Ologies with Alie Ward - Victimology (CRIME VICTIMS) with Callie Rennison

Episode Date: March 26, 2019

In a world saturated with CSI spinoffs and true crime documentaries, we look at a criminology subset focusing not on the pathology of the killers, but on the victims of crime: their experiences, vulnerability, survival rates, statistics, trauma, and recovery. In the least goofy episode to date, the brilliant and warm professional victimologist Dr. Callie Rennison of the University of Colorado chats about resources, historical changes of perspective, gender's role in victimization and how people of color and Native populations are at a tragically higher risk for violent victimization. Also covered, PTSD and fear at school, trauma from homophobia and how Dr. Rennison used Brock Turner as a textbook illustration for a rapist. If the superficial thirst for serial killer stats doesn't sit quite right with you or you'd love a career that gives back, this episode might be just what you need. Also please get a Ph.D and be one of Dr. Rennison's colleagues. Follow Dr. Callie Rennison on TwitterSponsor links: Trueandco.com/ologies (code: Ologies) & Amazon.com/popchips (code 20ologies)This week's donations were made to RAINN.org, Just Be, Inc., Common Justice, IWGIA, GRIP & All Parrot RescueMore links at alieward.com/ologies/victimology"Indivisible" book by Christine MasonBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter or InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter or InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh hey, it's that person who almost accidentally took your latte when it came up ready at the coffee shop and then made that age old dad joke. So see what happens when I don't have my coffee. Allie Ward. Back with another episode of oligies. So this is a subject that absolutely zero people have asked me to do, which is why I'm doing it. I also want to note right up top, I loved doing this interview. I hated making this episode. I cried several times just writing it, researching it. To de-stress, I googled pictures of ferrets who have black heads on their tails because that's apparently a thing. Did you know that was a thing? Anyway, it was gross, but it was a welcome diversion comparatively. But the topic and the work of this episode is so

important. What this oligist is doing is saving lives and rebuilding ones that have been torn to tatters. So if this is your first ever episode of oligies, just warning, this one's not funny, like probably at all. All the other ones have weird sound effects and jokes about turtle dicks and knowledge plus some buffoonery. This one's a bit serious. I'm skipping the usual business. Thank you for your reviews. I read them all. Thank you for all the patrons who support the podcast. We're going straight in. So victimology. Yes, it is an ology. It's just not one that you hear about much. So etymologists think that victim comes from the Latin word for occasion and initially it meant a living creature killed and offered as a sacrifice to God or to supernatural

powers. In the 16 and 1700s, the meaning of victim morphed into someone who was just killed or hurt or oppressed. So victimology is a study of the psychological effects and the experience of victims of crime. So you might think, how is that not criminology? And just like all cacti or succulents, not all succulents are cacti, victimology is part of criminology. But criminology itself looks at the crime. It looks at the causes and the consequences, the management. It looks at the criminal acts. The word crime comes from the root word for judgment. And often we see a headline, a mugshot, maybe some kind of stoic courtroom plea or some closed circuit TV frames, even unfathomably live stream footage of a bloodbath. There's plenty of information on killers.

And there's a thirst to know why they do what they do and how we can avoid their surprise attack, the fate of maybe landing in their crosshairs. But what about the fallen? What about the survivors? What about the people we see only maybe in some smiling photo that was grabbed off their Instagram or whose stories are never told because they're kept as secrets for decades? That's what victimology looks at. Who gets hurt? Why? And what can help them? So a little context. In 2017, a criminal justice major posted a photo from a textbook written by this oligist and it inspired the Vox essay entitled, victoriously, quote, I'm the professor who made Brock Turner the textbook definition of a rapist. That's right. Next to a paragraph defining rape is Brock Turner's mugshot,

detailing his actions and his shockingly short three month prison sentence. At the end of the article, this oligist bio mentioned, she was the previous year's recipient of the Bonnie S. Fisher Victimology Career Award from the Division of Victimology in the American Society of Criminology and immediately I added her to my spreadsheet of just dream guests. So a year later on a trip to Colorado, we met up in my hotel. Now I did this interview months ago and I've been holding it because I try to space out the heavier episodes. This without a doubt is the heaviest. It makes the surgical oncology and apocalypse episodes seem just like afternoon game of checkers. And people love true crime. But does anyone want to hear about true trauma and true recovery and

true advocacy? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe by the time you're done hearing about this professor's work, you might be applying to transfer to her school. But content warning, of course, we discuss sexual violence, abuse, homicide, trauma in her utmost informed and respectful way. But it can be hard to hear. We settled in to talk about the media distortions of crime victims, the unexpected path to her PhD, the glories of math and stats, statistics on all kinds of different groups, and who's getting hurt and what to do to help them. So breathe deep and get ready for the real scoop with professor, researcher, author, speaker, and victimologist, Dr. Callie Renison. Is that okay? Yeah, no, that's great. And so you are a victimologist. Yes. How long have you

been a victimologist? Oh, gosh, it's probably been at this point, about 20 years, I got into it. Like a lot of things in my life, I stumbled into it accidentally and then found I loved it. So I started when I went to the Department of Justice and started working with a big data set that deals with victimization. And it's where I learned everything and started answering questions and digging and being curious. And can you describe what the difference is between criminology and victimology? Because I hadn't heard of victimology until I started doing some research and found you and I was like, what is this? Tell me everything. Right. Well, I wouldn't say they're different as much as that it's a subset of criminology. So depending on who I'm talking to,

