, for instance, Rose 1990). It is worth pausing here to reflect that the nature of reporting to criminal justice actors, which tends to compel victims to either make or withdraw a public allegation, contrasts with the nature of reporting for therapeutic purposes, by which records are usually prevented from being made public. This difference in institutional values and protocols means that the narrative accounts produced in these two contexts will differ accordingly.

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Note 1. ‘FG1’ refers to Focus Group 1 and ‘FG2’ refers to Focus Group 2.

References Abrahams, H. (2007). Supporting women after domestic violence: Loss, trauma and recovery. London: Jessica Kingsley. Androff, D. (2012). Narrative healing among victims of violence: The impact of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 93(1), 38–46. Australian Associated Press. (2018, March 2). Child sex abuse commissioner hits out at lawyers who attack victim credibility. https://www.theguardian.com/ australia-news/2018/mar/02/child-sex-abuse-commissioner-hits-out-atlawyers-who-attack-victim-credibility. Bal, M., Crewe, J., & Spitzer, L. (1999). Acts of memory: Cultural recall in the present. Hanover: University Press of New England. Barnes, R. (2013). “I’m over it”: Survivor narratives after woman-to-woman partner abuse. Partner Abuse, 4(3), 380–398. Campbell, R., Sefl, T., Barnes, H. E., Ahrens, C. E., Wasco, S. M., & Zaragoza-Diesfeld, Y. (1999). Community services for rape survivors: Enhancing psychological well-being or increasing trauma? Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67(6), 847–858. Chelimsky, E. (1981). Serving victims: Agency incentives and individual needs. In S. Salasin (Ed.), Evaluating victims services (pp. 73–97). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cloward, R. A., & Ohlin, L. E. (2013). Delinquency and opportunity: A study of delinquent gangs (Vol. 6). London: Routledge. Danielson, C., Kmett, M., de Arellano, A., et al. (2006). Identification of high-risk behaviors among victimized adolescents and implications for empirically supported psychosocial treatment. Journal of Psychiatric Practice, 12(6), 364–383. Doak, J. (2008). Victims’ rights, human rights and criminal justice: Reconceiving the role of third parties. Oxford: Hart. Dore, G., Mills, K., Murray, R., et al. (2012). Post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and suicidality in inpatients with substance use disorders. Drug and Alcohol Review, 31(3), 294–302.

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Dunn, J. L. (2010). Vocabularies of victimization: Toward explaining the deviant victim. Deviant Behavior, 31(2), 159–183. Elliott, I., Thomas, S., & Ogloff, J. (2014). Procedural justice in victim-police interactions and victims’ recovery from victimisation experiences. Policing and Society, 24(5), 588–601. Fenwick, H. (1995, November). Rights of victims in the criminal justice system: Rhetoric or reality? Criminal Law Review, 843–853. Frieze, H., Hymer, S., & Greenberg, M. (1987). Describing the crime victim: Psychological reactions to victimization. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 18(4), 299–315. Gutner, C. A., Rizvi, S. L., Monson, C. M., & Resick, P. A. (2006). Changes in coping strategies, relationship to the perpetrator, and posttraumatic distress in female crime victims. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 19(6), 813–823. Herman, J. L. (2005). Justice from the victim’s perspective. Violence Against Women, 11(5), 571–602. Hirschi, T. (2002). Causes of delinquency. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Jordan, J. (2013). From victim to survivor—And from survivor to victim: Reconceptualising the survivor journey. Sexual Abuse in Australia and New Zealand, 5(2), 48–56. Keeling, J., & van Wormer, K. (2012). Social worker interventions in situations of domestic violence: What we can learn from survivors’ personal narratives? British Journal of Social Work, 42(7), 1354–1370. Kirchengast, T. (2006). The victim in criminal law and justice. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kunst, M., Popelier, L., & Varekamp, E. (2015). Victim satisfaction with the criminal justice system and emotional recovery: A systematic and critical review of the literature. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 16(3), 336–358. Laxminarayan, M. (2012). Procedural justice and psychological effects of criminal proceedings: The moderating effect of offense type. Social Justice Research, 25(4), 390–405. Matza, D. (1967). Delinquency and drift. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. McGarry, R., & Walklate, S. (2015). Victims: Trauma, testimony and justice. Abingdon: Routledge. Merton, R. K. (1938). Social structure and anomie. American Sociological Review, 3(5), 672–682. Nye, F. I. (1958). Family relationships and delinquent behaviour. New York and London: Wiley and Chapman & Hall.

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O’Mahony, D., & Doak, J. (2017). Reimagining restorative justice: Agency and accountability in the criminal process. West Sussex: Hart. Parsons, J., & Bergin, T. (2010). The impact of criminal justice involvement on victims’ mental health. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 23(2), 182–188. Rose, N. (1990). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private self. London: Taylor & Francis and Routledge. Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. (2017). Final report. Commonwealth of Australia. Ruback, R. B., Clark, V. A., & Warner, C. (2014). Why are crime victims at risk of being victimized again? Substance use, depression, and offending as mediators of the victimization–revictimization link. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 29(1), 157–185. Shapland, J., & Hall, M. (2007). What do we know about the effects of crime on victims? International Review of Victimology, 14, 175–217. Sutherland, E., & Cressey, D. (1978). Criminology (10th ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott. Ullman, S. (2003). A critical review of field studies on the link of alcohol and adult sexual assault in women. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 8(5), 471–486. Wemmers, J. (2009). Where do they belong? Giving victims a place in the criminal justice process. Criminal Law Forum, 20, 395–416. Wemmers, J. A. (2013). Victims’ experiences in the criminal justice system and their recovery from crime. International Review of Victimology, 19(3), 221–233.

5 Adaptations in Recovery

Meaning Work Following Trauma Perhaps the most elementary factor that connects the individual to the life-world or collective or social life is what Frankl terms a ‘will to meaning’ (Frankl 2014; Maddi 1970). Humanistic theories of the counselling process and the promotion of positive outcomes following trauma depend upon and exploit this basic human need (Wong and Fry 1998). According to Frankl life ‘holds meaning for each and every individual, and even more, it retains this meaning literally to his last breath’ (Frankl 2014, p. ii). Many who follow his teachings practice a therapeutic system that draws upon logotherapy, which holds that a lack of awareness of or emotional frustration in the meaning of human existence is at the back of such maladies as learned helplessness. A firm belief system is related, as we will see in Chapter 6, to a view of justice and injustice. It has also been found to support recovery from trauma (Brune et al. 2002). In general, people develop a logos or develop their in beliefs a system of measurement by which to conduct an ontological self-examination. We refer to this as meaning work.

© The Author(s) 2018 W. de Lint and M. Marmo, Narrating Injustice Survival, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93494-5_5

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Both therapists and traumatised victims draw from templates that are made familiar or naturalised through repetition in various discourses by institutional authorities. It is perhaps a matter of preference in our analysis that we lend priority to the influence of the liberal social and economic order in the shaping of therapeutic discourses, so that meaning work is set against the necessities of that liberal order. In so doing we are following a tradition. The works of Weber (1930), Althusser (1971), Foucault (1979, 1990), Rose (1990, 1998), Cruikshank (1993) and Giddens (1991) are particularly instructive in this regard. These analysts are concerned with how people make sense of their lives against normative and prescribed ways of being in their socioeconomic, cultural and political domains. In other words, these are ‘big picture’ templates against which individuals are encouraged to match their own understanding of what is meaningful. What are these templates, and how do they inform the meaning-work that victims are confronted with after trauma? Beginning at the broadest or hegemonic level, in the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, Weber (1930) argues that there are cultural underpinnings that are antecedent to yet also co-existent with the development of capitalism. What is consistent across the economic relations of capitalism and the cultural relations of Protestantism, he argued, is a sense of duty or ‘calling’ and style of frugality as part of a strong work ethic that permits a highly individualistic and even possessive accumulation of wealth. For Weber, the connection or ‘elective ­affinity’ between the spiritual in Protestantism and the material in ­capitalism is not only fortuitous for a specific socioeconomic system, but is also ­buttressed by the method of verstehen, ‘interpretation’ by which it is important to explore actors’ meanings, understanding that people need to attach meaning or significance to their actions. In this case, Weber provides an explanation for the normalisation of capitalistic accumulation. In this and other works (Weber 1994), he suggests how rational-legal domination, under the authority of which bureaucratic organisation produces a slavish obedience to rules and process as people came to occupy what he terms the ‘iron cage’ of modernity, has had the effect of stripping belief or meaningful endeavour from our lives.

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How people interface with material and cultural conditions is also explored by Anthony Giddens. In particular, in Modernity and Self-identity (1991, pp. 10–35), Giddens argues that what he prefers to call ‘high modernity’ has distinct social forms including discontinuous, disembedded and reflexive institutions. He asserts that individuals living in high modernity adapt to continuous changes or revision as they depend on institutions that separate time and space (through ‘symbolic tokens’ and ‘abstract systems’). As he notes, the condition of self-identity in the world today is one in which knowledge is no longer stable or certain and trust in disembedding mechanisms produces a relative deskilling as each person depends upon expert intermediaries to negotiate the built environment in which they live. Giddens argues that under contemporary conditions of high modernity the ‘altered self ’ has become ‘a reflexive project’ ‘to be explored and constructed as part of the ... process of connecting personal and social change’ (1991, p. 33). He notes that this project involves abstract systems including modes of therapy and counselling that, in a way, are replacements for the supports provided by traditional village life. For instance, and as also explored by Rose (1990), a therapeutic community has emerged to discover and identify, explain and treat maladies, syndromes and diseases according to a rule book (for instance, the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013)). As per Jirek (2017), the individual negotiates this meta-narrative. Neoliberalism informs and subjectifies, it supports schemata that may place a great burden on the individual for failing to measure up as resilient or responsible (Cruikshank 1993; de Lint and Chazal 2013). On the other hand, belief that immediate, individual experience is connected with a broader set of values in the unfolding of a teleology, whether rooted in the spiritual or rational-scientific, is associated with the reduction of pain and anguish (Park 2005; Dezutter et al. 2010; Unruh 2007). That a system of belief can arguably be destructive at the societal level, as Marx among others has shown (McKown 1975), does not take away from the therapeutic role of meaning and belief for the individual. However, it does suggest and may complicate how victims may review the interface of justice, order, and trauma.

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In this regard, Thompson and Janigan (1988, p. 263) propose that the search for meaning is really a search for meaningfulness, or order and purpose: to discover how an event ‘fits into a larger context.’ People want to believe that their world is governed and made meaningful on the basis of its orderliness, justness and coherence (Thompson and Janigan 1988, p. 263). From this perspective, an event is meaningful if it ‘follows in an orderly fashion from our views and beliefs’ and ‘it has a purpose whose value we recognize.’ Indeed, to recall Weber’s rational-legal authority, people may find solace in what is for most educated people a naïve belief: that in a highly rule-bound organisation an authority applies penalties rationally, equally and without favouritism (that is, justly) where those rules are broken. Importantly, events that may be challenging or threatening possess what is called an ‘implicit meaning’ (Thompson and Janigan 1988); the event will be signified or framed (implicitly) as, for example, something that the individual can overcome with relative confidence, is too much for them to cope with or provides them with a chance to shine. If an event is implicitly signified as too much to cope with, it may be because that individual has an underlying latent or unresolved distress. Confirming these theoretical assumptions, studies have found a positive relationship between meaningfulness the ability to cope with a stressful experience (Ficková and Ruiselová 1999; Park et al. 2008; Halama and Bakošová 2009; Zika and Chamberlain 1987; Ryland and Greenfeld 1991; Ulmer et al. 1991). According to much research, finding positive meaning in life events will encourage individuals to perceive that their situation is self-enhancing, thereby promoting adaptation (Taylor 1983). Roy (1988) uses the term ‘veritivity’ to denote the purposefulness of human existence. Recovery begins with and is dependent on everyday decision-­making (Maddi 1970) and involves the maintenance or nurturing of a coherent life narrative (Kenyon and Heath 2001). It also depends on self-efficacy, or the view that a person has the capability, if the will is there, to e­ xercise control over events that may affect them (Bandura 1989, p. 1175). As per Bandura (1989), people draw on their knowledge to make inferences and discern probable outcomes of actions, while those who are ‘plagued with self-doubts’ may be chaotic in their thinking

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(Wood and Bandura 1989). But there will be a gap between what appears to be needed and the capacity of the affected individual to engage in the creative work needed to arrive there. There may be incongruencies between meaning in these different spheres, across the global and situational. Several scholars, including Park (Park and Blumberg 2002; Park and Ai 2006), distinguish between an event’s significance for the person as a reflexive being (a more global meaning) and how an event challenges a particular person’s situation (situational meaning). The traumatised individual is to create meaning at the same time that a deficit of meaningfulness is associated with depression, anxiety, substance abuse and suicidal ideation. Crime victimisation is associated with these negative outcomes, and with feelings of despair. At the micro-level of meaning-work, as per Thompson and Janigan (1988, pp. 260–261), since the 1980s researchers have been looking at how people adjust to traumatic events by adapting their search for meaning. As this research has hypothesised, an experience that is deeply challenging at the ontological or existential level is one that calls upon a reassertion or revision of the individual’s ‘life scheme.’ People who have been able to reassert or revise a meaning schematic ‘have been found to cope better after the event, presumably because positive assumptions about the world and self have been restored’ (Thompson and Janigan 1988, p. 261). Meaning-work, in this application, may be more or less productive of the recovery trajectory. What Thompson and Janigan (1988) identified as ‘implicit meaning’ or the significance of an event for a person, Lazarus and Folkman (1984) term ‘cognitive appraisal.’ This combines existential and situational meaning in processes that relate trauma or stress to how people see the world. And according to research by Bulman and Wortman (1977), it is possible to categorise how people view a traumatic and life-changing accident (such as someone being paralysed as a result of a car crash) into a limited number of schemata. We may relate this to our discussion (Chapter 6) of social and casino chance. For example, the victim may deem that the event occurred because it was their turn in the draw; that it was predetermined to happen (they could not have prevented it); or that it happened because they deserved it due to their lifestyle choices. Bulman and Wortman (1977) found that

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those who recovered best were those who had a traumatic experience while doing what they enjoy. For Wong (1993), the ability to cope is dependent on an individual’s internal resources, including how the person is able to find congruence between their view of self-identity and the condition in which they believe themselves to be. This may require a ‘restructuring’ of attitude and philosophy so that some way forward may be charted. Thompson and Janigan’s (1988, p. 265) life scheme framework is a cognitive representation of the ongoing or unfolding narrative. It involves the individual as a protagonist, who charts a course from their point of view, with plot and objectives, as well as obstacles such as events that challenge the protagonist and their worldview. Importantly, the life scheme places necessary significance on the reflexivity with which people encounter life. As these authors point out, the concept encompasses the fact that people seek to draw meaningfulness from order (stability in the world) and purpose (viable goals). The perception of order needs to be somewhat hopeful against any ‘objective’ measure of how one really fits into the world, and the perception of purpose needs to place goals that are in reach. The capacity to cope with tensions is dependent on both intrinsic and extrinsic factors (Maddi 1998; Antonovsky 1987). According to the salutogenic approach (Antonovsky 1987), a person’s adaptation to stressors or a stressful situation can be salutary, neutral or pathogenic, depending on how a person copes with the tension created by the stressor. A person has what Antonovsky calls a number of ‘generalized resistance resources’ for coping, including social supports, and cultural and material capital. These assist in buffering or negotiating past the tension. It is the second group of resources, internal resources, including what he refers to as a sense of coherence, that concerns us more here. By sense of coherence Antonosvsky refers to meaningfulness, manageability and comprehensibility, and relates these respectively, to the relative worthiness, the relative capacity to address these demands, and whether an individual perceives impulses as attached to ordered, predictable cognitive meaning. The recovery pathway does not have the same starting point for everyone who has been confronted with trauma. First, as noted by Antonovsky (1987), Wong (1993) and others (Barnes 2013; Jirek 2011,

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2017), there are different extrinsic and intrinsic resources or obstacles that make the commencement of every journey unique and non-linear. Second, there is much literature that suggests that trauma may be complex and cumulative, and that in some people’s lives it is difficult to find, either subjectively or objectively, a more or less precise point at which a therapeutic intervention is deemed necessary. Psychological trauma involves a range of consequences including disempowerment, loss of control and disconnection from self-identity (Androff 2012; Bal et al. 1999; Jordan 2013). At the same time, there is no singular path or optimal placement or pattern of milestones marking the best way forward and this is the case for persons fortunate enough to have avoided victimisation in their lives as well as those who have suffered multiple traumatic experiences. Consequently, there is a therapeutic danger in assuming that recovery narratives all more or less follow the same pattern. Individual victims have meaningful experiences that require incorporation into a narrative, and the triggers, beliefs or events that assist the construction of the recovery narrative manifest in various ways and forms. Thus, lives and perspectives are composed of one or more narratives. In many cases, multiple and sometimes contradictory ways of seeing are evident in victim accounts (Frank 1995; Barnes 2013). According to Janoff-Bulman (1999), a traumatic event will often challenge the view that events are predictable or make sense, and recovery requires a resetting of meaningfulness, or a renewal of the belief that there is an affirmative value and meaning in life. This re-evaluation is understood as essential to trauma recovery, and involves engaging with the event through a revised life scheme, to borrow Thompson and Janigan’s concept.1

Charting Recovery Adaptations If, as according to the research cited above, everyone experiences more or less anxiety that is ontologically challenging, and meaningfulness is the orderly and purposive translation of a view of the world into a concept of self-identity, a traumatic event may separate order and purpose from identity. The event is not only disruptive of immediate plans or goals

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and the person’s adaptation to a view of order, but it is also challenging to the person’s view of the world and their place in it—a process that has been termed ‘narrative wreckage’ (Frank 1995, p. 68). The adaptation, as per Thompson and Janigan (1988, p. 270), is either to change the life scheme or change the perception of the traumatic event. Building on the above observations, Polkinghorne (1988), Neimeyer (2001) and Frank (1995) have developed therapeutic interventions based on the observation that self-identity, being dependent on continuous reflexive construction that provides a storyline or ‘master narrative,’ must adapt to incongruous, traumatic or upsetting life events through revision or rewriting. A ‘restructuring’ (Landenburger 1998) or ‘realigning’ (Abrahams 2007) of the self refers to this reflexive engagement with an adaptive narrative. Narrative therapy seeks to empower the individual to take control of their recovery via an active construction of the incident, rather than passively experiencing its negative effects (Androff 2012; Bal et al. 1999). Given the importance of meaningfulness and especially its incorporation of teleology or purposive living, it is unsurprising that some scholars have begun to unpack understanding of the role of personal narrative in recovery from trauma. Reflexive engagement with the event involves a review, or ‘narrative reconstruction’ (Jirek 2017, p. 166), of the distinctive signposts that form, inform and reform the life course. Maddi (1998) conceptualises ‘hardiness’ as stemming from beliefs that divide trauma responders into those who find value in active engagement or strong commitment, those who see negative and positive experience as a challenge requiring the individual to take a chance for personal growth, and those who believe that they are able to control events if they make the requisite effort. Transformative coping is found where people take action by making decisions and carrying out plans or where they adopt a broader perspective or more deeply frame the meaning of the stressful situation or event. Barnes (2013) studied forty intimate partner violence abuse victims, adapting Frank’s (1995) illness narratives, to postulate four narrative types. Frank (1995) identified three narratives, including chaos, restitution and quest, with those maintaining a chaos narrative experiencing

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an ‘anti-narrative’ that lacked a clear tie to an ongoing perspective; those with a restitution narrative on the path to recovery and locating experiences of abuse in the past; and those with a quest narrative seeking to create a renewed and emboldened identity, and not fearing change or challenge. Barnes found that about half of her sample conformed with the restitution narrative. Three-quarters of her sample gave accounts that reflected the chaos narrative, with respondents speaking about ongoing struggles and confusion, continued abuse, over-sensitivities and struggles with their self-concept (Barnes 2013, p. 389). She found quest narratives, expressing the positive impacts of trauma, in just over half of her sample. And she identified what she termed ‘active recovery’ as a fusion of these other narratives but which is dominated by a recognition of the adverse effects of the abusive experience but also an effort to take charge and end the negative impacts (p. 392). In her work concentrating on post-traumatic growth (PTG), Jirek (2017, p. 172) identified major categories of trauma survivors in terms of levels of narrative coherence and PTG, and five major post-trauma narratives. She coded her qualitative interviews as revealing: (1) a continuous and coherent storyline before, during and after the traumatic occurrence; (2) an ‘intelligible, organized and logical’ life story; (3) a clear sense of self-reflection on continuity and change before and after the trauma; (4) incorporation of trauma into one’s worldview; and (5) incorporation of the trauma into a vision of the future. Regarding post-trauma narrative coherence, Jirek found that she could divide her sample into the following groups: level I—individuals with low narrative coherence and low PTG; level II—individuals with moderate narrative coherence and moderate PTG; and level III—individuals with high narrative coherence and high PTG. For instance, about one of her respondents who conformed with level I she observed: ‘As a result of not forming a coherent narrative about his life, including his sister’s death, Mike’s trauma remains nearly as raw and unprocessed today as it was two years ago’ (Jirek 2017, p. 173). In contrast, she noted that Jennifer (Jirek 2017, p. 175) was at level III because she had incorporated the traumatic incidents ‘into a coherent story,’ by relying upon her Christian belief system and trying ‘to live each day with purpose.’

