Childhood Victimization Violence, Crime, and Abuse in the Lives of Young People

Children are the most criminally victimized segment of the population, anda substantial number face multiple, serious "poly-victimizations"during a singleyear. And despite the fact that the priority emphasis in academic research andgovernment policy has traditionally gone to studying juvenile delinquents,children actually appear before authorities more frequently as victims than asoffenders. But at the same time, the media and many advocates have failed tonote the good news: rates of sexual abuse, child homicide, and many other formsof victimization declined dramatically after the mid-1990s, and some terriblyfeared forms of child victimization, like stereotypical stranger abduction, areremarkably uncommon. The considerable ignorance about the realities of childvictimization can be chalked up to a field that is fragmented, understudied, andsubjected to political demagoguery.In this persuasive book, David Finkelhor presents a comprehensive new vision toencompass the prevention, treatment, and study of juvenile victims, unifyingconventional subdivisions like child molestation, child abuse, bullying, andexposure to community violence. Developmental victimology, his term for thisintegrated perspective, looks at child victimization across childhood's span andyields fascinating insights about how to categorize juvenile victimizations, howto think about risk and impact, and how victimization patterns change over thecourse of development. The book also provides a valuable new model of society'sresponse to child victimization - what Finkelhor calls the Juvenile VictimJustice System - and a fresh way of thinking about barriers that victims andtheir families encounter when seeking help. These models will be very useful toanyone seeking to improve the way we try to help child victims. Crimes against children still happen far too often, but by proposing a newframework for thinking about the issue, Childhood Victimization opens apromising door to reducing its frequency and improving the response.Professionals, policymakers, and child advocates will find thisparadigm-shifting book to be a valuable addition to their shelves.