I might tell them I'm a criminologist or that I'm a victimologist. And all that means is that I'm looking at criminal offending incidents, interaction with the criminal justice system. My focus is more on the person who's been victimized, not on the offender. Like a really common interaction I'll have is let me go, oh, you're a criminologist like CSI and oh, my favorite serial killer is this person, which I think is a little weird, you should not have a favorite serial killer. And then I'll tell them, no, I'm really focused not on the offender. I'm focused on the people who are harmed. Right. I feel like that is very unique these days in terms of the way that we interact with crime. Right. And so can you tell me a little bit about your

background that led you to criminal justice? Yeah, again, accidents stumbling in the dark. My PhD is in political science. And I was drawn to that because of the quantitative elements of it, gathering data, analyzing data, answering questions. And when I graduated my PhD, I ended up taking a job at the Department of Justice dealing with victimization. And to this day, I've never taken a class in criminology or victimology. But I started answering, I think, questions that normal people have. I mean, I was raised in Texas and there was a certain idea about how we saw crimes, offenders, and if people thought about victims, what they thought about victims. And so I just started answering basic questions, thinking I knew the answer. And what I pretty

much found is everything I thought I knew was wrong. Surprise. Really? Yes. So I wanted to write reports, hopefully for other people like me, to understand who is more likely to be victimized. When I give talks, a lot of times I start with a pop quiz, and I'll put up 10 true false questions, and most people got them all wrong. What kind of questions and what kinds of things really shocked you when you started digging into it? Oh, I think, I mean, I held on to a lot of stereotypes, like who's victimized more? Well, older people, clearly. That's not true. And who's victimized more? Well, women, clearly. And that's also not true. Specific types of violence. Yes, women are more likely to experience, but overall violence? No, that's men. I'd see something

written about young black urban males, for example, and it's always written about their offenses, but very little written about the fact that they're victimized at some of the highest rates. And so that was a part of what my work, what I wanted to do with my work is to bring this to people's attention about who is being victimized. And that's what I continue to try to do. Why do you think that we are focused on certain victims and not others as a culture, at least as a media culture? I mean, I think it's our culture, and I think it's still messed up, and it's still dominated by a lot of incorrect stereotypes. I mean, one of the things that I always think about is blaming the victim. And you'll hear a lot of people say,

don't blame the victim. And I agree, don't blame the victim. But let's not kid ourselves, either. We blame the victim a lot. We blame young black men who are killed for doing nothing, except being black, walking down the street. But if you blame, say, a white, beautiful person for being harmed, then people really get upset. So I wish as a society, we would start viewing all victims the same. These are all people who were like violently attacked, and it wasn't their fault at all. And I wish we could have that compassion for all types of people regardless of age or race or ethnicity or other types of lifestyle. But we're just not there as a society yet. So quick aside, the field of victimology came about in the 1940s, 1950s as a way to study how

victims partly brought this shit on themselves. And one article I read said that the pioneers in the field back then, who by total coincidence, I'm sure, were all white men, like, what are the odds of that? They were just kicking around theories about how people who suffered wounds and losses brought it on themselves by, say, having an alive body to kill. Now, women were sometimes held responsible for misunderstandings that evolved into sexual assaults. Now, these theories, thank God, began to be dismantled in the 1970s. Victimology became less about blaming people and more about crime prevention, victims' advocacy, recovery. And as long as we're here looking at time capsules of historical and modern day horrors, let's have a look at that definition

of rape. So before 2012, the FBI defined rape as the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will. So in the eyes of the law, until a few years ago, it was penises only, and men couldn't be raped. Now, in 2013, the FBI expanded that, removed the word forcibly, because, hello, drugged, date rape, et cetera. And it now reads, and this is not easy to hear, it shouldn't be, it reads, the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person without consent to the victim. Now, in communicating how vital it is that all 50 states recognize and adhere to this expanded definition, Cally has noted, historically, rape has been treated as a crime against a man's

property, his women. It initially was never considered a crime against the actual person who was the victim. Now, over time, the definition of rape has expanded to include marital rape, non-consensual penetration between married individuals. And Cally says that it was only the 1970s that marital rape exceptions were removed from the law. So we put human beings on the moon. We had color television sets in disco and Camaros. And yet there was nothing illegal about raping your spouse. Now, Cally notes, the laser focus on women as victims sexually is also tragically neglectful. And almost like we have to, and this is super crude, but protect the vagina at all costs. Women, when we look at violence against women, it's so often focused on, say, rape and sexual

assault and intimate partner violence, which is really important because that's been ignored and it continues to be, I think, minimized. But women are also robbed, they're assaulted, they're shot, and they're killed. I'd like for us to do a better job at looking the full person, no matter who they are. And was there anything in particular that drew you to this? Did you have family that were in criminal justice? Did you see friends victimized at all? At the time, I would say no, but it's very interesting. The household I was raised in was very rules oriented. And I think I have a brother and a sister. And I think we're all continue to be very rules oriented and right and wrong. My brother is an FBI agent. He got into it

after I did. At the same time, we were kind of on different paths. So our paths cross professionally every now and then. And as far as families, I mean, I don't know that you could talk to anybody who doesn't have some of this in their family, especially intimate partner violence. And then, you know, that clearly has happened in my family, not with my immediate family, but with the grandparent level and cousins. And, you know, we're dealing with rape and sexual saw, you can't throw a rock without hitting somebody who's experienced that. So yeah, I think it's all around us. And I think a part of it is, and especially as I've gotten older, I'm tired of us pretending it doesn't happen, making the people who experience it kind of