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Adapting the work of Frank (1995), Barnes (2013), Jirek (2017) and Thompson and Janigan (1988), and taking into consideration the previous discussion on self-medication and self-identity, we can identify four adaptations consisting of continua along three dimensions. We take from the above that the individual will have a more or less complete and coherent narrative structure in an individualised onto-epistemology consisting of: 1. a more or less ordered pathway consisting of signposts (marking difficult stretches of journey, indicating how the significant trauma has been memorialised or integrated into identity and what still lies unfinished). The pathway is clear or resolved or it is obstructed by a significant blockage from unprocessed trauma. 2. a daily routine and reward regimen that is more or less oriented towards completion of the unfinished journey and characterised by a daily regimen that is marked by numbing or isolating indulgences on one end and productive or dignifying activities on the other. 3. a supporting (as opposed to undercutting) belief system that either provides solace and synergy in an affirmation of meaningful connection to the world or undercuts it to produce despair or nihilism. In this adaptation, a recovery narrative will consist of an ordered pathway that is supported by routine undertakings with both of these girded or supported by a way of seeing oneself in the world. The question that the recovering victim may ask themselves is: how far back is it necessary to go before meeting up with that signpost that marks the division between that part of the journey that still needs more reflection and integration into identity and that part of the journey that is more or less integrated (as the division between PTSD and PTG)? As is well-known, many victims do not feel themselves as moving forward because they are not in a position where they are willing or able to integrate the fact of the significant trauma event into their self-identity. The second question is: how is the daily routine and particularly the reward structure oriented to support a balanced routine that nurtures production and dignity? Some people will be more proactive with their routine, aiming to build up at least part of their resilience and perhaps also slowly easing themselves back out into public appearances.

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For many others, the daily routine is reactive and retreating, tending to the bandaging but not ready engagement. Here, the question is whether there is some part of the daily or weekly routine that is oriented to attaching an affirmative meaning to a lingering legacy. What needs to be modified or revised in the trauma reflection to that they may be satisfactorily incorporated or validated in the preferred identity? In this regard, and taking up the question of the underlying belief system, questions need to be asked: is the belief system, or the way the victim-survivor sees the world, supportive of inspiration, synergy and involvement? Alternatively, is that belief, challenged by a significant event, driving towards nihilism and despair? Is the metanarrative consistent or an impediment to an affirmative connection between self-identity and the significance of life? If belief is stymying, does moving forward on an ordered pathway require a modification in the belief system? This leads to four ideal-type adaptations: • Level I (chaos) – The victim occupies is uncertain or unable to identify a pathway that is disordered by obstacles (markers of significant unresolved trauma). – There is also weak connection to a meaningful world; they have their view of the world jarred loose or are otherwise not grounded by a strong affirmative worldview. There is a disintegration between routine, pathway and self-identity, beginning at the ‘ground zero’ of the original trauma (cf. Barnes 2013, p. 384). – There is no clear recipe to take from an affirmative identity from which to build up the day to day routine (there is dread regarding what still lies dormant) and/or there is no system of belief that might help to make the identity work meaningful. • Level II (scrambling) – The victim occupies a weak position on a disordered pathway but a meaningful connection with the world through a positive belief system.

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– The belief system has been challenged, and meaning work is needed to reconcile facts on the ground with the self-identity ideal, which may require a bit of revision, but still provides a supportive foundation. – There may be some need to reframe or redirect as the untoward event is incorporated into the narrative as a signpost. The adaptation may involve a looking back upon that event as an unresolved injustice or ongoing menace or an inability to look forward beyond that event and its impact on identity. – Since that incorporation is a move that also involves the burying of innocence and perhaps the aspirations of that innocent identity, it is symbolically tragic. There may be a good deal of self-indulgent self-medication by victims who are blocked or not prepared or able to take on and come to grips with a traumatic event. – The victim may by indulging with drugs, alcohol or over-eating. They may be visiting with the trauma in manageable dosages or preventing themselves from being lucid regarding the event. • Level III (ritual/control) – The victim appears to hold a strong position on an ordered pathway by engaging in highly structured affirmative daily routines that are consistent with resilient adaptation, but at the same time weakly is connected to a system of meaning. – The person believes that overcoming the traumatic event is possible through doubling down on commitment to an ordered, rigorous programming of the routines of their daily lives and/or by vigilant monitoring of all entry points. Such an adaptation substitutes ritualism for meaning. – Since the recovery/discovery narrative is not strongly attached to a supporting belief system, the victim-survivor may be disempowered.2 • Level IV (quest) – The survivor sees him herself as in a strong position on an ordered pathway and a meaningful connection with the world through a positive belief system.

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– The person has accepted and incorporated the victimising trauma into their identity, has placed markers and is taking stock of the distance taken in self-development. – There is a strong affirmation that all historical events play a necessary and beneficial role in the stronger, more affirmative identity. Figure 5.1 depicts the four adaptations along three continua, where the text has been minimised for the purposes of representation. There are four adaptations, representing chaos, scrambling, control and quest. The dotted line indicates weak or entropic connections around the perimeter between the dimensions of belief, routine and pathway. Each dimension- continuum is represented in a line across three points from a periphery apex to a centre apex. For ‘pathway,’ ‘blocked’ is at the periphery and ‘clear’ is at the centre; for ‘routine,’ ‘indulgent’ is at the periphery and ‘productive’ at the centre; and for ‘belief,’ ‘nihilistic’ is at the periphery and ‘affirmative’ is at the centre. In this schema of adaptation, a few points are worth noting. First, as in all such schemata, individuals do not fit precisely into one or the other. We do think that the three variables that feature across them are important and we hope that readers find it useful Pathway

Chaos

Scrambling

Control

Quest

Belief

Fig. 5.1  Recovery adaptations

centre

Routine

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to consider how these factors play out in the negotiation between ­traumatic victimisation and PTG. Since we understand that each variable (pathway, routine and belief system) may be stultifying to that growth, we should emphasise the implication that for some people, some belief systems may be in the way of positive change. Beliefs are not always or necessarily therapeutic and they require revision (as per Thomson and Janigan 1988). We know that there is much to be understood beyond quantifying how much. In addition to identifying how a person is tracking with more or less order or elaboration in belief, it is helpful to distinguish among kinds of ordering and believing. As is understood within research into belief systems, there are various belief systems and people with different learning experiences will use different schemata or ideological tools to interpret their world. Individuals represent their world with cognitive systems in mental models that represent, and so create, structure and order. In this analysis, we have not developed the material to parse the character of the belief system as a potentially counter-developmental cognition, but we do note here that this is something that complicates recovery. As per the ritual/control adaptation, like too much belief, too much reflection on the ordering of the self may be associated with a less-than-robust recovery pathway. The emphasis on ordering the self produces a fetishistic ritualism, but this can become a substitute for meaningful reflection. The figure depicts the four adaptations along three continua, where the text has been minimised for purposes of representation. On the x axis, the pathway is depicted in a continuum between obstacles and objectives; on the y axis, routine is depicted as a continuum between indulgence and productivity; and on the third axis between these is the belief, depicted on a continuum between nihilism and synergy. In what follows, we present examples that we hope support the view that self-medication is an adaptive behaviour. It is a response to the interplay between pathway, routine and belief system.

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Level I: Chaos As per the description above, and borrowing from Frank’s (1995) original concept, many victims will have experienced a time in their recovery (if they recover) at which both past and future is a disarming blur of disarray. Not everyone can be clear-eyed about their situation as it being lived. People are generally in a position to deploy perspective, or place themselves in a sequence of linked events, when they can do so retrospectively at a safe distance, not hunkered down facing a situation they do not feel in control of and from which they see no way clear. ID012 is a poly-victim who came from a ‘dysfunctional family’ and was sexually assaulted as a young woman several decades ago, began to abuse heroin and other drugs to disengage following the assault, became suicidal, and then transferred her energy into a community project to help women who have been abused. Since then, she has been the victim of workplace sexual assault, for which she did not receive help from any type of formal support. She believes that, had she not chosen to cope by disengaging (through drug use) following the event, she might not have survived. However, she is currently not a user and believes that she can now never safely return to drug use. She has a segment of her diary from ten years previous to the interview, at which time she was experiencing panic attacks, which she says ‘sums up what I felt at the time’: ID012: Friday: saw Grant, he was a psychologist, very depressed and suicidal. I phoned a friend and talked to her. Put the cats in animal welfare so they have a chance at living—because I had three cats at the time—buy a bottle of Scotch and take pills and sleep the weekend away. Hopefully I won’t wake up. Paula phoned back with numbers for [name’s place] and crisis care. Went to markets, did some shopping and bought a bottle of Scotch. Grant phoned me and reassured me about work—whatever that was—umm … feel better but exhausted, went for a walk then went to bed. Saturday: slept badly and unable to concentrate on paper, even unable to listen to science show. Can’t concentrate on anything. Went to the city to buy birthday present for friend, absolutely exhausted and dragging my feet. Laid down in the afternoon because I started feeling dizzy, forgot to

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eat, I keep doing that. Exhausted but very agitated, can’t settle down. I can’t do anything and am very confused. Developed a cold sore— went for a walk to calm down. Sunday: slept very badly … umm … woke at 10 a.m., four cups of coffee, very agitated—no wonder. Went back to bed at midday. Awoke at 1:15, cleaned house … Looked for brown bears in the garden … 4–4:30 … started to fill out the Commcare form, started dinner and fed cats—5:30. Panic attack started. Monday: exhausted and slept late, terrified about going to the hairdresser in case I see Mark—because the hairdresser was next to the building where we worked—Grant phoned. I don’t really want to go near the Commcentre—because I worked in the Commonwealth Centre—forced myself to leave home and went the back way to the hairdresser. Fortunately they placed me in a dark corner, hidden from [name’s place]—so I guess the hairdresser knew something was happening. I didn’t tell her or anything—saw some ABS people on the way to North Terrace, but I was wearing sunglasses and pretended that I didn’t see them and I didn’t speak to them. ID012: No, I didn’t go to the police that time. I went to the police, I think it was last year or the year before, when another guy from work [abused me] … that was a waste of time though, because nothing has changed … nothing’s changed since 1976. Very little, as far as rape victims go. And that’s another reason why I wanted to take part in this [interview] too, because so many people that are victims do use, do self-medicate and it’s just not understood and it should be. I:  Is there a connection between that and your reasons for talking about your life for this research project—is there any connection between your news and this? ID012:  No, not really … umm … I mean, one of my friends said that I can start using marijuana again because it doesn’t really matter, does it, because I’ll be dead in six months? And I said to her—she only said it to me the other day—and I said, ‘No, there’s no way I’m using marijuana again. I don’t care if I’m due to die in a couple of weeks, I’m not using marijuana again, ever.’ Because you think—and I thought this with drinking—you think that if you have time off drinking or using marijuana and you go back to it again, you think it’ll be like starting again like it was in the early days, where everything was great. But it’s not the case, you go back to exactly where you left off and it goes downhill very quickly. So yeah, I’ve learnt that I can’t do that … it’s not an option anymore … So, I went to see a lawyer I had, and

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she actually asked me after a few years of everything, she said ‘can you give me some more details?’ And I couldn’t tell her … She was working on my behalf and I couldn’t tell her. See, I haven’t gotten very far anywhere because I can’t talk with anyone, it’s too hard … it’s too painful. And that is why I medicated. I: Would you like me to organise a counselling session for you? ID012:  I don’t know if it would be any help or not, I’m just … I just can’t do things … I’m hopeless. [Emphasis added]

ID012 linked the routine or daily travails to the discourse of Alcoholics Anonymous. There is much reflection in which she is explaining herself in terms of a daily struggle against backsliding into debilitating addiction. However, there is no clear route by which the trauma of the past will be laid open and the wounded child laid to rest. There is the possibility of repeat cycles, as the validation from some formal supports (the psychologist, her volunteer work), but there is also a clear danger that without a strong self-belief the survivor narrative is still only appearing in dribs and drabs. Similarly, ID006 affirms that there is work to do so that she can lift herself beyond her current state of malaise. The difficulty is identifying the connection between the belief system and the interpretation of the obstacles still on the pathway. As with so many victims, the alcohol and other drug (AOD) use is symptomatic of the parlous state of this reflexive work. ID009 is a poly-victim aged in his mid-sixties who was viciously assaulted on a busy street in front of bystanders by the boyfriend of an abused woman to which he had provided solace (regarding the abusive boyfriend). It was the second assault by that perpetrator on ID009. Subsequently, he was the victim of an (unrelated) home invasion in which he narrowly escaped injury. Since the attack, ID009 has become forgetful, fearful, has disengaged and increased his use of alcohol. He lives alone in a rented flat. He has three years of university and is employed part-time as a technician. ID009:  I’m not one of these people that is on guard all of the time when I’m walking down the street … you should be able to walk down the street and not be assaulted. But afterwards, I never used to feel vulnerable but since then I do. And then this other one, that makes me feel vulnerable now even in my own house. That’s why is so bad. And

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everything I’m doing is to try and get out of there, but it’s hard because I’m chasing my tail … my income’s going downhill, and … I don’t know what to do, I really don’t. If I had any hair I’d pull it out.

A disordered pathway is clearly evident in this short description. ID009 feels under siege, but also does not indicate here, or in other quotes, a strong belief commitment beyond survival. He ‘checks the computer everyday’ to see that his assailant is still serving the sentence he received upon conviction for the assault and appears not to convey a strong faith that he will not face another confrontation that will hurt him. He seems unable to plan or to rethink the pattern of victimisation. There is also a vexing mystery about the bashing as a near-death experience that seems to be arresting: ID009:  I remember the first [incident] … I was on the median strip and I was sort of on my knees … I was not half-stood up but I was sitting back on my haunches and this guy grabbed my arm and pulled me up. I stood up, after a fashion as I was still out of it from the kicking, so when people say that they have the wind knocked out of them I know what the mean. I was taking in the big ones trying to get some breath back into me and then he starts swinging me around. At this stage I could hear the traffic going the other way, they won’t stopped … it was only one side. And so, this lane I could hear the tyres going—they were doing 60 kms/hr and I could sense that he was going to throw me in front of the cars so I just dropped. I made myself as heavy as I could and dropped to the ground, so he had not the chance. So, I went back to do that [give a statement] but the other one was when I was on the phone, they said, ‘Ok, hang up’ … so I hung up. I had my phone in my hand like this … I remember it distinctly, I was shaking like mad. This idiot, that smashed me, he came up and I felt his hands grab my phone and he walked away. I couldn’t see much, but just enough to lean back … and I was starting to panic and so I yelled ‘he took my phone, he took my phone’ … I yelled it really loud, and a few minutes later someone put my phone back in my hand. I don’t know how that happened.

He notes the following about the first incident regarding this perpetrator, after he was hit:

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ID009:  Now, when this second bashing happened, I queried them about it. I asked whether they had a report from the first one and she said ‘no, there’s no report,’ so obviously they didn’t put any paperwork in, they didn’t do anything … they just sat on their hands. In their defence, I suppose, in some way it’s because I told them at the time that I’ve had a skinful, I’m not sober or anything.

His self-medication with alcohol makes him a poor witness, and police are disinclined to provide formal validation. He does not know how to place the dread of the near-death experience; he appears to believe that he only just, miraculously, prevented himself from being pushed in front of fast-moving traffic. His life appears to be on hold until he finds the clue to unlock his vulnerability to repeat victimisation. ID009:  So, I bought some plywood and screwed it in so it would be harder to get through, even though they could if they wanted to. So now, I’ve got this massive solid door and I’ve gone to the trouble of … well not the front door, but the back, I screw that shut … I’ve got one of those electric screwdrivers and I’ve got these long screws that screw into the door jamb, so no one can get through that.   Yeah. I undo it in the morning so I can get in the back door, when I come home if I have to go in that way. See, being on the corner like that, I go up the alley and I’ve got a gate so I go in there. I’m always wary about just opening the gates and driving in because what if someone’s there waiting?

In the chaos adaptation under a disordered narrative, there are temporary or quotidian ‘fixes’ that may be unconnected in a sequence until there is a means by which a survivor finds a significance that enables them to chart a way clear of present circumstances. ID009 is by his own description a victim who is expressing being cornered without offering himself a way clear: in his routine activities he appears to be sleep-walking through the dread of the next traumatic event; the underlying cause is only explained in terms of random or inexplicable acts; the covering explanations are unfinished or find their way to a discourse on existential precariousness.

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Do most victims begin a journey of recovery in condition in which their ‘world is turned upside down’? It is certainly not unfamiliar to many of them. The pathway has been disordered by one or more deeply traumatising events. This has also pushed into doubt the metanarrative or a set of beliefs. The relationship between the commitment to a set of ideologically-informed tasks and a condition of wellbeing, safety and social involvement has been torn asunder. As discussed next chapter, the implicit contract of reciprocity is broken. There is instead the inversion of justice, purpose and self-development.

Level II: Scrambling As above, the scrambling adaptation is identified by an inability to reframe identity in light of the worldview so that every day or routine ordering is patchy, and there is likely to be a reliance on drugs or alcohol to numb the pain or push away the trauma and traffic with the outside world. What distinguishes it from the chaos adaptation is that there is some reference to belief, where a self-identity is connected, if only incompletely, to a positive worldview. We asked the question of our focus group participants if they were aware of clients who struggled with managing their daily routines in the face of confronting their victim narrative, especially as some victims were offering testimony in front of the Commission. FG23  VSS002: I’m going back a bit, about a client who … Initially when she sought help it was both from a domestic violence service and ourselves it was because of domestic violence. But as time’s gone on she has been reflecting on what’s been happening to her and trying to make changes in her life. She’s also recently revealed that she suffered a child sexual assault at the hands of her father, as a very young child, several times. And she was the eldest girl and how she protected her sisters and things like that. And it’s really interesting watching her because she now, and she was definitely using alcohol and talked about her use of alcohol, and also her use of food. Eating as a strategy of coping which kind of hasn’t come up because it’s not a substance

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as such or a drug. But then eating is definitely something that people use as a coping strategy. So she’s been really reflecting a lot on how she in fact—and talking about strategies about how when she has the thought, how she might interrupt that. And sort of talks to herself about using a better way to deal with it. So she’s using journalling as a way of doing that. Writing she’s finding extremely useful.