keep quiet and internalize blame and shame. And I, you know, I think we need to say this happens a lot. The victims aren't to blame. We should be able to speak up without being worried about how people perceive us. Quick side note, according to stats from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 10 million people yearly experienced some form of intimate partner violence. Now, if there's any good news, it's that a 2014 study using the Bureau of Criminal Justice Statistics showed that violent victimization by intimate partner violence was down significantly from 2005. And from 1993 to 2017, the rate of violent victimization in general declined 74%, although there was a slight uptick the past two years. But getting back to Callie's history,

her academic path took her from a bachelor's in psychology and two masters in sociology and political science to a PhD in political science. It's far from the tailoring career that she once considered a dressmaker dressmaker. Oh, thank God, that'd be totally unemployed. And so going, going to your scholastic background, were your family, were they, were they PhDs? Were they academics at all? No, not at all. My dad dropped out of high school and went into the Navy. My mom did finish high school. And while my parents encouraged us to go to college, the fact is if you haven't gone, you don't really get it. How do you do it? How do you choose it? How do you know what to take? So, um, and I had no intention to go to college. I graduated high school early,

walked away saying, I will never write another paper again as long as I live. And I remember the exact date and where I was when I thought that she says it was December 14th, 1981, her last day of high school, she was walking through the parking lot and thought, I will never write another paper as long as I live. She later joked that the universe must have had some other plans for her because pretty soon I realized I wanted to take some math classes because in high school, girls were pointed toward non-math things like home, which was a waste of time for me. So I wanted to take some math and I wanted to take some Spanish classes. So I went to the community college and ended up getting a community college degree. And then I ended up in bachelors and it

just kind of stumbled into a master's and another and a PhD. But I really think an important point and something that I think about a lot when I deal with students today is that even in college, I don't think I got it. I didn't get that I could study something that I loved and can make a career out of. I thought I was getting a degree that then would help me in my job since I worked my way through college. And I know it sounds bizarre, but it made sense then. And as always, getting ready to complete my bachelor's degree, one of my professors, a sociology professor at the University of Houston, his name is John Lawrence and he's still there, asked me, what are you going to do with your degree? And I said, as people in my position would say, well, I'll try to get a better

job. And he said, you would be wasting your talents if you didn't consider graduate school. And it really was, I'd never even considered it. I don't think I really understood it existed. And that simple question made me think, oh, maybe I could do this. And so I signed up for a masters. And I mean, that led me on my way. And it truly is, in my intro book, I acknowledge this and I dedicate the book to somebody who totally changed the trajectory of my life. And it's something that I hope I can do to some of my students when I recognize great talent or curiosity. I mean, the smartest people don't finish school. The most curious do and the most tenacious do. So I hope that I can do that to some students too. I think if you follow what you love,

it takes you to where you need to be. So that's certainly been my case. Did you ever think like you would be Dr. Renison? No, never. And you know, it's fine when people call me Dr. Renison, but I'm a pretty casual, comfortable person. If you guys could see me, you'd know that. Dr. Renison, by the way, has a very easy way about her. She's so casual and so warm. She arrived in comfortable Colorado fleece, her long hair loose. And about her academic and career path, she advised anyone with a passion and a curiosity to put their nose to the grindstone, get busy, work hard, and they can do it too.

And what is your day-to-day work like as a victimologist? Like what are you digging into data? Are you giving talks? Are you teaching? Are you doing interviews? What is that job like? Yes, all of the above. So anything. Every day is really very different. I'll get people sometimes say, hey, what day is a good day of the week to do something? I'm like, it is different every single week. So I might be working with students on theses or dissertation. I might be preparing for a talk. I might be writing a book chapter, putting together a couple more books. So doing a lot of writing, dealing with data, doing analysis. Yeah, it is all over the place that I can switch gears every day and address deadlines is something that I thrive under.

When people look at victims of certain types of violence or certain types of assault, do you find that certain victims all kind of respond the same way depending on what they've been through? No, I mean, I think there's a little bit of a stereotype about that too, which I wish we could break up. She notes the myth and a misconception that all victims need to be completely devastated sobbing and acting that way when in fact a lot are not. And so if they're not, people start doubting them. And that's not right. And a great analogy I heard many years ago that I've repeated is that it's like going to a funeral. You go to a funeral and you've got the the widest variety of responses. You've got your crazy uncles over

there laughing. This one's over here sobbing. That one over there is looking at their phone. Everybody handles it really differently. And I think we have to get better as a society of realizing that so that when somebody's not responding in the way we think they should, that doesn't mean that we should doubt their experience. It's just how they have to have to deal with it. I think some people are impacted more deeply or differently than others, but it doesn't mean that Oh, well, it was no big deal to them. It's it's violence, right? We don't have these sorts of questions when, you know, you take a big population of people been hit over the head with a weapon. We're not doubting some of them. But when it comes to some types of violence, and

again, that's like violence women predominantly experienced, there's a lot more doubt wrapped around it. And I think society keeps forgetting that this isn't like, say sex gone bad or relationship gone bad. This is violence. Somebody was violently attacked. Period. Do you think that people of color and women do tend to get doubted more than others when it comes to being victims of crime? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, the criminal justice system, although it is a lot better than it used to be, and I think he's continuing to make, you know, strides to get better. Yeah, there, there are really big problems with this. And this has kind of been my big deal this last year, doing a lot of talks about, you know, rape and sexual assault is that we have got to

believe people. I love the Me Too movement because it's giving people the opportunity to step up and say Me Too, where the criminal justice system has failed them. The CJ system is very different for people of color compared to whites and it's different for men and for women. There's zero doubt. Zero doubt. According to a 2017 study on violence victimizations that excluded homicides, men and women were statistically about even, but people of color had higher instances of being victims. And though we tend to hear more about white women being victims of homicide, according to one long-ranging report spanning 1980 to 2008, white women were 35 times less likely to be the victims of a homicide than a young black man. But those just aren't the stories we hear about.