ID006 is a poly-victim who was neglected and physically and sexually assaulted during childhood by her stepdad. Her mother died before she could ask her about her knowledge of these assaults. She had two siblings, one of whom died at twenty, and the other with whom she’s had no contact in over thirty years. Her most recent victimisation was a stranger assault on a public street. She suffers from acute anxiety as a result of the assault, including fear of public places. She uses marijuana to dull the anxiety. Her PTSD directly followed from the assault, but its severity is probably linked to the trauma of repressed childhood experiences. The visit to Victim Support Services (VSS) for the interview was a significant undertaking. ID006:  Basically, I grew up in kids’ homes when I was a kid. In foster homes, welfare homes … whatever you want to call them. Family group homes … whatever … And there was abuse in them, like physical abuse. I remember that I was hit when I was about three or four years old. And then when I was about twelve or thirteen I went to live with my mum and I got abused by her partner. So yeah, there’s my life … I basically lost two jobs because of it, because I wouldn’t go. I used to do work at the XXXX, and at the XXXX … you can’t trust people after something like that. You can’t be around that many people. I: So it really put a huge fear into you? ID006:  Yeah, and I still don’t go very far and I don’t go out at nighttime, even though I got bashed during the day … and I very rarely come to the city. The only reason I came to the interview … like I said yes to the interview because they pushed me to come … I went to the doctor and they closed my head up. They put some tape over it, but I got a scar for it. I went to the doctor and I got them to write me a report for, like a referral to a psychologist … but in getting the

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referral, I worked myself into such a state that I was vomiting, so to this day I still haven’t seen the psychologist. Like, I’ve still got the referral and everything and I want to go back to the doctor and speak to them again, and still do it because I know that I need to … I’d hope that in a year from now that I would have been to see the psychologist … like, I’m over putting up with it myself, I want to get it out. Like I said though, when I thought about getting it out, I made myself sick … and then I was too scared to go because I didn’t want to make myself sick again, so I’ve just … like, I psyche myself into things. I psyched myself into coming here … I was glad when they rang me and said that you’ve got a week or whatever, because that gives me that time to work myself into going. I:  Would it be this most recent trauma that you would be talking about mostly … or would it be historical? ID006:  Yep … the recent stuff, and we’d probably delve into the other stuff too because I haven’t really dealt with that, so I’m not going to get over that either am I? I:  And you’ve sort of delayed that, partly because you were bringing up children…? ID006:  I’ve never really like … there’s no ending to it all … I mean, it’s already over because the person that did it is dead, so that’s it, it’s done … there’s no, like I don’t have to face that person ever again. I: So you don’t have to worry about deciding whether to charge them or not? ID006:  No, and so I’ve kind of let it slide … I mean, it’s still there and I suppose it don’t hurt to talk to somebody and get it off my head, you know. I: There’s quite a few things that people do, for example, swimming, because they were very angry, so they were able to release a lot of anger doing swimming. [19:55] ID006: Well, I trashed my backyard basically. I like to be outside and if I am angry or anything like, I will go and work in my yard and do something, but yeah, I made a mess. I: So that’s what you did after this last event? ID006:  Yeah … but I used to do it all of the time, anything that used to stress me out … I’d just go out and hack up my backyard. [Emphasis added]

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In assessing or interpreting how ID006 is negotiating the three dimensions of pathway, routine and belief we will highlight a few points from above. First, with regard to pathway, the historical trauma has been pointed out as still requiring meaning work in order to be integrated. There is the matter of the view of past events of her mother and her siblings, and the stymieing of recovery that an absence of validation may portend. Her daily routine is not supporting reflection, but rather dulling it; and she appears to be prone to expressive destruction, targeting her backyard, which otherwise provides her a limited solace and respite. With respect to belief, she appears to be in a long moment of suspended animation. There is reference to the necessity of some meaning work that links the past to a positive affirmative future, but there is at present no strong pull to bring pathway, routine and belief into harmony. ID014 is a poly-victim in her mid-forties who believes that as a young she was stolen and illegally adopted out to an Australian who physically and sexually abused and isolated and tortured her and her brother for seven or eight years. Her brother committed suicide as a young man. She then was with a ‘junkie’ who drugged her and her girlfriend and brought them somewhere to be raped by several people. ID014:  He used to make us eat vomit from the carpet. He used to try and drown us in filthy bath water. He broke broomsticks over the soles of our feet and our hands and our body and jump on us. So, I have a lot of memory loss, because I’ve been kicked into brick [inaudible ] and glass and that. Twice, two accidents, one inside for not changing my shirt when I was about seven or eight, about eight. And it happened twice to my head, two separate injuries. So, I’ve got a lot of memory loss. I used to be loved in my country, but the moment he come and got me, it’s like he just destroyed everything of me and my heritage. I was really loved, I lived on temple food, I grew up [on] temple atmosphere and was on special diet. I never had egg, I never bad meat, anything except for temple ‘presade ’, that means blessed offering. So, when this person came, he broke every rule, he started giving me egg, he gave me meat, he would give me bacon, he gave me this. Of course, when I came to Australia I throw up.

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The ability to slow down the pace of stimuli, to separate events and responses and take a position where routine and milestone events are not a threatening cross-cutting jumble is not equally available to all crime trauma survivors. In the following passage, note the cascade of detail and the immanence of the threat: ID014: What happens to me is I get very suicidal if I get told off. If people are having a go at me, if it’s more than one thing, like two or three things in a day or something, it can turn me over. And [PO1]4 was working on a case about foster care or something, I can’t remember now, but they are no longer dealing with me, [PO1] heard me very suicidal after speaking to [PO2] and about the police offer from the [indecipherable ] and I got very suicidal and I was beside myself at home and I was wanting to take my life and rang [PO1] how [PO2] had given me all this information it was overloading me, how he couldn’t do this, he couldn’t do that, it just felt like betrayed, I spilt my guts out for him and then somehow got through to Royal Commission [into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse], saw them and I don’t know the order and all that part, [PO1] was the one who called VSS, she’s the one that got me onto it, and because I already had seen the Royal Commission I was, and [PO1] was my police officer and she was very loving to me and she’s a lovely woman, and I had a lot of respect for her, and that’s how I started coming, because [PO1] heard that she, ‘you need some extra support.’ … He drugged me and he took me to some guy’s house and they were doing whatever they were doing with body but I didn’t know he drugged me because I was [inaudible ] I never had that experience, and yeah he was out near the Glenside, there was a KFC, around there. I see that guy but I don’t know his name. But he, I can tell he’s ashamed of it. But whatever they did and I don’t know how many times, initially there was me and my girlfriend ‘it’s a happy pill’ but he was drugging me and abusing the fuck out of me, excuse my language, but like, and one day I didn’t even have saucepans, bowls, fridges, nothing, never had a mother figure, because that man never let me have a woman figure, he had loads of girlfriends, like a prostitution house our house was, the one that adopted. And that’s what I reckon, because he was having women galore, because we had to stay away from his end and at the back with the door deadlocked. So, I’ve been raped, I been

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gagged, I been fucking abused and so much by people … You know what I’d really like, I’d like, listen to this one, I’d like, I’d never had an apology from the man that adopted me, except once in the Rundle Mall, called my name and [inaudible ] and said, ‘Oh sorry I accuse you for taking Gina’s wedding ring’ and I said, ‘What the fuck’s that about?’ He thought I stole his wife’s wedding ring and he found it behind a picture, that’s the only apology I ever got, what I want is this Trevor [inaudible ] that adopted me and my brother … he’s now passed away, deceased seventeen years ago, what’s the date today? I: [Provides date ] ID014: Yeah on the 15th of March is seventeen years my brother’s died, took his life, gassed himself in a remote part of the river land had a whole heap of medication from [name’s place] and so, this story comes out for him on his behalf because he doesn’t have a voice. What was I saying? What were you asking?

When asked about her daily routine, she said that she was ‘starting to,’ implying that she had no definite daily pattern, after which she referred to sleeping at the temple among the deities that are ‘real’ for her, noting that she would be having a deep sleep, a ‘divine sleep,’ when she finished at VSS. From this, and from the style of answer, it is quite likely that the integration of routine, pathway and belief is still disjunctive. ID014 had a very strong belief system, but she did not connect the experiences of her life to that system. In this case, the quest for justice would appear to have been stymied by actors that have not served her well, by her account.

Level III: Control Where victims do not permit themselves to perceive a passive vulnerability to what appears to be unpredictable and demeaning events and instead seek to reframe such events in a structured, temporal order, the adaptation may be control. The capacity to govern routines by excessive ritual and hypervigilance is a means to place or fix an event and not allow it to overwhelm. This is manifested, for example, where sufferers experience intrusive and scattered flashbacks commonly associated with PTSD (Bal et al. 1999; Frieze et al. 1987).

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ID004 is a single-event victim who has incorporated his victimisation into a narrative of resilience. He is analytical and introspective and may be a bit obsessive about controlling all aspects of his daily and weekly routines. ID004:  I’m a very structured and logical person. I’m disciplined … in some regards, perhaps a little obsessive-compulsive … not to any degree of needing to be medicated, but my career and my … and the way I conduct myself as a person in society has always been very pragmatic in that I look at the pros and I look at the cons, I look at the relationships and I try to draw logical and intelligent conclusions from that and then learn from it and move on. So, that’s how I have been successful in my working environment and I tried to apply a similar approach in trying to understand what the hell happened, because I was separated from my wife at the time … I wasn’t part of the family unit in terms of close contact with my kids, and in particular my daughter that was murdered.   I tried to dissect it, reassemble it, digest it and evaluate it and all of those things and through some of that I got some clarity and through some I got obsessive. And not necessarily obsessive about understanding the event, but also obsessive about some of the other things … like, I’ve never been involved with a funeral and I had to learn that quickly … the etiquette, the protocols, the eulogy and paraphernalia. But I also got a bit obsessive over a shrine … and how and what I would hold onto as far as remembering her … I got a little bit obsessive in my work as a distraction, probably distanced myself from my girlfriend a bit … I only talk about it if we have to and that is usually at milestone events, like the anniversary of her death … Umm … as far as coping with it, I think one of my strengths career-wise, divorce, estranged children and etcetera, I think is just the fact that I am a highly resilient individual, and that’s not to blow smoke up my own shorts, but I look at people around me and how fragile they can become and yet I can go through similar and/or worse things and come out the other side. I think that is what has happened with this. There are still elements of this that I will never understand and accept, there’s been some circumstances that from this have led to other conflicts, which again I analyse, I dissect and try to rationalise … I try to compartmentalise, and that really

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is my coping mechanism. It is part of me, it is something that I am ­comfortable with. It is something that I do naturally and I do quite well, eventually.

ID005 is a double-event victim. He has elevated anxiety because a historic event (a pedestrian injury) primed him to the emotional impact of a recent event (a gay bashing). Despite this, he has taken hold of his narrative, drawn from supports (including VSS), resumed university studies, and interpreted his victimisation in the maintenance if not improvement of his self-esteem. ID005:  I think you have inbuilt strategies that you don’t know you’ve built. Because you have survived it so long you have a natural way of getting through it. So when it comes up again, it doesn’t become as important; you don’t give the importance that you used to. You don’t give it the power that you used to, because you start to realise that you are giving them the power, not anyone else, but those people that were actually bullying you. And that sounds like I made a very well-balanced decision, but it wasn’t a well-balanced decision logically anyway, it was just something just happens … as a survival technique, that’s what it was.   Because as a victim … you learn to live with the victimisation, you don’t sit in the corner crying … You know the wanting to be aware of predictability of life, knowing the party that you’re going to be going to, you’re going to know everyone that’s gonna be there, you wanna know what will happen in the next hour … you do want some kind of, um, settlement in everything you do. And I still have that. I still find it hard to go to a party and feel totally comfortable. Go to a dinner party and feel totally comfortable. I’ve got to know what I’m going into. I’ve got almost like reconnoitre. It sounds mad, but it’s true.

Level IV: Quest Evans and Lindsay (2008) argue that the journey post victimisation may be better understood as ‘incorporation’ rather than ‘recovery.’ Recovery assumes that the individual can return to a pre-victimisation state and is

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no longer ‘significantly affected’ by what they are recovering from—an idea that has obvious limitations (Evans and Lindsay 2008, p. 360). One clear demonstration of incorporation is the use of the term ‘survivor’ in place of ‘victim’ (Jordan 2013, p. 48), which posits the ‘linear progression from a negative to a positive state’ (Jordan 2013, p. 48), emphasising actions and responses, and acknowledging strength and resilience, while still recognising the victimisation (Jordan 2013). The term survivor describes victims as active, thereby dispelling the negative connotations of ‘helpless’ and ‘vulnerable’ victimhood (p. 49). One limitation, however, of this terminology is the presumption of a linear progression. In contrast, the idea of incorporation acknowledges that the individual is still affected by their victimisation, suggesting a more ‘complex and nuanced’ relationship between the self as victim and the self as survivor (p. 48). The concept of incorporation complements notions of a journey following abuse and the legitimate construction of a sense of self, affirming one’s resilience and strength (Evans and Lindsay 2008; Barnes 2013). The fourth narrative type, the quest narrative (Frank 1995), builds on this, and identifies personal growth and the positive impacts stemming from the trauma, such as uncovering the victim’s strength of character (Barnes 2013, p. 384). We would add, as per our discussion above and in line with Frank’s (1995) original typology, that the quest adaptation represents a productive synergy between an ordered pathway and a meaningful connection with the world engaged through a positive belief system. ID013 is a poly-victim who was neglected and sexually exploited during childhood. He is on a disability pension. His most recent victimisation was a brutal assault by a schizophrenic lodger that left him with severe injuries, but also opened up in him a resolve to live that he says was previously absent. He has two children from an ex-partner, but is estranged from these family members. He is working on how to best draw meaning from the variety of abuses he has encountered. He has by his account good formal supports but a notable absence of informal supports, including an ex-partner and stepfather. He drinks ‘two or three glasses a day’ of white wine as a ‘comfort companion,’ but he was ‘clinically regarded as an alcoholic and drug addict’ prior to the assault, which in this regard, ‘has been ironically positive. I would say I live more healthily now.’

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ID013:  It’s a psychological pain I feel, yes, and I … there’s two aspects to this: one, I have no idea what happened to me, or why it happened to me and—in terms of the assault—it was a severe assault. It was just a, you know, king hit or … like I said, over fifty bones were broken … And I question myself, I try not to, but I question myself whether I actually deserved to be assaulted like I was or that it was my fault. My ex-partner who is the mother to my youngest two children, she … is best mates with the young man’s mother, who assaulted me, and she said to me one day on the phone, this was a few years ago because we don’t talk now, she demanded that I stop looking for someone to blame because it was all my fault. So, that still rings through my mind and I don’t want to allow myself to fully accept that I was assaulted so severely because it was my fault.

He adds at another point in the interview that it is a ‘bit ironic for me but not tragic’ that as a person who has been running youth shelter and community living residences that he was assaulted in this way. It is also an added irony that he was doing this for a close friend of his ex-partner who appears to believe he should be taking more responsibility for being attacked. At the same time, he says he has ‘lost probably about ten years of memory’ and was ‘in a coma for about a month.’ Almost as an aside, he notes, ‘I think I ended up spending up to … well I spent longer in the hospital than [the attacker] spent in prison.’ Formal and informal supports in this case would appear to be working harmoniously: I:  Ok—so you feel that you’ve leaned on some of the official agencies or at least they’ve stepped into help you? You said that they were helpful, whereas some of those friends and family weren’t as helpful after the event? ID013:  No, I … I think I found my … well, I only began calling him my stepfather after I came out of being unconscious. I’ve never called him my stepfather in all my life. He was with my mum for a good twenty years I think … my experience with him after the assault was that he willingly spent … well, almost excessive amounts of time apparently supporting me. But he was manipulative and he was … primarily after the benefits of any compensation that came my way.

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I: How did he have any access to that? ID013:  Well, he doesn’t have access to it … umm, he introduced me to the lawyer that worked with me and I’ve concluded recently to myself that it’s highly probable that the reason that the lawyer recommended to the judge that the compensation awarded to me be put into public trustees was in order primarily to keep it away from him …

The following is a reflection on the pathway from a position of affirmative belief. It is thus a recipe for everyday living that derives from an appraisal of the past informed by a transcendent perspective. ID013: Prior to the assault, I think I lived a life within my sense of self, of not really caring whether I lived or died. And, I had actually attempted suicide a few times in my earlier years. I was abused as a child … I ran away from home when I was thirteen years old. At sixteen I was sold on the children market to a man in Bangkok and Thailand who ran a business, a restaurant there. He was quite wealthy so he paid for me to go over there to live. So, I think I grew up as a victim really. And strangely for me, this experience—the bashing—it has almost woken me up to living. In fact, during the month that I was in a coma just prior to coming conscious again, I had umm … a sort of out of body or spiritual experience, where it was clearly said to me in a voice or manner that is way beyond human talk, that it’s not my time to die. There are still things for me to do. And that gave me some sort of quite … positive resolve, that there is a purpose in me being alive, even though I don’t know what it is specifically. And, so since the impact of the assault five years ago I have now had no death wishes in the sense of what I am saying is that I never consider taking my own life. I:  So, would you say that … I mean, how much of your recovery would you credit to your own resilience? ID013:  Good question … that’s a specific and positive question. In being kind to myself, I would say around 60–70% of my recovery has to do with my mental resilience, my character. I even wrote—I still journal quite a lot—and I remember, in fact I pulled it out of my wallet only today a piece of paper where I wrote, ‘I am a survivor,’ and so that is how I see myself now, which is a contrast to always wanting to see myself as that I shouldn’t be alive, to know that I’m a survivor. It’s a very different way of seeing oneself … I am quite consciously

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and legitimately addressing in the sense of my own psyche … like, not being hard on myself and giving myself a break. Umm … even like, language like loving myself and making choices that are good for myself … that’s really quite powerful action and I’ve been implanting that sort of action personally, in recent months, and it requires deliberate effort on my part to apply my choices like that. [Emphasis added]

We see that ID013 is in the process of charting a course in which he can have some assurance that he will not continue to go around in circles. He is considering whether he himself is responsible for the assault by the schizophrenic, who was a boarder in his house (provided as an act of charity) and who is known to be unpredictably violent. He appears to reflect on how his family members seem to have abandoned him at a time of need, and to be wondering whether the key to moving forward is accepting fault for that abandonment and assault. At the same time, he is well on a route, on a quest for a better outcome. ID015 is a poly-victim aged in her mid-twenties. She was sexually abused by her stepfather since as far back as she can recall and was involved in abusive, but by her understanding not necessarily avoided, sexual relations with older men from the age of twelve. She became a call girl in order, as she put it, to gain some control over her sexual relations with men. She said that the closing date of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was what triggered her to take action by filing a complaint against her stepfather. I:  But so one thing that’s changed I guess, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but you used when younger to be afraid of your stepfather, so when did that fear diminish? ID015:  When I was fifteen and I was moving around high schools and he became a high school teacher, or he was a high school teacher or existing teacher at one of the schools they put me into. And we had a confrontation … and I sort of ended up locked in a room being interrogated by a principal because he’d tried to protect himself and said I made false allegations against him in the past or something. I can’t say because I wasn’t one of the adults privy to that, I just know that I was in a room being told I couldn’t leave and panicking about being detained and not sure why. Um, one of my carers of the

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resi-carer facility came down because I told them that I have to call her or she will make a missing persons report and I acted really weird on the phone and wasn’t making sense to the questions she was asking me and she was like, ‘Are you safe?’ and I was like, ‘No, no’. ‘Right, can you tell me where you are?’ ‘Nope!’ ‘Okay, are you still at the school?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Great. Front building?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Is it a teacher?’ Or ‘Yep! Absolutely I would love to do that later’ and then she drove down in her van, her name was Jane kicking ass, pulled up, busted her way into the thing and was like, ‘How dare you!’ and just like went off and he stepped up and said, ‘I represent the school [inaudible ]’ and tried to sound super adult or something or I dunno, super legitimate and she said, ‘I know who you are’ and called him by name and started blasting him. Um, which was really odd to me because I didn’t realise, I hadn’t told anyone he was a teacher there, I was trying to hide it because I really wanted to finish school and knew they would pull me to another one and I just wanted to pass Year 9. Um, and I was really scared of him in that moment, but having her stand up and be like, ‘Get in the car’ and he was like, ‘Stay here’ and it just went on for ages until she said, ‘You will never touch her again, get away from her, you understand me’ and I was sort of like, seeing somebody so easily, ‘cause everything in my childhood was unspoken or whispered, to have somebody outright say, ‘I know who you are, get the fuck away from her’ that was pretty cool. And he lived in a suburb close to where I lived and I ran into him quite a bit. Maybe three times I ran into him. That’s how I found out he was married. We played friendly. And I was just really surprised at how short and fat he was. I guess seeing him being a lot taller, you know when you’re smaller, literally the physical size is quite scary.

For ID015, this moment of intervention, credited to her own actions and the intervention of a social worker, permanently diminished her stepfather and allowed her to begin the process of adopting the survivor identity. The conjunction or confluence of spiritual fatigue and immediate danger with an exceptionally generous act provided a watershed moment that rejuvenated or restored hope and belief. As per the reflections of both ID013 and ID015, they have both experienced epiphanies, or startling moments in which a blockage is suddenly removed and a clear and a clear pathway is opened up.

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Epiphanies are a meaning-moment, they infuse the quotidian with heightened significance, where that significance is thought sometimes to emanate from, or at least suggest, a ‘divine’ or extraordinarily beneficent intervention. Epiphanies are only available retrospectively, because not only the event but also what occurs following the event must be available for reflection on its significance. Epiphanies are theoretically available to everyone, but it is necessary that the yearning insight is attached to a view of the routine and the significant events that loom large and must be resized.

Unpeeling Complex Trauma and Moving On The discovery of suppressed trauma is an everyday occurrence for victim support service counsellors, as illustrated by the following response raised in the focus group discussions: FG2 VSS006:  I recently had a situation with a woman who is the victim of domestic violence and, um, the offender was in jail and was recently released on parole and, um, you know, having the victim recognising that when she would see him or triggered by memories or whatever that she would automatically shut down and disassociate. I’d been having phone conversations for quite some time and it wasn’t until I said to her, ‘You know, can I ask, has there been some previous trauma?’ Without me asking that question she wouldn’t have disclosed there’s actually a previous complex childhood trauma history there. So the recent trauma that she had experienced with the DV [domestic violence] is just obviously just triggering of trauma patterns and coping and ways of dealing as well. It’s quite often not the first thing that they will tell you. FG2 VSS001: I’d say it’s quite common. FG2 VSS003:  I’m actually thinking of two at the moment. Um, one is a woman who discovered that her husband had sexually abused her daughter and granddaughter. Um, she actually made the [inaudible ] notification herself and contacted police. And saw me in the context of what had happened to her daughter and grandchild. Um, and then she said to me one day, ‘I’m going to tell you something that

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I’ve never told anyone else.’ She said, ‘I was actually raped by a neighbour when I was thirteen years of age,’ and this actually happened in another country very close to Australia. Um, and then it was only a couple of weeks ago that I got a call from this woman after all these years, and this woman is now close to sixty [years old]. A police officer from the country [where the rape occurred] contacted her because a lot of other young girls as they were at that time disclosed about what this man had done … Um, and also recently a court case which has just finished, um, I saw the mother of a young victim, a young woman, of domestic violence and the perpetrator had actually gone to the family home. And so, in the process of talking with her she disclosed about her experience of fourteen years of domestic violence she actually experienced in her first relationship. And how her daughter’s experience had brought up some of those memories. But she in the interim, um, had been seeking support. She had the psychologist. And so, you know, while her daughter’s experience had triggered some memories, and the fear of the perpetrator, the threats he made that he was going to kill her, she felt that she had gained some strength, and she had learned how to cope. And to the point she said, um, ‘He doesn’t frighten me anymore,’ ‘I’ve gone past that,’ ‘I no longer feel fear.’ And that’s quite interesting, particularly with a threat to kill. FG2 VSS005:  I would say that my opinion is across the board, um, we, you know, rarely see those pure single-incident traumas anymore. It’s far more common that someone has poly-trauma, complex trauma, you know that really kind of pure sense of single trauma where there is not identifiable previous trauma. Where they might be coming to us for a housebreak, and that’s the worst thing that they’ve ever experienced is actually quite rare. You know, when you actually start to unpeel some of that stuff, poly and complex trauma is far more common than single incident. I’d have to say across the board, I don’t know if you guys agree, but—[Then the whole group indicated that they agreed ].

While the differential patterns of a narrated recovery are of particular concern here, there are also some quasi-universal milestones. Victims characteristically experience anxiety, by which a person is lacking the resources to predict immediate and long-term events, both positive and negative. Victims who describe an everyday life of anxious

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‘hyper-veillance’ have quite likely not been able to ‘move past’ an ­original trauma and repeatedly return to this original event with reference to their narrative immobilisation, or ‘being stuck.’ At the other end of the continuum of adaptations, we placed ID015 in the category of quest because she is engaged in meaning work involving reflection upon her recovery narrative. In particular, as below, she has adapted to the lack of safety or validation in her formal and informal networks by incrementally replacing the network ‘pieces’ or ‘hopscotching up.’ According to the account below, after reflecting on some quite dramatic events, including a homicide, ID015 engages a small network of ‘friends’ including people she views as above her station or circle. Once she believes herself on par or perhaps even superior to this set, or with individual people, she works on another rung in the ladder, so to speak. She systematically displaces into a secondary designation those who no longer serve to challenge her. She also makes reference to being able to be controlling in this respect. ID015:  Okay so I admire most of my friends, especially if they’ve been in my inner circle because it’s usually because I’ve viewed them as better than me and I’ve— I:  Do you really? That’s interesting, I mean you view them as better than you in what way? When you say better that’s a— ID015: In every way. I: Sort of noble. ID015:  Yeah in every way, not necessarily physically, but emotionally in life circumstances you know usually they’ve got something that I want so there is something in their life or way of approaching life or existing that I see in them and I go, ‘I want to do that’, or like that’s what I want. So at one point in my very early days, I chose very intentionally my inner circle and that were non-drug-using, non-smoking, non-partying, educated people who finished school and it was very minimal education, but I was the opposite of that, and I faked it and eventually I was able to absorb, sponge up the way that they sort of felt and thought and I bettered as a person, so usually the people who are in my inner circle I admire a lot and that’s why I scouted them to be part of my inner circle because I need to better myself and the best way to do that is by controlling my environment intake which is a bit controlling [laughs ]. Like I said earlier, I can be very controlling.

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I: That’s very logical. ID015:  Yeah so [laughs ] if I just surround myself with what I want to be next I eventually hit a point when they become my peers and I don’t feel better than them— I: Oh you don’t feel like they are better than you anymore? ID015: No, nah I feel like we understand— I: And then you move on to a new inner circle? ID015: Yeah, they may become … secondary friends, we’ve got a strong relationship it’s just not, you know strong every day. I can rely on them, I could call them, they could call me, if they called me and said, ‘Oh, I’m having a crisis my dad is dead and I need somewhere to sleep’ I’d set up my bed for them which was very special I guess because I don’t like people in my home. I:  So, would you say that your inner circle then has improved over the years? ID015: Absolutely, yep. Systematically improved with every— I: Iteration. ID015:  Yeah it gets better every time. Yeah and what do you think, what was the other part of that? I: That’s basically it, yeah the people you compare yourself to— ID015:  Oh yeah, and sometimes I compared myself to other state kids who come out of care. And it makes me feel really sad. To see the outcomes for some of my peers. I: And so you still have contact with quite a few of them? ID015:  No they’re just everywhere, you can’t, you know, thousands of them, you walk around you see them, they are homeless, they are on the TV being arrested, one of them got murdered the other week by her partner and her kids, and you know para hills or something and seeing that sort of thing I compare myself yeah to them and I feel distressed at their lack of ability to step forward. [Emphasis added]

In reflecting on how she became or is becoming a survivor, ID015 highlights the preconditions of her recovery evident in the sexual abuse she suffered as a child, the crucial intervention/rescue by one dogged social worker, an ‘oversexed’ life of high risk as a teenager and young woman, and the methodical approach she took to self-help and recovery. The instrumentalisation of a support network as a dynamic, alterable stepping stone is thus presented as a deliberate survival plan.

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The following commentary was offered by ID005, who expressed the belief that he overcame enslavement to affects that he identified with his victimisation. He said that he self-consciously permitted himself to express sadness and anger and saw this as acceptance, which was in turn a stepping stone to productive self-development. ID005:  I felt stronger and stronger as I went along, and more relaxed. And I felt like … I could let myself feel victimised. I could let myself feel sad. I could let myself feel angry. Instead of just being a slave to them. Which was great power to get. And to relax, it taught me how to relax … which was the major deal. And if I didn’t get that I don’t think I’d have coped with it, I still think I’d be sitting home now. And would have gone through a year of school, of uni. But, um, if it wasn’t for here I think my uni studies would have gone right down. I: Why? ID05:  Considerably. Because I was studying cultural science, studies and social studies, and, um, sociology. And it made me … If I didn’t have this I wouldn’t have been objective enough to do that kind of study. So now actually, I’m stronger as a student, doing sociology than I am … than I was because of it, which is great. So, you gotta see the good things of it … than the bad, because then, you know, you’d just be a victim to it.

Conclusion In matching up values and norms to interests and goals, the individual engages the social via formal and informal networks. Community organisations provide or fail to provide institutional support and, in this way, give ‘enduring relations between the structural position of actors’ at the level of social work (Hood 2012). These organisations also ‘possess ontological depth,’ that is, they are dependent on the alignment of values between community actors and agents and versions of emancipatory social improvement (Matthews 2009; Bhaskar 2013). In this regard, victim support agencies have come a long way in acting upon their understanding of their existence or mandate in respecting the dignity of the victim where the resilience of the survivor may be a work in progress.

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However, and as we have attempted to demonstrate in this chapter, that understanding maybe further aided where there is a sharper understanding of the interplay between the social world of support/non-support networks and the interior world of the victim-survivor. As we have shown here, the meaning work that is done by victim-survivors is not without pattern, because it is dedicated to reconciling belief, routine and pathway. Trauma has literally and figuratively pushed victims off of their pathway, with the consequence that they are often left in disarray, questioning that the path they were on was the path that they were meant to take. This, of course is the tragedy of criminal victimisation. The need to find meaning in events is placed alongside the randomness of a predation, even against the innocent child. And then the double-whammy: To convert the tragic end of innocence into a tale of resilience depends upon the transformation of the victim. Given that the metanarrative of neoliberal resilience ‘helps those who help themselves,’ the political ideological space of victimhood is impoverished. The focus is on victims as a talking-point for retributive crime policy or to demonstrate the miracle of the human capacity at reinvention, left to its own devices. In fact, the meaning work that is required is often enormous. It requires that the person understands that they have a unique life history with properties that set them apart from others. This is a work of discovery that ought to be consistent with the means of recovery. That is to say, if meaning work must be ideographic for the victim, so too is it necessary to represent that onto-epistemology in its treatment. In reviewing the reflections of survivors, that is to say those victims who seem to have worked their way onto a new pathway using a guide towards routines or daily logistics and a revised metanarrative or belief, we have attempted to relay the vivid accounts of their journeys. Although we are using ideal-types along three dimensions in order to help guide understanding and differentiate the attitude of survival, it is worth noting that the intrinsic and extrinsic influences are dynamic, with the consequence that an affirmative self-belief is (almost) always vulnerable to collapse. ID005:  This [is] a weird kind of oxymoron, but um … I felt stronger and stronger as I went along, and more relaxed. And I felt like … I could let myself feel victimised, I could let myself feel sad, I could let

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myself feel angry. Instead of just being a slave to them. Which was great power to get. And to relax, it taught me how to relax … which was the major deal. And if I didn’t get that I don’t think I’d have coped with it, I still think I’d be sitting home now. And would have gone through a year of school, of uni. But um, if it wasn’t for here [VSS] I think my uni studies would have gone right down … Because I was studying cultural studies … So now, actually, I’m stronger as a student, doing sociology than I am … than I was because of it, which is great. So you gotta see the good things of it … than the bad, because then, you know, you’d just be a victim to it.

Notes 1. Cognitive behaviour therapy is used to reconfigure how victims of crime interpret themselves and their place in a meaningful world. This requires a reflexive engagement with a series of possible stepping stones that actualise a positive understanding of the nature of meaningfulness for that individual. 2. This may make a person prone to becoming an object of the perpetrator’s speech (Bal et al. 1999). 3. ‘FG1’ refers to Focus Group 1 and ‘FG2’ refers to Focus Group 2. 4. The names of persons referred to by the interviewees have been changed to protect their anonymity. Here, the names of police officers referred to are replaced by ‘PO1’ and ‘PO2.’

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Frieze, I. H., Hymer, S., & Greenberg, M. S. (1987). Describing the crime victim: Psychological reactions to victimization. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 18(4), 299. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Halama, P., & Bakošová, K. (2009). Meaning in life as a moderator of the relationship between perceived stress and coping. Studia Psychologica, 51, 143–148. Hood, R. (2012). A critical realist model of complexity for interprofessional working. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 26, 6–12. Janoff-Bulman, R. (1999). Rebuilding shattered assumption after traumatic life events: Coping processes and outcomes. In C. R. Snyder (Ed.), Coping: The psychology of what works (pp. 305–323). New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jirek, S. L. (2011). Posttraumatic growth in the lives of young adult trauma survivors: Relationships with cumulative adversity, narrative reconstruction, and survivor missions. Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan. Jirek, S. L. (2017). Narrative reconstruction and post-traumatic growth among trauma survivors: The importance of narrative in social work research and practice. Qualitative Social Work, 16(2), 166–188. Jordan, J. (2013). From victim to survivor—And from survivor to victim: Reconceptualising the survivor journey. Sexual Abuse in Australia and New Zealand, 5(2), 48–56. Kenyon, E., & Heath, S. (2001). Choosing this life: Narratives of choice amongst house sharers. Housing Studies, 16(5), 619–635. Landenburger, K. M. (1998). The dynamics of leaving and recovering from an abusive relationship. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, and Neonatal Nursing, 27(6), 700–706. Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Coping and adaptation. In The handbook of behavioral medicine (pp. 282–325). New York: Guilford. Maddi, S. R. (1970). The search for meaning. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 17, 134–183. Maddi, S. R. (1998). Creating meaning through making decision. In P. T. P. Wong & P. M. Fry (Eds.), The human quest for meaning: A handbook of psychological research and clinical applications (pp. 3–26). Mahwah and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Matthews, R. (2009). Beyond “so what?” criminology: Rediscovering realism. Theoretical Criminology, 13(3), 341–362.

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McGarry, R., & Walklate, S. (2015). Victims: Trauma, testimony and justice. Abingdon: Routledge. McKown, D. B. (1975). The classical Marxist critiques of religion: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kautsky. Berlin: Springer. Neimeyer, R. A. (2001). The language of loss: Grief therapy as a process of meaning reconstruction. In R. A. Neimeye (Ed.), Meaning reconstruction and the experience of loss (pp. 261–292). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Park, C. L. (2005). Religion and meaning. Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2, 357–379. Park, C. L., & Ai, A. L. (2006). Meaning making and growth: New directions for research on survivors of trauma. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 11(5), 389–407. Park, C. L., & Blumberg, C. J. (2002). Disclosing trauma through writing: Testing the meaning-making hypothesis. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 26, 597–616. Park, C. L., Aldwin, C. M., Fenster, J. R., & Snyder, L. B. (2008). Pathways to posttraumatic growth versus posttraumatic stress: Coping and emotional reactions following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 78(3), 300–312. Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press. Rose, N. (1990). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private self. London: Taylor & Francis and Routledge. Rose, N. (1998). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power, and personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roy, S. C. (1988). An explication of the philosophical assumptions of the Roy adaptation model. Nursing Science Quarterly, 1(1), 26–34. Ryland, E., & Greenfeld, S. (1991). Work stress and well-being: An investigation of Antonovsky’s Sense of Coherence model. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 6, 39–54. Taylor, S. E. (1983). Adjustment to threatening events: A theory of cognitive adaptation. American Psychologist, 38(11), 1161. Thompson, S. C., & Janigan, A. S. (1988). Life schemes: A framework for understanding the search for meaning. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 7, 260–280. Ulmer, A., Range, L. M., & Smith, P. C. (1991). Purpose in life: A moderator of recovery from bereavement. Omega, 23, 279–289.

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Unruh, A. M. (2007). Spirituality, religion, and pain. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 39(2), 66–86. Weber, M. (1930). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin. Weber, M. (1994). Weber: Political writings, Cambridge texts in the history of political thought (P. Lassman, Ed. and R. Speirs, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wong, P. T. P. (1993). Effective management of life stress: The resource-congruence model. Stress Medicine, 9, 51–60. Wong, P. T. P., & Fry, P. S. (Eds.). (1998). The human quest for meaning: A handbook of psychological research and clinical applications. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Wood, R., & Bandura, A. (1989). Social cognitive theory of organizational management. Academy of Management Review, 14(3), 361–384. Zika, S., & Chamberlain, K. (1987). Relation of hassles and personality to subjective well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 155–162.

6 Meaning Work and Chance

Fitness to the Metanarrative—The Macro Socio-cultural Context Like all people, victims reflect on their lived experience, and this is dependent on a generic assumption concerning the role of volition or individual agency in day-to-day affairs. It is therefore important to identify the persuasive views—or metanarratives—by which most people evaluate themselves and provide themselves with a schemata or cognitive roadmap. These may offer spiritual nurturance, solace or structural support and suggests a place (or placement) on a difficult journey. As suggested by the bracketed caveat, this is not to say that such schemata or belief systems are always supportive or tailored to individual circumstance. Although there is no objective standpoint from which we may be certain to know this, it is reasonable to conjecture that some people may be using a roadmap that runs counter and provides an impediment to their recovery journey. Determining when this may be the case will may only be partially clear where a person has been long immobilised by discomfiture.1 In any event, and as

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per our discussion in Chapter 5, we view victimisation as an attitude to an event that must be incorporated into a worldview or Weltanschauung. Everyone who is educated, nurtured and normalised to live and (perhaps) thrive is socialised or instructed on the practices of a proper ontology and attitude. There is no contract, but it is implicit (and sometimes quite explicit) that in a society that ideologically follows a neoliberal doctrine, governments and citizens place great emphasis on self-development and self-help. This is predicated on the belief that (social, cultural or economic) capital is wasted where individuals do not maximise their potential. That underachieving may constitute a ‘sin’ against the eufunction or efficient operation of society is also consistent with the (somewhat structural, functionalist) belief that social and political systems are weakened when people come to depend on a ‘nanny state’ (Murray 1994). In liberal democratic states, there is an alignment between the terms of the political- and social economy of self-identity. Where the former is supported by neoliberal values, the latter is supported by precepts of the therapeutic or care community. No doubt there is much necessary overlap, but random misfortune can and does challenge the relation between attitude, expectation and reward.