And according to several studies, what draws us to some narratives is a build of tension and a release in a safe environment and the desire to learn how to escape or prevent a situation we might find ourselves in. So what happens, by the way, with such an active news cycle and social media when we do hear about violence inflicted on others? How much keeps us rightfully aware and how much is too much? How do you feel about people maybe absorbing the traumas that they hear about and being affected by other people's victimization and trauma? How are people compartmentalizing that or how should we or should we not compartmentalize that? Yeah, I know that's a great question. Definitely, even the positive elements of Me Too are hurting some people, right? Hearing a lot of

these things said in public might be triggering certain people and the way that they've handled their experience or that they've been able to tuck it away and learn to live with it. Having people at the highest offices of this nation saying certain things and then seeing a large population, a disturbingly large proportion of our population being okay with it and somehow thinking it's a joke, that's really harmful to people who have lived through this sort of violence. I wish we could be a little more sensitive to it and this isn't about being a snowflake, right? This is about people who've gone through really terrible events and we need to kind of think about that and before you make it a joke, I mean we don't go to a party and make a joke about suicide.

Chances are somebody at that party has had a family member who's done this, sexual violence, intimate partner violence and I mean for men and women because it's not like only women experience this. We have to be a little bit more sensitive to those traumas. Now remember, until 2013, the FBI didn't acknowledge that men could even be raped and in the 2011 National Gender Discrimination Survey, transgender and gender non-conforming people reported higher rates of harassment, physical assault and sexual violence in a variety of settings. Now a 2018 report found that of 22 transgender people killed in the United States that year, the vast majority were young transgender women of color which is why over time factors like

representation and inclusion literally saves lives. So what can help someone feel safer and what can help someone heal? When it comes to being victims of a crime or feeling just victimized in general, have your studies revealed anything about what can prevent someone from being in a situation where they might be vulnerable or help someone heal from a situation where they felt preyed upon? Yeah, I mean some of the work I've done but it's so large body of work. I'm just like a little drip in the bucket and yeah, I mean we know a lot of things and like one of the things that I do a lot of talking about has to do with initial disclosures. We know and I'm just going to take sexual violence again as an example that when people are sexually victimized they do

generally tell somebody. Do they tell the police? Not so often. This last year I think the number was 22 percent of rapes and sexual assaults were reported to the police. This is not where people generally go but they'll go to say a friend or a family member and how that first person responds to that disclosure is key to how that person deals with it and what they do from there on. If I came to somebody and said I've been sexually victimized and they're like are you sure? Maybe it was a misunderstanding or and these are all things I've heard people say or well you know you're single. I'm not really single but you're single what did you expect? Those are really terrible and what the person who's been victimized internalizes is never tell anybody else about

this and then they're left to deal with it on their own and while some people can deal with this on their own find a lot of other people can't and that's why we know that some of the responses to this can be PTSD or eating disorders or depression and suicide in some cases. So I think people have to be really careful that when somebody comes to you and discloses any sort of victimization to stop, to listen, to say things like you didn't deserve this how can I help you? You know thank you for trusting me. That's what we need to get better as a society doing and I think we're getting there but we have a long way to go. Callie says that if someone discloses a good strategy is to acknowledge it to accept it and to let them know they're not tumbling for it

and to find out what they want to do but don't try to take control let the person who's gone through it drive the boat she says on the next step just be there to help and support and the next question I feel like she must get a lot so I asked it and what about preventing yourself from becoming a victim? I feel like that's, I hate thinking about that because you don't have control a lot. I mean I myself was mugged by two guys with knives in my 20s. It was obviously a very surprising event. That's an understatement. And it impacted me greatly for years in ways that I didn't even fully really understand. And I did some things in the moment that helped my survival but in terms of preventing it I was walking down the street in the middle of the day.

But when it comes to crime statistics or victim statistics is there, do people ask you that? Like what can I do so this doesn't happen and is there an answer to that? Yeah that's another really great question and that's kind of where we've been focused for a long time and now we're seeing a really great shift to more like don't be rapey. This is the bigger problem don't be rapey and then rape doesn't happen. Things like that but it is really true. We do a lot of things in all of our lives to try to minimize bad things happening. So there are certain things that we can do but can you make yourself victim proof? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You see people who are victimized when they're months old and elderly people and people who are at home and

people who are out. I mean women are more likely to be victimized in their own homes than anywhere else. So there's nothing you can do to make yourself totally safe but I think that um you know just thinking about it trying not to put yourself in situations that could possibly be dangerous but again if somebody's victimized then the last thing I want to do is say well you know you probably shouldn't have done that. That's not true because people who commit offenses they're not dumb and one of the things I'll talk to a lot of students about is they're surprised to find out sexual violence rarely occurs with a weapon. It's about seven-ish percent at single digits which is shocking because if you watch television they all have knives you know that's

pretty uncommon in reality but I'll ask students what is it that offenders use and the answer is confidence and trust and they'll do something like hey let's run up to my room and get something and once you're alone then there's trouble. So um no you can't really totally protect yourself but I also don't want people to think oh my gosh I'm doomed every day just be aware of your surroundings the same same things you do not you know to try not to be robbed or not to be you know swindled or something it's sort of the same things. And what about for African-American men what do you think systemically could change to prevent them from being victims of crime? Yeah that's that's super tough I mean one of the things that we know in the field of victimology is one of the

key characteristics that increases risk of victimization is income socioeconomic status. Poor people are victimized at far far higher rates than people with more resources so it'd be nice if I could say be richer but that's not that easy as we know um it's just really challenging. I I don't know it's it's easy to say don't if you hang around people who are committing offenses your risk of being offended against is greater but when we're in a neighborhood um when we don't have the opportunity to move or leave or you know we're around certain people our risk is higher it's I don't feel like I have a good answer I'm sad to say I mean education is one of those things tied to victimization risk it's income it's education this is when I talk to kids at

community colleges and just say you have to go on and get your degree and there's a lot of talk these last couple years about degrees not being important and I could not disagree more they are important um and for anything your victimization risk goes down education matters it opens doors it gives you opportunities and in those communities where there is um violent crime against people of color do you find that reporting also goes down or is there is there less reporting if it might be within a community or if it might be um maybe violence from someone that they're familiar yeah it's it's really wild when you look at the numbers because it's very complex for example one of the things that shocked me most when I got into the field is seeing that when there's violence

committed against African Americans it's actually more likely to be reported to the police than when it's committed against white people that makes no sense to me and I still am trying to figure this out um and some people say well it's it's the avenue they have to make it stop so they might make calls but I think too given some um interactions in the CJ system and people of color they're going to be less likely to contact the police we saw this happen actually with domestic violence things when we had mandatory reporting it used to be that you call the police somebody would get arrested sometimes nobody would and that was wrong but now police might come and then there's a mandatory arrest and so what have we found that a lot of women especially won't call the

police because they might very well be the ones who got arrested um and that's a problem it's also what we're seeing with um Black Lives Matter movement and violence against people of color knowing that they are more likely to experience violence but also more likely to endure repercussions maybe of a criminal justice system that is is weighed against them is like what do you do like yeah I don't know I mean there's a a great book that was written years ago looking at gangs in the Chicago area and I thought one of the cool elements of this book was that it didn't only focus on gangs as the bad things they did and certainly gangs do bad things but also because the criminal justice system had abandoned this complete area is almost like this little microcosm

society so the gang took on the policing parts of it so I think sometimes you get some of that that happens in some smaller areas where yes maybe we don't call the police but we'll take care of it ourselves which ends up looking like more violent sometimes but uh I mean we have to do what we have to do and I think kind of again blaming groups for doing something like that when um like structures of greater society has abandoned them that's not really fair it's not fair to do to them of course not I was gonna also mention too one of the and I wish I had many out more hours in the day but looking at um asian americans and their victimization rates their numbers year after year after year they're really low I think really really low and um one of the things my data can't capture is the

influence of say culture so the question is is it really that low or is there something culturally about this community and of course this is a large generalization that they really won't call the police and report it or even tell a field rep who's gathering data about it so there's you know we can gather the data as good as we can but then there are cultural elements about who's gonna tell us what about that and how much does that drive these different rates it's interesting puzzle right I mean if you were trying to quantify car crashes or butterflies that data would be so much more straightforward but because it depends on um on divulging really painful information that has repercussions like that's got to be so frustrating for you right

yeah I mean yeah I mean you you probably know people who've been victimized who've never told the police um maybe you're the only person they've ever told I definitely there are people that have experienced things who've never revealed that never will reveal it and I find it interesting sometimes people criticize the research because you know well you can't possibly capture it all it's like you are absolutely right and the only way I could actually do that would be pretty unethical right like sodium pen ethyl and make them talk that's not gonna happen the best we can do is try to establish some rapport ask questions in a sensitive way um and deal with it but there are still going to be people that are like nope not sharing especially I think there's some um

generational elements of it right you look at some senior citizens who I know some that I see experiencing intimate partner violence and they won't do anything about it because their fear of not being a couple is far greater than their fear of being abused so tragic and I think younger people are a little less likely to tolerate that we've done a good job about educating and letting people know that no people don't get to hit you or belittle you or you know entrap you by hiding your money things like that so it is still really scary and it's still scary the first time anybody discloses right how is that person going to respond um is it worth it I don't again I really love the me too movement for the people who choose to say something

that they can say and see an entire world saying yes me too and they realize they're not alone and they're not the only ones and they weren't to blame it's it's I just think one of the most positive movements so side note well the hashtag me too began trending in October of 2017 following Harvey Weinstein's sexual abuse allegations the me too movement actually started over 10 years earlier by Bronx born political activist Tarana Burke and she says quote the me too movement started in the deepest darkest place in my soul she was working in a youth camp and a young girl named heaven pulled her aside and began to disclose to her horrifying abuse done by her mother's boyfriend and Tarana felt unequipped to handle the disclosure she shuffled her off to another worker