The Entrepreneurial Self Entrepreneurial self-identity or the entrepreneurial self is at the apex of culture in the neoliberal ‘meritocracy’ (Cruise 2017; Giddens 1991; Earley 1993). The rewards of a strong enculturation according to the spirit of bonanza is a deep sediment, as illustrated by the resonance of rags to riches tomes like Horatio Alger and The Great Gatsby, among countless others. In the economic context of finance or ‘casino capitalism,’ the individual is archetypically an investor or risk-taker, a ‘slumdog millionaire’ who rises from the ghetto to attain riches and fame. Most business start-ups fail, yet it is through economic actualisation that self-actualisation is deemed to be most fully realisable. Risk-taking is a necessity of economic advancement, which in turn reduces vulnerability to social predations.

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In support of this Weltanschauung, even those who start off the blocks in a weak position must ‘make their own chances.’ That the economically and socially disadvantaged have limited resources with which to make good bets is true enough (Pikkety and Saez 2014), but only reinforces the political ideology’s strong social Darwinian affirmation that the onus is on the individual to change those circumstances. As famously articulated by Margaret Thatcher, individuals may volunteer to provide charity to those disadvantaged by misfortune, but there should be no expectation that ‘society’ owes anyone a living or should provide a safety net; on the contrary, government should deliberately restrict interventions that serve to take responsibility for individual improvement away from the individual (Murray 1994). In this macrosocio-cultural context, the remedy for and causes of victimhood will tend to be understood as dependent on individual resilience rather than social support, with the onus residing with the individual to maximise their chances against unpredictable adversity—a conditionality to be celebrated as an antecedent to economic vitality (Donzelot 2008).2

The Nurtured Self: Therapeutic Discourse Meaning or signification is also framed by the therapeutic environment and discourse. Whether the self is empty (Cushman 1990, p. 599) and needs to be ‘soothed and made cohesive by becoming filled up’ with consumer products or other nurturing properties or is instructed to develop mastery over emotions (Hazelden 2003), the therapeutic discourse sets out the contours of nurturance but is not detached from the ideological values of neoliberalism. Nikolas Rose (1990, 1998) and Anthony Giddens (1991) have explored how the modern. western ‘regime of the self ’ incorporates liberal values including autonomy, individuality, liberty and the freedom to choose. Rose has argued that we now ‘interrogate and narrate’ ourselves as ‘psychological beings’ such that the ‘inner life holds the secrets [of ] identity which [we] are to discover and fulfil, which is the standard against which the living of an “authentic” life is to be judged’ (1998, p. 22). Following Foucault (1990), and concerned to understand the

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‘practices in which persons are understood and acted upon,’ he refers to ‘the intellectual and practical techniques that have comprised the instruments through which being has historically constituted itself ’ (Rose 1998, p. 23). Like Foucault, Rose is interested in interrogating how and when human actions are viewed as non-normative—that is, degenerate, maladjusted, sick, troublesome or dangerous. A recent illustration of the therapeutic self may be found in the applications of resilience theory (Luthar et al. 2000; Brown 2006; Richardson 2002; Yates and Masten 2004; Worthington and Scherer 2004). In line with Luthar et al. (2000, p. 543), who argue that ‘work on resilience possesses substantial potential for augmenting the understanding of processes affecting at-risk individuals,’ Richardson (2002, p. 307) argues that resilience refers to a ‘force that drives a person to grow through adversity and disruptions,’ and that there have been three waves of inquiry into this phenomenon. Worthington and Scherer (2004, p. 385) note that health resilience is dependent on reducing stress emotions (such as anger and resentment) and increasing positive emotions (such as empathy and compassion), and based upon direct empirical research, they argue that forgiveness ‘is related to health outcomes and to mediating physiological processes in such a way as to support the conceptualisation that forgiveness is an emotion-based coping strategy.’ Brown (2006, p. 43) interviewed 215 women on their experience of shame to identify ‘the various processes and strategies women use to develop shame resilience.’ She notes that ‘mutually empathic relationships,’ ‘critical awareness’ and the freedom to ‘speak shame’ are shame resilience boosters. Greene et al. (2004, p. 75) interviewed psychologists and found that personal attitude, spirituality/religion, education and multilevel (formal, institutional, informal) attachments or bonds are the conditions that buffer stress and contribute to coping and resilience. From the perspective of public policy, what counts is what is most likely to happen to most of the people most of the time. The path to health is provided by stepping stones, each of which is determined by the probability of recovery, according to research measuring the experiences of large cohorts (Stroup et al. 2000). Analysts have also undertaken to mine the terrain between the ‘objective’ diagnosis of traumatic

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events and the ‘subjective’ interpretation or absorption of such events into one’s self-image and identity. ‘Personalised medicine,’ which emerged in the early 1990s, refers to the effort to push away from the centre of medicine’s claims and counterclaims of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model in favour of ‘knowledge about individual specificity and variability’ (Tutton 2012, p. 1721). Of course, people do try to match themselves to idealised others and stuff their own experiences into the templates or schemata on offer by expert diagnosticians. Yet therapists are aware that a patient’s ideal model must be tailored, as there is no one-size-fits-all. The narratives of wellbeing are strongly situated. A meek person is edged towards some safe risks, while a brash person is invited to reflect upon others’ needs or feelings. By contrast, there is no presumption that the person is recovering so that they can live self-sufficiently in a remote wilderness. Overall, those therapeutic models must have sufficient nuance, and must be attentive to the real possibility that patients may have a false positive relationship with the proffered template. Socialisation, and versions of the self, track along with regard to deviation from an ideal neoliberal subjectivity. As per Giddens (1991), even though self-identity is dependent on self-understanding, through the sieve of neoliberalism the therapeutic discourse is heavily steeped in self-help. This context of meaning or signification is experienced by victims as an encumbrance from which they must make good an escape, the ideologically correct course of action being to assume upon themselves the burden of responsibility for their victimisation (Cruickshank 1993). They are measured against the normative ‘good’ of the entrepreneurial self. Under the neoliberal doctrine, victims are told not to wait for the ‘big bad state’ to overcome their vulnerability to predation or provide them with a remedy for it. To the extent that victims show fitness to this metanarrative, they will be reluctant to seek social services and will believe that doing so may be counterproductive to recovery. No doubt, there is a quandary as the victim is told that, from a therapeutic perspective, she ought not to engage in self-blame despite the temptation while at the same time taking self-defence classes to help overcome her vulnerability and to wrest a sense of confidence and self-control out of the wreck of an inward-looking malaise.

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Meaning Work and the Chance of Victimisation According to Janoff-Bulman and Frieze (1983, p. 1), the psychological distress experienced by victims is largely due to the ‘shattering of basic assumptions held about themselves and their world,’ including ‘(1) the belief in personal invulnerability; (2) the perception of the world as meaningful; and (3) the view of the self as positive.’ They argue that a rebuilding of the presumptive world is a necessary step in the recovery process. As per the above, the ideals of the nurtured and entrepreneurial self are sometimes in conflict; that tension is on bright display when the cultivation of risk is opposed to the random application of hardship. For the complex poly-victim, the belief in invulnerability may be shattered early on. Where a person experiences childhood abuse at the hands of a trusted authority such as a mature relative, the basic assumption about childhood and maturation is contradicted, as individual experience is opposed to cultural or social representations. This is linked, as per Janoff-Bulman and Frieze’s observation, to the perception that as individuals we are engaging in a meaningful world. After a shattering experience of childhood trauma, victims are likely to experience—as per Janoff-Bulman and Frieze’s third point—an exclusion from whatever meaningfulness there may be in the world. The self is viewed as damaged, and the worldview is eclipsed by negative trauma. That human beings seek to perceive the world as meaningful accords with findings regarding a just world hypothesis. Montada and Lerner (1998) have compiled several studies that demonstrate that people will tend to equate victimisation with desert. In other words, if students are shown fellow students being victimised, they will want to believe that there was a method in the selection of suffering, particularly where the suffering is inflicted intentionally by human actors. Similarly, experimental research by Lerner and Miller (1978) found, in line with the just world hypothesis, that people have a need to believe that they live in a world where people get what they deserve (good people are rewarded and bad people punished)—and that this belief predicts people’s reaction to the suffering of others who ought to be construed as innocent. Further, Rubin and Peplau (1975, p. 65) found that believers in a just world are more religious, authoritarian and oriented towards the

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internal control of reinforcements such as delayed gratification: ‘They are also more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups.’ Meaning work is challenged where the individual attempts to incorporate into a consistent worldview a neoliberal metanarrative, a therapeutic discourse of the self and a personal situation in which adversity appears to be a random act as opposed to the result of divine retribution. A view that life has meaning is challenged where adversity strikes despite demonstrable efforts to assimilate or normalise the self to accord with these schemata. As we shall see, adjustments in how victims perceive their life history unfolding are in good measure triggered by events that have a significance that does not align with what these templates provide—hence the need to tailor victim narratives.

Chance and Meaningful Order One key but often discounted feature of the victim narrative is the incorporation of chance, fate or luck into one’s view of justice, redemption or recovery. In this section, we examine how a view of chance may augment what is already a rich literature on meaningfulness. We explore how chance has an interceding and perhaps even directing influence in the reflexive dimension of recovery or narrative readjustment or exploration. The view of the self as inescapably unlucky or fated with poor chance may well be objectively understandable, given that victimisation and especially brutal victimisation is arguably a product of one or more types of chance. As per our division of the cohort, it stands to reason that complex poly-victims will have a slightly different impression than simple victims of the influence of uncontrollable forces on their narrative experiences and aspirations. The understanding of meaningful social action has required, according to Smith (1993) and Popper (1957) that we discount the impact or role of chance in sociological models. Smith (1993) argues that the reality of chance has been foreign to sociology or viewed merely as a marginal category and ‘a measure of ignorance’ (Poincare in Smith). Smith (1993, p. 514) asserts that chance:

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is not residual but should be analysed, in general, within sociological models. Indeed, since social chance refers to unforeseen occurrences, it must, by definition, form a general, putative, explanatory element within analytical models for it is only when examining past events through such general models, that researchers are able to distinguish specific chance occurrences from events explained in terms of ‘structure/action.’

Smith notes that in developing his ideal types, Weber (1930) holds that sociology should be concerned with meaningful actions. Although Weber accepted that there is a role for luck or chance at the level of individual competition and in ‘chance causation,’ he nonetheless instructs sociologists to adapt models to un-incorporate chance. On the other hand, and as summarised by Smith (1993, p. 517) Karl Popper (1957) argues that chance has made a major contribution to understanding the indeterminacy of social life. Popper (in Smith 1993. p. 517) argues that there are unforeseen, chance consequences of people’s purposive actions, a type of chance occurrence that he believes should be the main study for social scientists. Social scientists, according to Popper (in Smith 1993, p. 517) need to understand ‘the significance of chance in shaping the indeterminacy of social life.’ Victimity is a chance encounter that may to some extent determine further social or casino chances.

Social Chance Human evolution is dependent on adaptive mutations. Random mutations and ‘genetic drift events’ are effects of chance that constitute the main driver of evolutionary change (Gould 2002). Much is determined by the random apportioning of beneficial genetic material. Intelligence, which is largely determined by genetics, broadens life chances (Deary et al. 2009). This is not to say that environment or nurture is not also determinative, but from the point of view of the emerging individual, that too is a lottery that has been significantly won or lost (Phillips and Schonkoff 2000, pp. 5–10) by the time a person has the capacity to dwell on it. Sociologists speak of ‘life chances’ to refer to the economic and social profiles of people. Frank (2016, unpage) notes that ‘the one dimension of personal luck that transcends all others is to have been born

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in a highly developed country.’ In addition to the relative national or country or residency wealth, the family, as a social structure, represents one of the mechanisms by which equality of opportunity is supported or hindered. People are born into family and social environments that go a long way to predicting their prospects for a good quality of life. So, for instance, studies have shown that a person’s prospects are dependent on ‘her parents’ position in the distribution of advantage’ (Swift 2005, p. 256). Even in highly developed countries, people have a better than average chance of a high quality of life if they come from families that have more social, cultural and economic capital at their disposal to support educational opportunities, refined social and cultural opportunities, and vocational or career aspirations. We refer to this as social chance. Lippert-Rasmussen (2014, p. 1) argues that there are four ways in which luck is a feature of human life. Two of these are consistent with what is understood as social chance. Thus, ‘constitutive luck’ refers to the inherited genetic profile that makes some people more likely to live well, while ‘antecedent causal luck’ refers to the nurturing dimension of our backgrounds, including the presence of a positive and stimulating environment. Citing Nagel (1979), Lippert-Rasmussen notes that when these are combined with circumstantial and resultant luck, what is left free from luck is not much at all. Thus, it is not surprising that the children of prisoners are six times more likely to end up in prison themselves (Victorian Ombudsman 2015), or that once a person has had poor antecedent causal luck, it is likely that more bad luck awaits. Indeed, as per Hindelang et al. (1978), Eck (2001) and others, it is social chance that underpins the distribution of victim proneness. As hinted at previously, victimisation represents a chance encounter with genes, offenders, justice officials, family and the therapeutic community. These are ‘luck of the draw’ encounters that, as research has shown us, are cumulative; one adds to another with each increasing the probability of victimisation. That the social chance of victimisation snowballs with each unlucky factor, is what is also discovered in the concept of ‘poly-victim.’ Social situation alongside the learnt expectation of reward or just deserts here has its inverse: those subjected to victimisation stand a greater chance of re-victimisation.

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For victims, chance depredations challenge the meaningfulness of events—a challenge that survivors, in particular, will make note of in describing their recovery pathway. Social (and biological) chances will predict quality of life, and these chances nurture and support unequal starting blocks.

Casino Chance The idea that ‘it is only a matter of time’ before one’s luck will change is consistent with casino chance. The category of casino chance encompasses a voluntary effort to overcome the limitations of an ascribed or achieved distributive profile. A person gambles for many reasons or affects: thrill-seeking, to tempt fate, out of desperation, or the artisanal challenge that may arise out of a self-belief in a special capacity or talent to overcome disadvantage or beat the odds. Choosing to play is normally accompanied by the expectation of a greater than even chance of misfortune; the initial stake, it may be reasonably expected, will be sacrificed in whole or in part to the betting. The so-called professional gambler has refined the elements of the occupation into fairly predictable sequences. As Gerda Reith (1999, p. 1) defines it, gambling is a bounded activity ‘within which chance is deliberately courted as a mechanism which governs the distribution of wealth among players as well as the commercial interest or “house”.’ Reith (1999, p. 1) argues that in today’s ‘age of chance,’ ‘risk, speculation, indeterminism and flux are our constant companions in social, economic and personal affairs.’ Despite that there may be for a spare few an artisanal, craft or even expert knowledge gained, culturally and socially there is a stigma attached to casino chance, derived in part from its identification with the explicit negation of the work or meritocracy ethic, or the value that the distribution of valued goods should flow largely on the basis of merit by earned achievement. In a meritocracy, it is only those differences in life chances that come from responsible choices, or those made from a position on a level playing field, that ought to count. Luck egalitarianists, Swift (2005, p. 263) notes, view all inequalities that are the result of differential luck as unjust ‘and give justice grounds for equalisation.’ As Swift notes, a

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more conventional view holds that it is necessary to distinguish ‘those mechanisms that, though a matter of differential luck, are constitutive of the individual and those that are not.’ If people are differentially socialised, ‘justice requires that those differentially socialised be differentially rewarded’ (p. 263). Of concern is the indeterminacy of social life as it is modified by chance events caused by purposive actions. What exactly counts as purposive here is a matter of preference, but we note that casino chance, as per our description above, depends upon a teleological action that may lead to a more or less known risk of deprivation or reward. All people, including crime victims, will sometimes engage in a deliberate gambit in the hope that it will lend their lives greater significance.3 For most dilettantes and from a social-structural perspective, casino chance is played in the hope that a bonanza dividend will be drawn according to fairness in the luck distribution, despite underlying efforts. There are certainly many people who become victims of crime as a result of choosing to enter risky situations. This is not to say that choices to achieve a high quality of life are equally available to people so that choosing to avoid risk will nevertheless still bring that high quality of life. It is also not to discount that there is a biological marker that will predict risk-taking behaviour. As the resurgence in biological positivism has shown, there are several mechanisms, including a low heart rate and masculinity (Choy et al. 2017), that are at play in this regard. Biological chances are also at once relevant and, it goes without saying, somewhat randomly distributed. The idea that the table should come around to giving them a good turn, after having been unkind to them, is a position that some victims of crime are seen to hold. It may also be said that many other victims are gun shy. They believe in taking no chances, and often stay at home behind barred windows believing that they are still very unlucky in the casino lottery, that the ‘house’ cannot be beat by them. It may be added that taking the chance to seek justice is also a bet against the odds (Chapters 1 and 7), because that table is also from their standpoint stacked against them. In this regard, too, they face a challenge to restoring a meaningful order.

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Meaningful Order The impact of a chance injustice or unjust chance is measured by the reflexive actor, who believes that she is either ultimately improved or better off, or damaged and disadvantaged by the twist of fate. Some people attribute their success to a lucky break. Others claim that a redirection following an unlucky streak was their saving grace in an otherwise bumbling existence. From the point of view of an assessment of the richness or fullness of an individual life, the attribution of a chance event as a grave injustice or a beneficent, divine intervention is the result of a retrospective investigation that can only be undertaken by others once the affected person has exhausted the last opportunity to mount a fresh resolve upon such events. Silver et al. (1983, p. 81) argue that ‘a critical feature of many undesirable life events is that they often shatter the victim’s perception of living in an orderly, meaningful world.’ Consequently, for victims, ‘the search for meaning is a common and adaptive process.’ The authors probe the mechanisms by which ‘individuals find meaning in their negative outcomes.’ Similarly, Janoff-Bulman and Frieze (1983, p. 1) have noted that traumatic victimisation shakes the ‘belief in personal invulnerability, the perception of the world as meaningful and the view of the self as positive.’ McIntosh (1995) argues that religion (like other metanarratives) may be understood as a cognitive schema by which people organise their perception and understanding of events that facilitates coping. Thompson and Janigan (1988, p. 261) put it this way: For many individuals, a severely negative experience challenges adaptive assumptions of a just and orderly world, of a sense of control and of positive self-regard. Individuals who are able to find meaning in experiences, such as a diagnosis of cancer (Taylor, Lichtman, & Wood, 1984), the loss of a child (Chodoff, Friedman, & Hamburg, 1964), or being the victim of incest (Silver, Boon, & Stones, 1983), have been found to cope better after the event, presumably because positive assumptions about the world and the self have been restored. Thus, there is promising evidence that finding meaning plays an important role in how people interpret and react to their environment.

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Using a post-traumatic growth inventory, Calhoun et al. (2000, p. 521) found that ‘openness to religious change’ was ‘significantly related to posttraumatic growth.’ Calhoun et al. (2000, p. 521) have used Calhoun and Tedeschi’s (1989–1990) concept of traumatic growth to test how ‘event related rumination’ may be impacted by a ‘quest orientation to religion’ and/or religious involvement. At the same time, flexibility or pliable cognitive processing is needed for trauma adaptation (Tedeschi and Calhoun 1995). As indicated by these observations, the adaptation to chance traumatic events may include the embrace of religious dogma. This permits the view that the experience of injustice and disorder is a matter of the limitation of the individual in the face of the divine. A consequent adaptation, as also demonstrated in the remarks of some of our respondents, is to seek to reassert a quotidian or small-world, everyday order wherein the divine remains an unpredictable mystery that is covered by faith. However, as noted in the literature, people as a rule do not prefer to view their lives fatalistically. They wish to believe that they are engaged with a just world, and they know they will occasionally be called upon to interpret the criminal depredation as an injustice, possessing an irregularity and outrageousness that must not be permitted to derail beliefs and expectations. For complex poly-victimisation the task is perhaps the hardest. The impact of a trust-breaking childhood victimisation produces a deep sense of foreboding, which is independently identified with victim proneness. There are many adaptations to this. The socio-cultural reaction to victimhood is dependent, in no small part, on the perceived role of chance and desert in the event. As discussed below, it is our contention that victim-survivors more or less attempt to develop a narrative that incorporates the relationship between the victim event, their worldview or sense of the order of the world and the perceived role of chance or misfortune. They develop a view of their relation to a meaningful/less world with reference to the significant events in their life and the ‘chance signature’ left by these events. In the following, we consider the reflections of respondents on disorder and justice, social chance and casino chance.

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Types of Chance or In/Justice Equivalencies— Pathways to Restoring Order Disorder and Injustice Many victims in our study describe an unjust, disorderly world. Some of them go to great lengths to assert a measure of the appearance of order through the restriction or exclusion of significant others—via a control narrative. Others reflect on how they first adapted to the disorder of violence and abuse by trying to find comfort in its familiarity. One victim-survivor reported quite matter-of-factly that she was attracted to abusive men and viewed such men as normal: ID015:  I was attracted to men like my father, it just seemed normal … my father was like that, he was violent and he sexually abused me and so it just seemed really normal and there was lots of men like that, because of their own history. There’s a lot of violent women too, people tend to forget that.

ID015 was sexually abused by her stepfather since before she could remember up until the age of nine or ten, and described the depth of trauma she experienced, which also involved physical abuse against her mother. She recalled as a child deciding to take action against her stepfather and intending to force the matter of his status in the family. I: So then your parents divorced. But how did she end up saying ‘enough’? ID015: She used to, when things were quite bad, she had a van, she worked full time. And I would, when I was hearing them argue, sometimes she’d leave, she’d say, ‘I’m fucking leaving you, I can’t handle this, we’ve got a child. How could you do this?’ I could hear the van. It was a loud rattling van, and she’d drive off and I’d think, ‘Fuck, she’s never coming home, I’m here alone’ and I’d cry myself in a coma, not cry myself asleep. And I’d wake up to her getting ready for work and all was good and normal. Um, so there was a lot more of that. But I think what ended up happening was that he was a … lecturer … sorry, he was a lecturer at an educational place, not quite sure

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where. And he ended up having an affair with one of his students. And I found a Christmas card full of naked photos while looking for my Christmas presents. I: When was this? ID015:  When I was nine or ten. Showed them to my mum. I was like, ‘Mum! … why is this weird lady, like what is she doing?’ and I knew as well when I looked at it because I waited about a week before I showed her. Just because I was not sure. But then he was really nasty, and like and I just thought maybe this will help her leave and then we can go somewhere and be away from him. So, showed her, and she hit the roof and left for like two days. And then he ran off with his mistress. And they are married now. And, yeah so that was what it was.

ID015 was able to connect the details of significant events to a recovery narrative on trust and betrayal. This involved an ongoing reflexive process, as demonstrated in her instrumental view of how she has engaged her informal support network: I: Currently, what are your primary forms of support? ID015: Okay, I keep a small support network. I’m really internally functioning, so my birth sister, for example, she had a really similar upbringing, her birth father was quite sexually and physically abusive I: So she was placed in care as well? ID015: No that was her birth family. I: So her biological father? ID015:  Yeah my biological mum, with her biological dad, different dad, he was sexually and physically abusive as well and her coping strategy has looked like regressing. I: How old is she? ID015: A year younger than me, so she’s quite a child in the way in which she processes the world and how she operates and she’s very naïve and has a lot of unrealistic expectations of family and people and despite her experiences showing her quite the opposite, so she needs a vast support network to be okay in her trauma, whereas I took my view of the world, the world’s unsafe, it’s dangerous and people are shit and I became my own parent and sort of did that myself especially when you’re in care and don’t have a parents [sic] role model or somebody you can trust, you sort of start to do it by yourself and it becomes normal

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and comfortable so at the end there well coming out of that what I find now is that I have a lot of trouble forming wide social groups of support, so I usually keep one or two people close to me at most, um I sometimes have an extended network, so my inner circle is one or two people, my secondary inner circle is for me far more superficial but usually for the other people they are more connected to me than I am to them and that can be two, three maybe up to six people but they are usually people I’ve known for a long time, we’ve got a lot of trust and some of them live interstate now. [Emphasis added]   … And I could rock up and sleep on their couch for two weeks it’s a bit more of a family type thing but we’re not necessarily close in a lot of ways, but we’ve already worked for a few years to develop that relationship so it’s sorta on the backburner, and I have heaps of acquaintances and colleagues who all feel more connected to me than I do to them, so I don’t feel like they support me at all, I don’t feel like I have much support. My secondary support network offers me support, back up, if I need a place to crash or I’d often ask them, I’d rather just fall back on a service if I can. My internal network which is at the moment one person, usually quite challenging so they challenge me on my shit and my trauma and they’re usually very educated professionals in the trauma field because I’m quite interested in that so we have that common ground. And in that they’re quite excellent.

Counsellors try to work with victim-survivor’s expectations that good works will be rewarded. In the regional focus group, one of the counsellors noted that an adjustment to one’s worldview is a good part of the work of developing a recovery narrative for survivors: FG14 VSS005: I think one of the biggest things that changes after a trauma is somebody’s view of their world, and that really significant way in which they understand the world. Which is about connection and I guess that bigger stuff you were talking about around having an ordered pathway and making sense of what goes on around you. Because you have up from birth to when the trauma happens an understanding of the world as you see it. You experience it and then a trauma occurs and it just turns on its head the way you understand the world and then have to obviously put so much work into making shifts around that change in worldview, which is where hope comes from and reconnection and redefining what the meaning is for you.

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I: What about that belief, that issue, about having a reflector in a world that will provide positive support for positive action? FG1 VSS002: I can think of a client where there was an expectation around ‘if I do something, there must be an equal and opposite positive action coming back that must happen.’ So there was almost a taking on board ‘this hasn’t been my experience, but I’m now going to actively try to make it happen.’ And unfortunately it doesn’t work and that’s not sustainable because nobody understands how much that specific thing that they’ve done means to that person. So that’s a really hard space to navigate as well because it reinforces. I: Does that inform your counselling, where there’s a diminished expectation with respect to that reciprocity in terms of the world? The world isn’t being reciprocal. FG1 VSS002:  Yeah, and that’s a difficult thing to manage because you need to recognise how significant small things can be to that person, gestures, and recognising them, but also not wanting to perpetuate that and beat it out of them … Or buy into it too much, or set up an expectation. Because if you follow that or engage in that too much … it works here but it still doesn’t work outside. And I think that creates a lot of difficulty.

Social Chance ID010:  Oh, I don’t know how old I was when it started, but all through my childhood. I mean, I left home when I was fifteen and I took an overdose and was dead for a little while … they brought me back to life and they put me in a psychiatric ward and the psychiatrist said I had to get out of home as soon as possible … he meant mum. She had her own issues … he looked at mum and looked at me and said that ‘You need to get out of there,’ but the damage was already done, so moving out of home didn’t help matters at all. I:  Right, but you had a sense of who you wanted to be I guess in this, because there are people who end up, as you say, kind of reproducing the environment they were in and not being able to get out of the sort of cycle of reproducing it? ID015:  Yeah, I guess I avoided that by sheer panic, um, I was under the assumption that abused people become abused and generational abuse is pretty much just, 99.9% common in care kids and the outcomes for care kids are bloody poor.

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I: And so you were aware of that when? ID015:  Forever. I can’t remember, maybe under ten I might not have had an awareness. But as soon as I entered mainstream foster care I had a definite awareness of the low educational outcomes, that everyone goes to prison, I mean like I just knew, I mean I thought I would be dead now. That was literally how I believed it to be. I was confident that I would develop a needle addiction. And be dead. Or I would be in jail. Or you know as good as dead in my quality of life. So yeah.

One of the interviewees is a complex poly-victim who was separated from her biological sister to different adoptive parents when they were both one year old, yet they both ended up in sexually abusive families. As per other research, our cohort of victims is disproportionately from family and social environments that have proved an impediment to equal social chances. In reflecting on this, it is safe to assume that most victims seek to incorporate a view of themselves that both acknowledges the devastating impact of an unlucky social draw, but also (drawing upon the metanarrative described above) downplays as fatalistic or defeatist the view that nothing can be made of a bad hand. Here, against the social chance narrative, a discourse of resilience, proffered in the connection between the therapeutic and neoliberal political subject communities, is adopted as an antidote. ID005:  Because as a victim … you learn to live with the victimisation, you don’t sit in the corner crying. I mean a lot of people do obviously, but a lot of people don’t either. A lot of people have a bit more respect for themselves. But the weaknesses that come out of that become natural as well. You know the wanting to be aware of predictability of life, knowing the party that you’re going to be going to, you’re going to know everyone that’s gonna be there, you wanna know what will happen in the next hour … you do want some kind of, um, settlement in everything you do. ID015: Yeah so as a child it was survival sex working, shoes, clothes, safe places to sleep. And then as I got older I became aware of the sex industry as a cash exchange and that also played a huge role in combination with my therapy. Some of my therapy costs were covered by

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sex work, sex work also contributed to my ability to place value on my body and my time which had been taken away in child abuse and which obviously comes with its own set of complexities. I:  But you saw it as a way of transitioning from that feeling that your body isn’t something you had control over? ID015:  Yeah no control over it, no worth, so I was able to learn how to say ‘no,’ how to negotiate, that I can say ‘no’ because I didn’t think that that was a thing. So I met with a lot of women who were like, you just say no, you just say this, you set this, you own the room. So I learnt all these skills around consent and developed value for myself that stopped me needing to seek out sexual gratification to prove my template or, you know, like do any of that, and I used that money to funnel into more therapy and sort of it became its thing— I:  So in funnelling into more therapy you used the money, you actually went where for therapy? Who did you purchase therapy from? ID015:  I saw a bunch of private psychologists around the place, picked up different tools, paid for personal development workshops. I:  So this is where you would sort of canvas the psychologist and you’d say, ‘Thank you very much but this isn’t for me’ and get going on to the next one? ID015:  Yeah and I could easily do that, I could afford to. My self-care got better because I was able to afford the sort of lifestyle that somebody who comes out of care can’t afford, or somebody with my life experiences doesn’t just have, you know, nice, clean, fresh fruit and veg, comfortable living spaces, they are usually in slummy suburbs, you know shit stuff and so yeah that was really, really good for me.

On the one hand, social chance suggests that the draw of social goods tends to collect favourably for those already in a privileged position. On the other, there is a belief that all chances should even out over a lifetime.

Casino Chance Much criminological research has been devoted to the strains and pressures that are felt disproportionately by some, compelling and to some extent daring people from disadvantaged backgrounds to take chances

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at the pauper’s craps table, so to speak. Against the poly-victimisation research expectation, there persists a belief that chance cannot keep falling disproportionately on a single individual. As ID015 says, ‘It’s only a matter of time, it can’t keep happening forever.’ A prosaic example is one of our interviewees who was working the late shift at a fast food eatery, collecting tips as part of his wage, and who took a short cut through a ‘hot spot’ for criminal activity to make his way home late at night when he was offered drugs but was then robbed of his tips money. In another example, ID010 describes her risk-taking as a girl or young woman in going to dangerous places: ID010:  I was talked into going to this place one night with my female flatmate and her boyfriend. He was a member of this motorcycle gang in Plymouth called the Magogs—there were the black power mob and the Magogs, they were the big gangs back then—and they talked me into going, even though I didn’t want to go, but they said, ‘We’ll look after you’ … And then I went up there and they didn’t look after me so I’m thinking that they probably did that on purpose. But anyway, that happened, and I was with the guy I liked, even though he wasn’t good for me either.

A young poly-victim aged in her mid-twenties reflected on a series of misfortunes that had befallen her in addition to the sexual and physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather as a child: ID015:  I just had this really crass way of thinking and talking and my experience with the world was really dark, and then it got better but, you know the last twelve months I chose better things, and I made better choices for myself. I was really unlucky in the sense that my foster mother’s entire large intestine died and I was told she was gonna pass away and I had to fly out there and then she didn’t die and survived with 1% odds, but she suffered brain damage so she has no memory and that was following a major vehicle accident, that I had to get cut out of a vehicle while I was sitting next to my friend who was my main support network, and trauma informed person, wonderful worker who asked me to drive because she was too tired and I ran a red by accident, ran a red turning arrow, got wiped out

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at 70 k’s by two taxis and they cut us out of the car and I was sitting there watching her die. She survived also against odds, brain bleed, collapsed lung, broken pelvis, broken ankle, ribs, just everything her whole left side of her body, she didn’t walk for six months. I mean so having those experiences, I also like I fell pregnant while on the pill, I was on Roaccutane, so I did a termination because it’s birth defect causing which was really triggering for my past forced termination so that was all in a one and a half year sort of, one year actually it happened in eight months, all sort of crammed right in there. So even though I got a better understanding of the world and better choices, there are still things that happen to me that aren’t always about my choices. I mean the car accident, everything I could of [sic] done right was done, I don’t drive tired or drug-affected or, it was just an accident and they happen. My mum’s stuff was a direct result of her drug abuse over time and it was just not mine, like I can’t take any ownership over it, it’s got nothing to do with me, it affected me, and the termination again I was on the pill and using rubbers and had a condom break and did the follow-up and still somehow managed to get pregnant which is unlucky but apparently that actually happens so I didn’t know these things could happen to me if I started making good choices so it was really hard, I’ve been struggling again, even though I had a big break from that [inaudible ] system, I was literally just saying to my partner last night that it’s really challenging to keep this progressive mindset of ‘I’ve gotta move forward,’ don’t settle for anything unless it’s better than what I have today or better than what I think, I can always be better and want to be and that that in turn leads to a better life experiences for me. But it can be really hard not to fall back into this ‘Fuck me, the world is fucked,’ when I feel like I’m being victimised, by the world. Under eighteen I didn’t have any choice in that, and then I had a little bit of choice and I chose well, and then got smashed with another random circumstances, that are unreasonable and almost unbelievable. I think that it’s a bit of a cosmic joke and it’s really hard because part of me does think that, and part of me doesn’t, it’s sort of navigating that and at times that can be a really dominant thought belief system, it’s just I’m unlucky and this is targeted at me because I’m, like I had a belief system that I was built for trauma at one point and my existence was to be this punching bag of paedophiles and then when I turned eighteen I thought

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I was gonna die because I didn’t know what I existed for anymore, and it’s that sort of mindset of maybe I’m just here to suffer like, which is really grandiose in a way, but hard not to think when you have complex trauma, like really hard, massive issue.

In our reading, however, we would like to distinguish casino chance as seeking a good or resource, which a person does by returning to the game in the hope that luck will come their way. It stands to reason that some people will take the view that after being handed five losing hands in a row, their sixth hand ought to be winning. Behind this also is the difficulty of keeping the faith that the table is not fixed against the player. In this way, casino chance aligns with the view of a just world. In a just world the table is not fixed, and the persevering player ought to get an equal chance at a winning hand. ID010:  Because we made a vow when we were young, that we’d never get married or be happy for long but I think we need to break that vow … but I am happy. I mean, I know that it’s ok to be happy, but there’s always something that stuffs it up.

As we know, victims have a greater chance not of winning, but of losing. That some will maintain faith that their luck will turn around is testament to their resilience and faith or a lack of judgment regarding some conduct or behaviour. One complex poly-victim we interviewed saw that the risks she was taking were no longer in keeping with her developing self-image after she was fortunate, in her view, to have found a counsellor who ‘spoke to her’: ID015:  I’m really, really, really glad I pushed through and found a counsellor that spoke to me. And it was weeks and months even before I actually understood what he was saying, it was just him saying do this and I was like, ‘That’s fucking dumb’ and then one day it just all clicked and it was like this massive shift in my internal dialogue instantly, that allowed me to actually not be a victim of the world and to just be okay. And to take accountability for my part in trauma without taking responsibility for the trauma, just accountability for

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my part and my choices and how they impact what happens to me you know, like walking down a street dressed in skanky clothes at 2 a.m, you know, drug-affected, while it’s not my fault if somebody chooses to abuse me, in fact it’s all on them that they have chosen to do that to me, my choice to become drug-affected, not have a safe way home, be out at that hour, wearing easily accessible clothes, not about clothes that are sexually arousing, literally just about easy to take off, easy to be taken advantage of, I have a role in protecting myself from all sorts of circumstances by choosing better options for myself. Without taking on the blame of the abuser’s actions. It’s really, it’s a bit hard, to understand. A lot of people don’t which is really sad.

On another reflection, she found that her sex work was lucrative but challenged certain parts of her developing identity. I:  So when did that stop, the sex work? ID015: Ah, last week [laughs ] I became an occasional sex worker so there are a few regular clients who I’ve had for years, two or three people who see me once a year, and I still see them. So maybe three times a year if I’m lucky. Lucky is not the right word. I’m not even sure why I do it to be honest, because they are a regular and there is an ongoing relationship there and they also pay me a lot, a lot of money so, that’s really useful in the way of $10,000 is great. So people love that and you can put it in the bank by card or whatever, but that comes with its own set of complexities. It’s useful for a time but then once you’ve developed those skills it becomes maladaptive. It’s like, ‘It was great for a while but over the last two or three years it’s been more of a challenge than a blessing’ where it’s hindered me from engaging in straight, as they call it, employment. Or I’m at work and it’s 3 o’clock and I’m like, ‘Fuck me I made 600 an hour, what am I doing here?’ It’s peanuts and so it’s harder because you start to get trapped in this pool of ‘Why didn’t I stay with the glitz and the glamour and the money?’ you know but then at the same time, I’m not rewarded by that, I’m rewarded in my community work and the two don’t fit comfortably together, they are quite opposites. So it’s like do I choose to lean towards something that actually keeps me stagnant and is more in my past or move towards this future? So while I do want to be like, ‘Sex work was a part of that as well and it can be

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really great for people’ it has its purpose and you’ve got to really have an exit strategy like you’ve gotta have a plan and an exit strategy and adhere to it and a fucking great understanding. I can’t imagine people who haven’t been a victim of sexual trauma being able to disassociate from the experiences quite as well though, which could be quite damaging for people like I see how it would be awful. But for people who come from backgrounds of child abuse I think if you go into it with the right headset it can be great. And that’s also how I stopped drug use as well is I got concerned about my large amount of money coming in and thought, ‘If I use drugs I’m going to develop a very fast habit’ so I made an agreement with myself that if I used drugs I wouldn’t be working so I stuck to it, don’t know how but it worked really well for me.

She also spoke about resilience as bittersweet, inasmuch as her poly-victimisation gave her a frame of reference for the more mundane and vicarious troubles that people less affected by trauma may be deterred by. I:  Are you stronger because of some of the things that happened to you? ID015:  Yeah. I think both stronger and weaker. I think weaker in the way that I, well, I think it’s arguable. Yeah I think it’s definitely arguable. I know on a day to day, I feel a lot of pity for a lot of people who are suffering emotionally because of their lack of emotional intelligence because they haven’t had the experiences that have forced them to develop the tools to cope with life. So, I feel a lot of pity for people who see something on the news and are so deeply affected by that that it’s torturing them for days. Or people who ‘Why, why do we have this relationship and he hasn’t called me?’ and I just think, ‘Fuck me, you’re a pitiable piece of shit.’ And I think it in the nicest way, I’m compassionate but I just think, ‘Fuck me, like I’m so glad that I have enough tools to be able to regulate fucking the most horrific things that I can exist in the day to day without having my emotions sky rocketing up and down through the most basic everyday things.’ I can walk past something and not be so tortured by something, so I view myself as stronger in that way and I have a better understanding of the world by relationally I view myself as weaker because I can’t trust myself in or form strong relationships with people that are both sided,

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like I can’t ever be fully engaged in it like the other person is, and I think that ends up becoming a side of weakness because when times get hard, I’m more inclined to withdraw, to protect myself because I don’t have room for someone else to make an error. So, if you make an error in your relationship that’s another stress I have to worry about managing and that’s too much so I withdraw from my friendships and I do it alone. Which I—there is only so many hours in the day and so much I can do as a person so I feel like I miss out on a lot of support and a lot of ability to move forward because I think that everyone is stupid and they can’t make decisions for me because they are gonna get them wrong.