and she's written that she will never forget the look on that young girl's face she says I'll never forget the look because I think about her all the time the shock of being rejected the pain of opening a wound only to have it abruptly forced closed again it was all on her face she says I couldn't even bring myself to whisper me too now the justice department statistics show that around 40 of black women report being the victims of coercive sexual contact before the age of consent but for every black woman who reports her rape it suggested that at least 15 do not now Tarana Burke now runs just be incorporated which is a youth organization focused on the health well-being and wholeness of young women of color and she was named times

person of the year in 2017 for being instrumental as a silence breaker do you find in your life though a lot of people confide in you oh gosh yeah yeah I have a girlfriend and we'll travel sometimes and some of the early travels I finally realized I had to say something because people be like what do you do I'm a criminologist I'm a researcher I'm a victimologist I look at a lot of violence against women I look at a lot of things but violence against women gets a lot more attention and immediately total strangers will tell me about rapes they've experienced or domestic violence they're experienced or experiencing and I realized a recent trip to Arizona with my friend she's not accustomed to this and I finally had to say hey I apologize this is like my every day

every time you teach a class you're going to get multiple disclosures it's a part of it which is kind of an interesting thing about my work like the reality in my work my research we do the best we can to measure this stuff right we have estimates of rape and sexual assaults or intimate partner violence or robbery or any of these things but they're the best estimates we have but in reality I often say find me somebody especially a woman age 50 who has an experience sexual harassment and sexual assault that's unusual it's it is ubiquitous no matter what the rates say the rates are as good as we can do but we're there imperfect how do you handle those disclosures does it do you feel like you're you're pretty well equipped or do you compartmentalize

or do you ever just have a day where you're like oh I got a lot of my shoulders you know and kind of same thing is listening to them because they I think they found somebody they think is safe to disclose to so they can unload this you know and the most recent one was a woman I'm gonna guess she was 70 years old and we came together in a completely different context and I got the feeling she'd never told anybody about this and some of this happened when she was a child so I listen and do exactly what I said earlier in terms of you know thanks for trusting me with this and you didn't deserve that and I'm really I'm really sorry you've had to live with that and then depending on the situation I'll often say you know do you want some resources I can get

you some information for some resources there's a lot of 1-800 numbers and other things and today with the internet it's pretty easy to find a good resource but I just want to make sure that they don't need more than just to talk about it and I'll sit and talk about it but it is fascinating and people in my field they'll all tell you the same thing that they do you know you're on a plane and next thing you know you've got somebody disclosing and things like that and I think I'm pretty good at it probably should knock on wood I'll leave today and get a disclosure that really jacks me up or something because it can happen yeah yeah I asked Callie about resources that would be like first aid for victims and she mentioned that there are 800 numbers suited to different

situations so I looked and on the Department of Justice's website I found a list including child help national child abuse hotline national domestic violence hotline national runaway safe line national human trafficking hotline rape abuse and incest national network rain and I'll put a link to these and others in the show notes I also have a lot of bizarre beliefs but one of them is age 30 we should all be required to go see a counselor psychologist because we can all benefit from it and so and there should be no shame in that either right but to go to talk to somebody and to get it out and work through stuff I think it's really key carrying it what wait what I totally believe is that carrying it inside of us all this time

is never beneficial it's never beneficial ever so we've got to be able to get it out have people hear us have people help us and and learn to be okay you know with all of it and why do you think victims blame themselves do you think that that we are they are trying to make sense of what has happened and trying to put the control on them back in their own hands or why do we find ways to say I must have invited this I must this must be my fault somehow you know that might be a part of it for some but I think it's because society blames them yeah right uh you tell certain people or you hear judges say things on the stand about what were you wearing why were you out why were you alone how much did you have to drink so I think unfortunately society's first response is always

a very blaming sort of deal and then and then it's internalized um we also what I see a lot of is I think people trying to make themselves feel safe right if I say this is not something I personally would say um well I would never have worn a skirt like that I think that's the person thinking um well I can prevent it from happening to me you weren't smart enough to do that you know and that's just wrong because um there's some great exhibits that go around I think last time I heard about it was in Kansas where all it is are the clothes that sexual assault and rape victims were wearing when they were assaulted and you know they're up each on the wall and what do you see you see sweatpants you see pajamas you see all kinds of things so this notion that what you wear brought

it on is just wrong but I think society still will say that this exhibit by the way is called what were you wearing created by the director of Kansas University's sexual assault prevention and education center Jen Brockman and Dr. Mary A. Wyant-Hybert of a rape education center now next to one casual outfit is a story of a survivor who says I missed a couple of days of work after it happened when I told my boss she asked me this question what were you wearing and I said a t-shirt and jeans bitch what do you wear to a basketball game and I walked out and never came back Cali says that people internalize these judgments and we've got to just keep fighting back against that and call them out because nobody has asked to be victimized she says nobody Cali also told me that

she taught a criminal justice course titled murder in America and she says it was admittedly named that way to draw students to take it but her secret goal was to make sure none of them left with a favorite serial killer anymore I'm I mean reading the details and making it very clear that there are victims right it's not all about this weirdo it's about victims who were skinned and tortured and I mean just awful and you could talk to a few of my students who to this day can't eat a pot roast because of a particular movie I showed them but I was very happy to know that when they left they got it it's like walking around with a shirt with edgine on it or Ted Bundy that's not cool they killed and tortured people from a criminal justice criminology

standpoint in terms of universities and getting majors is very beneficial because everybody wants to be a CSI investigator or forensic scientist so it's great to get maybe it sends people to college and and they learn neat things but um yeah it's gross it's awful these are human beings these have mothers and fathers these people have sisters and brothers and you know they might have been the person to cure cancer and and all of this loss but um they're not deemed as valuable somehow it is really really disturbing something I've been trying to figure out the best way to say it but okay so we've got people who are like really obsessed and the serial killers and what they do and they know everything about them um they're victims or people and I try to like frame it as

somebody who's like been torturing animals they keep taking kittens and skinning them and making this and very quickly people be like oh my god that is horrible so why is it we can see the horror of it when we're dealing with animals and yeah I'm glad we can um but when it comes to people victims it's different apart from the obvious post-traumatic stress disorder there are so many more insidious and lasting effects of violence and victimization and not just the person who experienced it but those around them too fallout from violence can be multi-generational can be very emotional and can also be practical and financial if you have somebody in your family who was maybe murdered you can also get that assistance um which is needed because a lot of

times say a parent is murdered people lose jobs homes get foreclosed I mean just all kinds of terrible things so it tries to help bridge it but it's definitely not enough I'm sure you could talk to anybody who's been through that and say yeah it was a drop in the bucket it was useful but I need so much more and now what kind of people do you find are drawn to study victimology as opposed to maybe just criminology or what people are drawn to this subset like what are they passionate about yeah um that I've never been asked that question it's really good so I'm like trying to do the scan of all the people I work with when I think I mean I think one thing clearly they all have in common even if there's some disagreements about part of it that um I think

kind of what I've said is just this passion for people who've been victimized and taking care of them I mean the history of the criminal justice system is one that we didn't really even include victims in um I'm sorry for my guttural groans here they were treated I mean and I've got an introduction a criminal justice textbook and I talk about this but at best they were treated as a witness they were never treated as anything more than that and that's changed over the last few decades is it great no but but we're headed in the right direction so I think a lot of people who are just passionate about taking care of people who've been harmed um and caring about it and a lot of these people who work in this area have experienced it themselves or have very close

family members who have but but not all so I think it's just a yeah just compassionate people who want to make a difference and want to make it better I mean when my grandma was younger um and in not the best situation in her marriage she had nowhere to go I mean as a woman you know how's she gonna leave with children how is she gonna own a home get a job you know get a credit card or do anything she had to just live with it just a quick reminder that up until 1974 it was perfectly legal to deny a woman a credit card unless she was married you could have her husband cosign 1974 that era when raping your wife was also still plenty legal so if anyone's ever tempted to ask why didn't they just leave we are barely in an era when the law would even allow women

that independence and authority over their own life their own finances their own body and we're barely in an era when men are even considered a victim of some of these traumas and I'd like us to see that that doesn't happen anymore there's somebody's in a bad situation that they have the ability to get out of it I think that's what everybody that would probably be the one universal part of it is it being able to get out of a bad situation right right like who wouldn't who wouldn't want that it's kind of neat to see too that even in my career um taking on and recognizing problems that have always been around it say sex trafficking is a great one or human trafficking more generally that this is something that happens it happens in this nation trying to get people to recognize

it to understand why it's bad again why is that important right it's not good to enslave people and um and really working toward changing that but I will say this there aren't enough victimologists I would hope that we could get more people to go to school and study this into getting engaged whether they're out as advocates or in the CJ system with this good frame of mind or becoming researchers we need it a group that I um I've done several pieces on but I get frustrated that it won't get traction as American Indians and their rates of victimization are the highest they like blow african-american race of victimization out of the water they're incredibly high this is where somebody will usually go yeah well tribal lands are problematic this isn't on tribal lands

these are people who self identify and are throughout society and their rates are like astronomically higher and there's so little being done about it I mean there are people out there working super hard and passionately but but there's only so many of us and so I keep hoping you know it's like I need some people to to grow up and become victimologists and that be their focus because it's a lot of low hanging fruit and research and answers and help that can be done I think there's lots of groups like that too I looked into this and it's gutting how much higher the rates of victimization are in the 2017 Bureau of Justice Statistics rates for what's defined as serious violent victimization i.e rape sexual assault robbery aggravated assault the instance

of victimization for those identifying as indigenous populations Alaska natives native Hawaiians other Pacific Islanders is over twice that for other groups there are two hashtags indigenous women rise and I don't know more that seek to raise awareness about victimization in these groups and artist Jamie Black has helmed a new Smithsonian exhibit called the red dress project and it features 35 red dresses hanging outdoors bright or stark against these bare winter trees they're blowing the wind getting soaked by rain against this Washington DC backdrop so if you happen to be in Washington DC have a pop over take a look at that and when it comes to government authority what can be done about victimization how do you think we can change the way that

police officers are trained or they're you're like whoo yeah that they are interacting with victims yeah to be more helpful yeah I have some strong feelings about this and I know well so this I am not a police basher I am not um are there bad policemen oh yeah oh yeah there are but I think one of the problems is what what draws people toward policing and again I'm gonna go to the media and I'm gonna go to the and I know that this is like a really old people movie now students don't know what it is anymore but like dirty hairy now you know why they call me dirty hairy or this you know cops kicking people's heads in that's not what policing is about and it's never been about that but if that's what's drawing people into policing those are the wrong people