Finally, for victims, the upshot of taking charge of the table, so to speak, is that the chance of suicide is always lurking, the possibility might emerge through a small window that opens when reflexive self-understanding and hypervigilance are unsettled, broken or challenged. The chance that one takes may be the chance of death. I:  I didn’t ask you about that, so this isn’t currently is it? ID015:  No, no but it’s ongoing, usually attached to the lucky/unlucky headset, where you feel like there is permanence to bad situations, you look for a way out of that, and as a problem solver it comes up and like is it a solution? Or like to avoid pain through avoidance strategy: can I use that as an outlet? So when I get quite unwell, like I have to work with that and that’s when most of my tools were originally given to me, going around managing lows, so I view myself as a professional at not killing myself, like very good at it, I’ve gotten very good at it over the years, not so good early on, but every time I see someone on TV has committed suicide, or a friend or a past person I know it’s deeply impactful, because it serves as a reminder as it doesn’t matter how much you do or what you do it can literally just engulf you, and you are so dangerous to yourself, which is: I’ve been there and I know that it happens and sometimes I feel like I’m invincible because I’m so worded up and I’m so ‘Think!’ And a sex worker colleague, a year ago now, committed suicide, and she was very articulate like I was, and we described things very much the same, she described it as static in her head which is how I described it, which is why we bonded because I was like, no way, same experience, same describing, awesome. And

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so articulate, so educated, so well balanced. And one night she just killed herself. So, moments like that terrify me, because I remember that I have an illness in my experience, my experiences are an illness, if I’m not careful or if I don’t have enough respect for them then I can just die, it sort of feels like a bit of a terminal illness at times. It feels really— I:  So it makes you very vigilante? ID015: Yeah, well it’s scary, it’s even scarier because it’s not like I can put a lock on my door for it to stay out. I can literally kill myself and I don’t want that. So, that’s quite weird to imagine that I can do something to me that I don’t consent to, in a time of emotional reactivity or distress or anger, I mean there is many reasons why it can come up. But what, it’s quite abstract and it feels very unsafe.

Summary/Conclusion In this chapter we have explored how victim-survivors address the need to find meaning in the wake of the trauma of victimisation. We began by noting that a neoliberal and therapeutic discourse places a great deal of onus on the individual to develop their own self-help remedies. Resilience is touted as a quality or quantity that may afford the adhesive between the metanarrative and the personal biography. For many in the therapeutic community, it is hoped that through devices like cognitive therapy a disposition towards the trauma will emerge from the binding of a positive view of the world to a positive view of the self. Victims reflect on their lives, particularly in attempting to account for the role of injustice and chance; but survival demands a prospective outlook, so victim-survivors will toggle between a retrospective and prospective view. In that outlook, some victims seek to find solace by attributing to the divine the play of unlucky chance events. Many become hypervigilant, seeking to assert an order in a world assumed to be, for them at least, without order or principle. The use of alcohol and other drugs (AOD) ought to be considered in light of this necessary toggling between retrospective and prospective looking. Sometimes drugs or alcohol are taken to dull the vision of the past, and at other

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times, for many who do look forward and try to regain control, they are still troubled by such anxieties. For survivors who are fastidious about order and control and looking outward and to the immediate future, it is not necessarily hopefulness that something new and good will be arriving on the horizon that animates them, but anxiety that, from both a subjective and objective perspective, it is likely that the bad of the past will engulf them again.

Notes 1. As we point out elsewhere in this book, an objective standpoint from which to evaluate victim self-help protocols or decision-making is only available if one discounts the individuality and uniqueness of the victim’s position and viewpoint. We are trying not to do that discounting, although we may not always be sufficiently vigilant in this regard, and occasionally do find ourselves slipping into that default presumption. 2. The stratification of success according to place of birth and parental wealth does not lead the top 1% to be more likely to support a politics that seeks to empower the state to effect a more equitable wealth distribution. Frank (2016) cites a study by Page et al. (2013) that identified that this extremely politically active group is more likely to ‘resist taxation, regulation and government spending.’ While this group tends to negate the role of luck in generating their own advantage, Emmons and McCullough (2003) have found that recognising the role of luck and self-attributing as lucky tends to increase wellbeing measures. 3. As Robert Frank (The Atlantic, May 2016) reports, ‘people in higher income brackets are much more likely than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily because they work hard….Wealthy people overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time.’ He relates how Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker, credited a great deal of success to a chance seating at a dinner table leading to a Wall Street job invitation and the best portfolio at that firm at that time. Lewis noted: ‘people really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck—especially successful people. As they age and succeed people feel their success was somehow inevitable’ (in Frank, The Atlantic, May 2016, unpaginated). 4. ‘FG1’ refers to Focus Group 1 and ‘FG2’ refers to Focus Group 2.

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References Brown, B. (2006). Shame resilience theory: A grounded theory study on women and shame. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 87(1), 43–52. Calhoun, L. G., & Tedeschi, R. G. (1989–1990). Positive aspects of critical life problems: Recollections of grief. Omega, 20, 265–272. Calhoun, L., Cann, A., Tedeschi, R., & McMillan, J. (2000). A correlational test of the relationship between posttraumatic growth, religion, and cognitive processing. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 13(3), 521–527. Choy, O., Raine, A., Venables, P., & Farrington, D. (2017). Explaining the gender gap in crime: The role of heart rate. Criminology, 55(2), 465–487. Cruickshank, B. (1993). Self-government and self-esteem. Economy and Society, 22(3), 325–344. Cruise, T. (2017). Are we confounding heroism and individualism? Entrepreneurs may not be lone rangers, but they are heroic nonetheless. Business Horizons, 60, 257–259. Cushman, P. (1990). Why the self is empty: Toward a historically situated psychology. American Psychologist, 45(5), 599–611. Deary, I. J., Johnson, W., & Houlihan, L. M. (2009). Genetic foundations of human intelligence. Human genetics, 126(1), 215–232. Donzelot, J. (2008). Foucault and liberal intelligence. Economy and Society, 37(1), 115–134. Earley, P. C. (1993). Culture, self-identity, and work. New York: Oxford University Press on Demand. Eck, J. E. (2001). Policing and crime event concentration. In R. Meier, L. Kennedy, & V. Sacco (Eds.), Structure of crime: Criminal events and crime analysis (pp. 249–276). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389. Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality (Vol. 1, Robert Hurley, Trans.). New York: Vintage. Frank, R. (2016, May). Why luck matters more than you might think. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/why-luckmatters-more-than-you-might-think/476394/. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. California: Stanford University Press.

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Gould, S. J. (2002). The structure of evolutionary theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Greene, R. R., Galambos, C., & Lee, Y. (2004). Resilience theory: Theoretical and professional conceptualizations. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 8(4), 75–91. Hazelden, R. (2003). Love yourself: The relationship of the self with itself in popular self-help texts. Journal of Sociology, 39(4), 413–428. Hindelang, M. J., Gottfredson, M. R., & Garofalo, J. (1978). Victims of personal crime: An empirical foundation for a theory of personal victimization. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Janoff-Bulman, R., & Frieze, I. H. (1983). A theoretical perspective for understanding reactions to victimization. Journal of Social issues, 39(2), 1–17. Lerner, M. J., & Miller, D. T. (1978). Just world research and the attribution process: Looking back and ahead. Psychological Bulletin, 85(5), 1030–1051. Lippert-Rasmussen, K. (2014). Justice and bad luck. In Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/justice-bad-luck/. Luthar, S. S., Cicchetti, D., & Becker, B. (2000). The construct of resilience: A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. Child Development, 71(3), 543–562. McIntosh, D. N. (1995). Religion-as-schema, with implications for the relation between religion and coping. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 5(1), 1–16. Montada, L., & Lerner, M. J. (1998). Responses to victimizations and belief in a just world. New York: Springer Science and Business Media. Murray, C. (1994). Underclass: The crisis deepens. London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Nagel, T. (1979). Moral luck. In R. Shaffer-Landuau (Ed.), Ethical Theory: An Anthology (2nd ed., pp. 322–329). Sussex: Wiley Blackwell. Page, B. I., Bartels, L. M., & Seawright, J. (2013). Democracy and the policy preferences of wealthy Americans. Perspectives on Politics, 11(1), 51–73. Pikkety, T., & Saez, T. (2014). Inequality in the long run. Science, 344(6186), 838–844. Popper, K. (1957). The poverty of historicism. London: Routledge. Reith, G. (1999). The age of chance: Gambling in western culture. London and New York: Routledge. Richardson, G. E. (2002). The metatheory of resilience and resiliency. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(3), 307–321.

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Rose, N. (1990). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private self. London: Taylor & Francis and Routledge. Rose, N. (1998). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power, and personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rubin, Z., & Peplau, L. A. (1975). Who believes in a just world? Journal of Social Issues, 31(3), 65–89. Schonkoff, J. P., & Phillips, D. A. (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods. NRCIM, Seattle, WA. Silver, R. L., Boon, C., & Stones, M. H. (1983). Searching for meaning in misfortune: Making sense of incest. Journal of Social Issues, 39(2), 81–101. Smith, M. (1993). Changing sociological perspectives on chance. Sociology, 27(3), 513–531. Stroup, D. F., Berlin, J. A., Morton, S. C., Olkin, I., Williamson, G. D., Rennie, D., et al. (2000). Meta-analysis of observational studies in epidemiology: A proposal for reporting. Jama, 283(15), 2008–2012. Swift, A. (2005). Justice, luck and the family. In S. Bowles, H. Gintis, & O. Groves (Eds.), Unequal chances: Family background and economic success (pp. 256–276). Princeton and Oxford: Sage and Princeton University Press. Tedeschi, R., & Calhoun, L. (1995). Trauma and transformation: Growing in the aftermath of suffering. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Thompson, S., & Janigan, A. (1988). Life schemes: A framework for understanding the search for meaning. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 7, 260–280. Tutton, R. (2012). Personalizing medicine: Futures present and past. Social Science and Medicine, 75(10), 1721–1728. Victorian Ombudsman. (2015). Investigation into the rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners in Victoria, Victorian Government, Session 2014–15, No. 94. Weber, M., Tawney, R. H., & Parsons, T. (1930). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (Talcott Parsons, Trans.). New York: Allen & Unwin. Worthington, E. L., & Scherer, M. (2004). Forgiveness is an emotion-focused coping strategy that can reduce health risks and promote health resilience: Theory, review, and hypotheses. Psychology & Health, 19(3), 385–405. Yates, T. M., & Masten, A. S. (2004). Fostering the future: Resilience theory and the practice of positive psychology. In P. A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive Psychology in Practice 1. New York: Wiley.

7 Validation, Chance and Justice

What separates victim from survivor is the availability and finessing of the means (including techniques and justifications) beyond the existential human condition. Surviving is a reorienting claim of identity that has drawn on skills of reflexive adaptation. This untethers the victim from the legacy of trauma, inclusive of vulnerability (Fineman 2008), illness (Kleinman 1988) and indignity (Arendt 2013; Benhabib 2013). A complete analysis of this distinction would require testimony from both sides of this divide; but as we note in the introduction to this book, our sample only contains a partial record—people who are engaged in the affirmative project (of the survivor) who present to VSS. That said, as our detailed quotes amply demonstrate, each respondent has in some way experienced the shock of mortal vulnerability and offered at least a partial account of the view of the abyss. In seeking to understand them, beginning with how they use alcohol and drugs and more or less ending with a self-appraisal of their adaptations, we have juggled a number of concepts and themes that bring clarity to the victim narrative, and here we provide a synopsis of how these themes and concepts interact or tie together.

© The Author(s) 2018 W. de Lint and M. Marmo, Narrating Injustice Survival, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93494-5_7

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We began this study with a survey of self-medication by victims of crime, seeking some support for the hypothesis that self-medication increases as a response to the trauma of criminal predation and that this increase may be moderated where there is more robust informal or formal network support. Failing to find support for a moderation by networks in the quantitative analysis, we undertook to interview a sample of these respondents to probe these interactions further. A review of the survey data and some of the secondary literature suggested that understanding both self-medication and the attachment to formal and informal networks requires, in the first instance, a means of probing how victim-survivors describe the reality of coping with the traumatic events that brought them to VSS to seek assistance. We became aware that, in capturing those descriptions, we were listening to unique narrative accounts that involve differing qualities of introspection and reflection, suggesting that respondents were positioning their narrative identity in relation to the trauma event. In seeking to ‘do justice’ to these narrative accounts, we began to develop the view that it would be informative to analyse victim-survivor reflections on self-medication, support-seeking and the post-trauma journey, with meaning work an important qualifier. Consequently, we reviewed narrative accounts in terms of the view that victim-offenders brought to their daily routines and to a review of their recovery pathway. In this regard and borrowing from Frank (1995), Barnes (2013) and Jirek (2017) and from interviews and focus group reflections, we developed templates of four adaptations, discussed in Chapter 5, that we hope may be used by counsellors and victim-survivors to gauge or plot individual recovery pathways. As we have noted, the quest narrative is supported by the potential or realised epiphany. We have argued that for complex poly-victims such epiphany may well be forthcoming and may be a decisive moment, but this does not occur in a vacuum: the individual would have done a lot of self-reflective analysis on their identity and life trajectory. This work is only partial and we see much to be gained by further refinements and developments in this direction. In this concluding chapter, we discuss validation and chance in relation to justice. As is well-known to VSS counsellors (as per Focus Group 1 and 2), criminal predation trauma is subjectively interpreted

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and much therapeutic work involves offering validation. In the meantime, and as explored in Chapters 1, 3 and 6, to seek validation through formal justice process is to take one’s chances. In reviewing observations about seeking validation from the criminal justice process and other formal or informal supports, we were impressed with how deeply the recovery narrative was upturned and inspected, and that it was bewilderingly chancy. Since there will be socio-economic and other dimensions of the victim-as-complainant which will load the dice for or against a positive outcome, there is social chance in play. At various places the victim will decide or not to pursue or accept a remedy with the view that they will get no more from the house, so casino chance is also at work. Where the victim declines to take the chance, they must discount the value of validation that may have been forthcoming from the symbolic finding or determination by criminal justice actors. They must seek to progress the recovery narrative and the dignity of their position independent of the marker represented by a strong, affirmative criminal conviction and public repudiation of the offender.

Reflexive Narrative Strategy According to Margaret Archer (2007, p. 3), reflexivity ‘depends upon conscious deliberations that take place through “internal conversation.”’ It is ‘the regular exercise of the mental ability, shared by all normal people, to consider themselves in relation to their (social) contexts and vice versa’ (p. 4), and ‘the means by which we make our way through the world’ (p. 5). As she also notes, ‘objective structural or cultural powers’ are therefore ‘mediated’ by the relative force of ‘subjective powers of reflexivity.’ Possibly there will be some dispute over whether the subjective powers of reflexivity are necessary to make one’s way in the world, as Archer avers. Developing the relative capacity to bring to bear those subjective powers and achieve a coherent view both of ‘the world’ and ‘one’s way’ will be a challenge for people who are subjected to grossly disruptive events. In this respect, as noted in our discussion of chance, we are pointing to the centrality of a reflexive narrative strategy in the recovery

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profile of victims. To consider oneself ‘making our way in the world’ suggests a movement of the individual from one milestone to the next, where the identification of milestones will draw from self-reflection on what is truly meaningful or purposive, and what lies in the way of that meaning or purpose. A strong theme that emerges from the accounts offered in this research is how victims engage with formal and informal networks. This relates to whether and how these supports provide survivors with the means to develop a reflexive recovery narrative. As we have done in our consideration of chance, we would like briefly to outline a distinction in the conception or understanding of justice that resonates in our victims’ accounts of their experiences. Where the victim is a recipient of what we have characterised as a single, chance victimisation at a mature age, the response will be quite different from that of the complex poly-victim. In previous chapters, we analysed the case of ID004 and ID005 as simple and simple poly-victims who encountered trauma as adults. Their formative connections to authoritative validations would have supported a self-identity and justice expectations. These would incline them toward a view that they experienced a wrong where right is uncontroversial and needs a relatively immediate redress. If support networks and victimisation tend to be inversely related, then complex poly-victims (victims of childhood abuse) will have weaker support networks than simple (single-event) victims. Both groups are likely to have adopted a justice narrative that they draw upon to account for their situation, but simple victims (in our case, adults who report to victim support services upon referral by the police) will have experienced a fresh ‘shock to the system,’ and thus their view of the chance/justice relationship may not be as considered. People who have not experienced complex childhood trauma will have different expectations of the robustness or reliability of networks and the institutional resources that may be available. As relative newcomers to criminal victimisation presumably without experience of the remedies (or lack thereof ) of criminal justice, they may have a relatively innocent understanding; viewing the depredation as a shocking violation and clear

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injustice requiring a form of restitution. Not having had the experience of betrayal by an authority figure, they may, moreover expect, such restitution to be forthcoming. Complex poly-victims, on the other hand, will be less likely to believe that there is a system of justice ‘out there’ that can be solicited for a remedy. For complex poly-victims the view of justice and validation is different. There are those events beginning with the original trauma followed by a likely series of invalidating responses among the victim’s formal and informal networks. The reaction of others to the crime is what will inform a sense of either justice or isolation and alienation on the part of the traumatised individual. Those deeply hurt by trauma are often deeply hurt, as research has suggested, because they have been left to face the trauma without adequate support from others, including their family. Self-medication, as we have been noting in this book, is a response to trauma that serves many purposes, including that it represents a kind of backhanded validation of suffering and legitimate grievance, where such validation has otherwise not been (experienced as) received by the victim-survivor. The practice of over-indulgence in alcohol and other drugs (AOD), food (as cited by counsellors in the focus groups) or sex (as ID015 experienced) is a consequence of unvalidated criminal child sexual abuse that is so common that therapists generally expect to find the underlying trauma when counselling on such behaviour. In reference to the metanarrative referred to earlier in this book, everyone seeks to attach a view of the world to their lived experience to test how they might pivot and find the grounds to move forward. Much will be made of a chance encounter or even a single moment of solitary reflection that is reviewed as that pivot point, after which a new resolve and different techniques or survival tactics can be adopted. Some victims adopt tactics based on the view that their survival depends on developing and carrying out plans to ‘reconnoitre’ the quotidian or everyday events in their lives. Whether they do so depends, we suggest, on the reflexive review of their historical trauma. There is, for some complex poly-victims an event or moment which facilitates the epiphanous self-affirmation.

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Validation, Victory or Justice According to Kritias’s Greek play Sisyphus, gods and divine power were invented to provide a means of implementing justice in a human, social condition otherwise too rewarding of violence and avarice (Chaniotis 2004, p. 1). Divine punishment is a consequence that will be meted out in a wrongdoer’s purgatory or hell that otherwise escapes them in mortal life. Where individuals are not provided with the justice remedy and earthly retribution is lacking, divine punishment is an intervention that corrects that absence by threatening to erupt as collective punishment, perhaps by way of flood, earthquake or epidemic (Chaniotis 2004, p. 2). The argument that divine justice will remedy a human attempt to match the good to the right, or truth to beauty, is likewise a wish to remove the randomness or chance (with the banal and ignorant of evil) from the mortal coil. Human societies have developed by shunning these spiritual and developing naturalistic explanations and remedies to the problem of injustice. But although divine justice was naturalised, a core remnant remains. For example, in a trial by ‘ordeal’ or by ‘combat,’ in order for divine justice to take place, both combatants are expected to have equal strengths. This is still imbued in the adversarial system. The divine, truth or justice are interchangeable depending upon belief. For our purposes here, and from the standpoint of the victim, we may review the spiritual component in terms of chance. When a disaster befalls people, sufferers will claim to be victims and non-sufferers will deny their victimhood, but the line between misfortune and injustice is not, according to Judith Shklar (1990), fixed and permanent. Justice authorities as well as popular or lay opinion supported by technology, ideology or interpretation will set the line between misfortune and injustice, thus distinguishing victim and villain (Shklar 1990). Law’s truth is symbolised in the scales of justice. In an adversarial system, a just victory is not a victory of justice but the outcome of a procedure that was fair, presumably because it offered both sides the chance of victory. Lawyers will admit that victory is a concept that gains credibility to the extent that it refers to an uncertain outcome where a court

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of law is not a court of justice and, under the adversarial system, has emerged over the centuries from the idea that justice will be with the winning party in a fair combat. Equality of arms is a device or means that seeks to instrumentalise the authority of legality in the idea that a relative equality of combat will produce a more legitimate outcome. This legacy is rarely expressed or understood. On the contrary, and following Popper’s (1957) insight regarding society, we discount the role of chance in justice models. Thus, while it is expected that there should be sufficient randomness for each party to have the same opportunity to win, for an ‘equal’ combat between defence and prosecution, there is also a firm belief that criminal justice is akin to positive science. But if divine justice1 is a corrective for incomplete human efforts to provide the requisite earthly order, the foundation of our criminal process is reflected in both the overcoming and observance of these spiritual or fatalistic precepts. The relationship between institutional exigencies and values and the victim-survivor’s connection with formal networks inclusive of validation is a matter of great interest and copious victimology research (see Chapter 4). At first blush, the necessity of validation derives from a need for recognition of the violation imposed by the perpetrator (see Elliot et al. 2014). Theoretical notions of therapeutic jurisprudence posit that procedures involving and interactions with the legal system can have positive or negative effects on the mental health of those seeking justice (Kunst et al. 2015). As is well-known, the risk of engaging criminal justice officials and actors is that, far from the victim-survivor receiving the validation that may facilitate the road to a restorative recovery, or what has been called post-traumatic growth (Calhoun and Tedeschi 2014). What may instead occur is that the victim-survivor may invite the imposition of an additional burden of secondary victimisation. For the victim, justice is figuratively an act or series of actions that acknowledges and validates the fact of a wrong occurring. This is distinguished from self-help, or informal remedies not sanctioned by the state (Black 1983), where validation is provided by supporters the victim may be able to engage unofficially. Most victims will be deprived

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of justice validation in both these dimensions. They will not seek or be granted unofficial self-help and many will also decline to pursue formal remedies. The facts of the case may be deemed by police and prosecutors to be unfit for a prosecution. Their deep, personal hurt may be traded away in a justice (plea) bargain that lessens the subjective enormity of the crime. For these and other reasons, the victim’s interaction with the justice system is potentially damaging, insofar as it is a roll of the dice that is weighted against them. Unwilling to risk invalidation, and in the absence of strong formal validation, too many victims are left nursing a festering wound. As we saw in Chapter 5, a recovery narrative involves a path beyond the irruptive, traumatic event, especially where the event is experienced in childhood, or wherever it is subjectively dislocating of identity. Since most people need to engage a just worldview and most victims place a good deal of responsibility on themselves for their own recovery, their predicament can leave them in chaos or scrambling around for a sense of connection to the world enabled by routine, pathway and the guidance of a meaningful relation to the world.

Justice as Chance Correction Is justice an intervention against the lottery of chance? What is the nature of events that attracts the most strident call for a response under the banner of justice and where is the burden of that response? In The faces of injustice, Shklar (1990) makes the central point that passive injustice, by which she means a lacklustre refusal to act against those acts that cause great victimisation, is akin to oppression. For Shklar (1990, p. 46), such injustice is represented in the Arena Chapel in Padua, in Giotto’s Inguistizia. It depicts ‘a male profile … cold and cruel with small, fanglike teeth at the sides of the mouth.’ He wears a judge’s or ruler’s cap backward and carries a ‘nasty pruning hook.’ Under him is ‘the real character of passive injustice. There is a theft, a rape and a murder. Two soldiers watch the scene and do nothing and neither does the ruler.’ From the point of view of the victim and for Shklar, whatever the distinction between misfortune from injustice,

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which cannot be easily set, the result is not abstract but palpable and confronting. The inversion, chaos and disorder depicted in the image is a confluence of misfortune, injustice and invalidation. It reminds us that passive indifference to injustice may also be a forceful representation of a social calamity. Existential or onto-existential validation occurs, in good part, where recognition of victim experience is provided by social, cultural and political authorities. The image is from renaissance Italy when the official response to injustice would have been a public spectacle seeking to involve the whole community (Dean 2007). Criminal justice is transacted today in the hushed murmurs and cloistered discussions between lawyers and judges, according to whom the public is viewed as a nuisance and intrusion on the order of the court. In the meantime, although it is correct that victims have a figurative connotation which associates them with deserving good, this is inconsistent with the normative or sociological connotation, by which they are associated with a transgressive bad.

The Sociological Norm and Figurative Ideal The concept ‘victim proneness’ has been used by researchers to refer to an objective condition of vulnerability to targeting. As mentioned in Chapter 1, flag theory (Hindelang et al. 1978) suggests that some victims’ routines and lifestyles can be correlated with repeat victimisation as these routines and criminal interests intersect. Victims are people who are perceived as vulnerable. And as per boost theory (Hindelang et al. 1978; Tillyer 2014) and research on poly-victims, prior victimisation produces vulnerability to revictimisation. If criminal justice relies upon an attribution of victimisation, and people who have been victimised commonly attract more of the same, what is the relationship between common victimisation and justice? Here, it is important to keep in mind that justice is interpreted through the neoliberal lens as presuming, via the reasonable person standard, the necessity of prudent consequentialism. Untoward events have a chance signature, both in the built environment and in the social condition. That is to say, they may be expected to occur

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under conditions with which reasonable persons are expected to be familiar. People can be expected to avoid producing favourable conditions for unwanted chance events. As we have just noted, complex poly-victimisation is an accumulation of unwanted chance events, but prudent consequentialism requires the exercise of risk aversion according to a reasonable person standard. At the same time, chance is built into human institutions and social and political systems, with the intent and effect of providing a means of social reproduction that cultivates a version of normative subjectivity. Under the neoliberal meritocracy (Littler 2013) of western democracies, where just deserts is presumed to be based on prudence and hard work, distributive mechanisms are refined that support a reward structure that valorises individual initiative and innovation, especially in the denotation of the entrepreneurial self. Even behind the façade and the prescriptive edifice of the positivist law of the court, judgments will be distributed according to administrative and other discretions that will tend to favour a version of self-help. Consequently, there is no certainty that a rule will be applied, a friendly judge will be chosen to hear a case, lawyers will be competent or a novel interpretation of law will not be heard to set aside a more context appreciative understanding of injury (Kadish and Kadish 2012). If we follow much retributive and some restorative justice, justice actors seek to deploy their authority to penalise those who illegitimately challenge the (pre-existing) normative order. Yet, in the archetypal victimology and with regard to victims’ compensation, as Nils Christie (1986) has suggested, it is the victim’s virtuous vulnerability that counts. As Christie illustrates, a female pensioner on their way to a church charity who is opportunely robbed of her purse (containing her contribution to the charity) is worthy of receiving the strongest support from justice actors. One dimension of this view of desert or worthiness is the absolute separation between the actions of the victim and those of the villain. It was simply misfortune that the pensioner was targeted and the event took place. But it is reasonable to view the action of the pensioner as contributory, by opposition, to the injustice of the predation. If on the other hand by a reasonable person standard a person has been negligent, careless or even indifferent to a real possibility of being

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criminalised—for instance, by leaving their keys in the car—the worthiness and compensation are calculated as diminished. By more than just implication, as noted above, this ideal victim is the figurative exception to the rule. In most cases that reflect the norm of criminal depredation, the victim’s actions and associations will be documented on the contrary to subtract from their perceived worthiness. For most victims of crime, the edifice of justice falls down. What is clear from the literature and from our own interviewees is that most victims express a view of justice, consistent with Ewick and Silbey’s (2003) findings, that law is austere and remote and otherwise a game that is played and likely to be lost. As one of our interviewees intimated, many victims are not in a position to maintain bare life, let alone bang on the doors of the courthouse. Few have the emotional and social resources to spare for such efforts. For instance, in relation to the courts the problem of validation becomes a problem of evidence, and thus of testimony and procedures of cross-examination. The call for justice is an entreaty that there is a systemic, collective, corrective response to an event, but the response is in proportion to the ‘outrage’ of the event, an outrage that matches common expectations regarding norms and justice values. Justice is expressed by actors and processes to assert the stratification of values or expectations, not upend them. As evidenced from the descriptions of victims’ interactions with police provided in this book (Chapter 4), the early stages of the process of seeking validation is uncertain; and for those who have stuck with the process up to and including sentencing, there are many chances for disappointing results that fall short of the victim’s quest for formal validation. To advance their recovery, they simply wish to be heard and have their experiences recognised. But as an institutional discourse, criminal justice has developed self-perpetuating means and values that, as we have seen, are distinct from what victims are in a position to offer. As the literature on secondary victimisation makes abundantly clear and as we have just reiterated with reference to casino chance, it is not at all certain that a result will be a corrective of any kind, even were victims muster the resources to take a case to court. The justice process oftentimes is not a remedy to the chance injustice that victims have encountered and endured. It offers only a slim chance that the victim

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will feel fully validated. It is most often expressed to serve the victim who is not prosaically common but metaphorically worthy. The redundancies built into political and administrative systems mean that chance represents for actors the possibility that an outcome is not certain. In this regard chance is an affordance beyond the known or predicted outcomes of justice administration and may thus be identified by subjects as hope. In the United States, a death row inmate may appeal to the governor, the state supreme court or the Supreme Court. A sentence may be reduced on appeal, a person might be granted a conditional discharge or pardon, evidence may be lost or found, a parole board may grant early parole, a witness may recant, or a jury may decide to nullify or declare a verdict at odds with jurisprudence. To conserve their strength many victims of miscarriages of justice like victims of crime choose not to test the odds. They make themselves unavailable to the figure in the backward facing judge’s cap.

Note 1. This may be contrasted to the concept of ‘a victor’s justice.’ This refers to the critical evaluation of the deployment of the machinery of civil society in the extension of conquest by the winning side in a conflict. It connects to the realist view of normative behaviour in the international system according to which sovereign gains must be consolidated and legitimacy asserted.

References Archer, M. (2007). Making our way through the world: Human reflexivity and social mobility. New York: Cambridge University Press. Arendt, H. (2013). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Black, D. (1983). Crime as social control. American Sociological Review, 48(1), 34–45. Benhabib, S. (2013). Dignity in adversity: Human rights in troubled times. Chichester: Wiley.

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Barnes, R. (2013). “I’m over it”: Survivor narratives after woman-to-woman partner abuse. Partner Abuse, 4(3), 380–398. Calhoun, L. G., & Tedeschi, R. G. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of posttraumatic growth: Research and practice. London: Routledge. Chaniotis, A. (2004). Under the watchful eyes of the gods: Divine justice in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor. In S. Colvin (Ed.), The Greco-Roman East: Politics, culture, society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Christie, N. (1986). The ideal victim. In From crime policy to victim policy (pp. 17–30). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dean, T. (2007). Crime and justice in late medieval Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duncan, G. J., Yeung, W. J., Brooks-Gunn, J., & Smith, J. R. (1998). How much does childhood poverty affect the life chances of children? American Sociological Review, 63(3), 406–423. Elliott, I., Thomas, S., & Ogloff, J. (2014). Procedural justice in victim–police interactions and victims’ recovery from victimisation experiences. Policing and Society, 24(5), 588–601. Ewick, P., & Silbey, S. (2003). Narrating social structure: Stories of resistance to legal authority. American Journal of Sociology, 108(6), 1328–1372. Fineman, M. A. (2008). The vulnerable subject: Anchoring equality in the human condition. Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, 20, 1–23. Frank, A. (1995). The wounded storyteller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hindelang, M. J., Gottfredson, M. R., & Garofalo, J. (1978). Victims of personal crime: An empirical foundation for a theory of personal victimization. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Jirek, S. (2017). Narrative reconstruction and post-traumatic growth among trauma survivors: The importance of narrative in social work research and practice. Qualitative Social Work, 16(2), 166–188. Kadish, M. R., & Kadish, S. H. (2012). Discretion to disobey: A study of lawful departures from legal rules. New Orleans: Quid Pro Books. Kleinman, A. (1988). The illness narratives: Suffering, healing, and the human condition. New York: Basic Books. Kunst, M., Popelier, L., & Varekamp, E. (2015). Victim satisfaction with the criminal justice system and emotional recovery: A systematic and critical review of the literature. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 16(3), 336–358. Littler, J. (2013). Meritocracy as plutocracy: The marketising of “equality” under neoliberalism. New Formations, 80(80), 52–72.

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Popper, K. (1957). The poverty of historicism. London: Routledge. Shklar, J. N. (1990). The faces of injustice. New Haven: Yale University Press. Tillyer, M. S. (2014). Violent victimization across the life course: Moving a “victim careers” agenda forward. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 41(5), 593–612.

Afterword

Willem would like to acknowledge and share the words of Vaughen Zeeland de Lint, previously known as Kimberly, whose tragic story is one of the many who have come to a conclusion before being offered, and being able to seize, the chance of a reconciliation with justice. Kimberly was sexually abused at the age of 11 by her stepfather, John. She protected her youngest sibling from similar abuse, in the absence of maternal vigilance. A psychiatrist suggested that her mystery phone stalker, who was somehow able to find her new numbers as she moved addresses over the years, was also probably her stepfather, who stopped calling once challenged with identification. She experienced further traumatisation at the hands of two students, who tried to sexually assault her in an underground car park in Toronto, from whom she got away in a lucky escape, by running for a security guard she spotted getting into his car at the other end of the lot. She never pursued justice for herself, though she lived on a knife-edge of fear and devoted herself to right injustices against others. She developed chronic illnesses, including fibromyalgia, and was in pain most of her adult life. She became a passionate advocate for the lost and forgotten. She created a Carolina garden of native plants. She would lovingly rescue insects from the house for release. She could not bear the thought of death. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 W. de Lint and M. Marmo, Narrating Injustice Survival, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93494-5

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She could also not endure everyday sociability, because perfumes of any kind would set off migraines. Her innocence had been attacked but she still kept her elfin, humorous spirit until near the end. She came to rely on heavy doses of a variety of anti-anxiety medications (serotonin uptake inhibitors). She “just wanted to stop the pain.” Her life, precious and fragile, was mostly in precarious recovery, perhaps just one lucky turn from peace and belonging. Two days after release from involuntary hospitalisation in early December 2012 in Brighton, South Australia she ended her life. Her words: “It’s rainin’ somethin’ farce.”

Appendix

Self-Medication and the Pathway to Recovery Research has found that criminal predation leaves victims in a state of transition, or in one or more recovery adaptations. People traumatised as victims often experience an upside-down world, where the proper order is backward, and where their feelings or experiences are chaotic or lacking in order. Others may be hypervigilant or over-controlling of their environment. They will seek to put everything in place and take extra care to take note of every detail about what’s in their space. Still others may be scrambling to find a pathway and routine that matches up a positive view of the world to the injustice that they may be experiencing. For each victim of crime, recovery involves finding a unique pathway on which obstacles may be converted into stepping stones. This requires meaning work, or an attitude about recovery that matches a way of seeing oneself with a daily routine and a way of seeing the world. A routine of everyday habits may be either productive or disabling. Productive routines like exercise support rather than undermine progress on a pathway. Research has also found that a set of beliefs or attitudes that support a more or less positive approach to the tasks at hand is important. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 W. de Lint and M. Marmo, Narrating Injustice Survival, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93494-5

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For example, Kevin was assaulted after attending a nightclub with a one-punch blow. He was shocked by the event and began drinking five whisky sodas every night and stopped going to the gym. At first, this kept him from replaying the event and helped him sleep. However, this behaviour continued until his girlfriend said he’d need to see someone or she would leave. Kevin contacted VSS and was able to connect with counselling and start building his self-confidence. He permitted himself some, but not too much indulgence in his feelings of injustice. He acknowledged and moved on. He accepted that his drinking had been part of his recovery, but knew that he needed to get back into shape with exercise. He found that by accepting his change of habit he was in a better position. Everyone has a unique victim experience. Most people will increase their use of alcohol and legal and illegal drugs: research shows this is common and at times it may be helpful in supporting the achievement of short- and long-term goals. The path to recovery may start with the consumption of alcohol and other drugs but should not end there.

Index

A

Alcohol and other drugs (AOD) 1–8, 17, 18, 27–30, 38, 39, 46, 54, 75–79, 81–85, 87, 94–96, 98, 110, 113, 147, 200, 209

Criminogenesis 8 Cross-institutional input (therapeutic and academic)/knowledge exchange 33, 39 D

C

Chance and justice 205 Chance types casino chance 17, 135, 182, 184, 187, 196, 207 social chance 187 Complex poly-victimisation/repeat victimisation 5, 7, 8, 36, 37, 40, 54, 87, 187, 214 Coping mechanism 17, 18, 30, 56, 62, 63, 75, 79, 81, 82, 84, 86, 157 adaptive and maladaptive 57, 58 avoidance or detachment coping mechanism 17

Dignity 9–12, 16, 17, 19, 55, 101, 140, 167, 205, 207 Dulling or deferring engagement 77, 83 I

Institution-critical research 45 N

Narratives of (In)justice 1 Network support 28, 33, 38, 40, 206 formal 206 informal 206

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 W. de Lint and M. Marmo, Narrating Injustice Survival, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93494-5

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224     Index P

Prospective, retrospective and restorative justice 12 R

Recovery narratives chaos adaptation 143, 149 control adaptation 143 quest adaptation 143, 165 scrambling adaptation 143 Reflexivity/reflexively appropriative research 16, 29, 43, 45, 136, 207 Resilience 9, 10, 12, 17, 65, 66, 140, 156, 158, 160, 167, 168, 177, 178, 192, 196, 198, 200 S

Secondary victimisation 9, 96, 101, 102, 121, 211, 215 Self-reporting trauma 3, 4 Simple poly-victimisation/repeat victimisation 5–8, 36, 38, 40, 54, 87, 126, 149, 213 Simple victimisation 5, 7, 8, 36, 40, 54, 80, 87 V

Validation 2, 4, 9, 12, 15–18, 29, 38, 54, 86, 87, 91–95, 97, 100, 101, 105, 114, 116, 120, 121, 125, 126, 147, 149, 153, 165, 206, 207, 209–213, 215 Victim-sensitive research 43, 45

Victims’ (un)availability/hard-toreach populations 38 Victim/survivor discourse 1–7, 9, 12–17, 19, 27–29, 34–36, 38, 39, 43, 44, 46, 48, 53–56, 58–61, 63, 64, 68–70, 80, 85, 87, 91–94, 96–108, 110, 113, 114, 117–120, 125, 126, 135, 137, 140–142, 145, 147, 149–151, 156–158, 160, 163, 164, 167–169, 179, 181, 183, 186, 187, 192, 196, 198, 201, 205, 207, 208, 210–216, 221, 222 Victim vs. survivor 2, 3, 6, 10, 12, 14–17, 19, 29, 44, 45, 47, 83, 87, 122, 141, 142, 168, 187, 188, 190, 200, 206, 209, 211