there's a man named August Volmer who back in the late 1800s and early 1900s I would fangirl him if he was here he's dead though um but he's the father of American policing and back then he started like the first criminal justice college at Berkeley he started the American Society of Criminology he said police officers need to be trained and they need to be trained as social workers because the fact of the matter is is it why sometimes physical strength is a part of policing a lot of it is social work it's communication it's de-escalation it's working with an understanding of people and I don't think there's enough of that still happening Cali says that she would love to see the requirement that police officers had more training or maybe a degree in sociology

criminology victimology so now switching gears what about people who aren't victims but play them when it comes to power and abuses of power how are you reacting to the wrong people playing the victim or using a manipulation to be like I'm being victimized this is like the Blair witch hunt project like how do you as a victimologist deal with seeing the role of victim being twisted and an abuse like that that's that's um really cool because one of the a lot of times when people ask me what I do I don't say victimologist because the response I too frequently get is oh my gosh everybody's a victim these days and my response when that's happened is like I know those people who are murdered and raped they are big babies because because it has been

co-opted by a group um that I don't really understand the need to be that and it minimizes the true violence and victimization that victims have experienced Cali says that despite the nature of her work she likes to believe that there are no bad people just people who do bad things but she concedes there may be a few exceptions now in terms of how people cope with the aftermath of a violent event she says different people handle it very differently she has a girlfriend she explained her name is jennifer shu it I talk about her in my book and she's been in the news a little bit when she was eight she was abducted from her room and raped and like nearly decapitated left her dead in the field and 20 years cold case and it was finally solved

and Jennifer's really remarkable in that her way of dealing with it is that she's a speaker she talks about her victimization talks about being a survivor and in fact she would like probably slug me in the arm for saying victim because that that is a sensitive issue victim versus survivor and I use victim because I deal with people who are killed as well I can't call them survivors but um and Jennifer handles it in a really cool way and I admire her way but man it is not everybody's way right other people to call them out say can you talk about your victimization would be the worst thing that I could do so I yeah I think everybody has to go at their own speed their own time in their own way and maybe never forgive or maybe forgive I mean there's certain things

in my life that I don't know that I would forgive but I've just learned to live with and I don't let it like eat me or something and I imagine that's true for a lot of people so and there are when it comes to victims and survivors there's more than just a person who experienced the acts I mean there are it's multi-generational if you've got a someone who has been murdered their their children their grandchildren who never met them are going to be affected right right and even just if I mean there's some research that shows it say there's a rape that's happened that a lot of times or even the murder of a child that that marriage ends in divorce that there are other consequences that happen that are pretty big and pretty damning you know a secondary victim seeing if you were to see your

boyfriend assaulted or something how traumatic that would be even if nobody laid a hand on you so yeah the secondary victimization is very real and that's why in the intro book I'm part of it I say something about nobody nobody is untouched by crime at a minimum we as taxpayers are paying money to fund a huge criminal justice system but just personally you everybody's been touched and do you think that the criminal justice system is doing enough to prevent further crimes or do you think it's just super fucked like our prison system is it making things worse isn't making anything better yeah I think it's pretty super fucked okay yeah it's um I mean we need to do more on the front end right we need to do more about economics we need to do more about

education we need to do more about opportunities and this whole pull yourself up by the bootstraps yeah that sounds really nice but if you're living in a city that has no businesses and no public transportation and a crappy education system that's way more challenging versus somebody who is born to wealth and privilege and all these things we're running really different races so I think the criminal justice system is is far more reactive than proactive and it would be nice to take a lot of that money and put it on the front end to try to prevent offending and victimization I mean the prison complex is dreadful and the new administration's um you know privatizing prisons again we were actually moving away from that the state of Kentucky had completely gotten

rid of their contracts and everybody's moving back toward it again why because it reduces crime no it doesn't reduce crime we know it doesn't reduce it doesn't help anything except it enriches people who benefit from that it's the worst it's just sacrificing people for money and it makes me sick so where can we get a dose of hope how can we make things better what can we do on the front end I mean I know that we know that men are victimized um as much if not more than women probably more perpetrators male absolutely what can we do for the dudes so that they don't lose their mind and victimize people like what is what's going wrong there yeah I mean I think there's a lot of ideas you know is it testosterone is it psychology is it culture and is probably a

little bit of all of it that again that's not totally my area but um yeah I I think that we have to hold people accountable when they're doing stuff but I think we also have to teach them right it's a big change we've seen over the last few years right about rape what constitutes rape this definition's changed over time somebody who maybe thinks rape is can't happen between married people um has to involve a penis in a vagina they might be engaged in behavior they think's totally okay when in fact it's not it's rape and you'll go to prison for it well you should go to prison for it often don't brace yourself for some grim math according to rain out of 1,000 rapes only 230 get reported to police 46 of those lead to arrests nine are prosecuted and less than five

of a thousand rapes lead to incarceration so out of a thousand rapes 995 rapists walk free but Cali offers another grain of hope one of the neat things that I've seen happen over the last few years is some of the work that I've done that's gotten a little more press dealing with rape and sexual assault sexual harassment um it used to be that I'd get emails and some of them would be pretty hateful and it always had the hope you get raped email oh my god you know it's I'm just like oh another one put it in the folder oh my god and I don't see that as much but a really promising change that I do see is that men are writing and they're writing to say thanks and they're writing I'm glad we're looking at this and so I'm seeing it shift a little bit and I always try to I mean

really acknowledge the fact that men experience this stuff too it's very easy to focus on women because from the numbers we have they experience it at higher rates but I also think there's a lot of good reason that men don't want to come forward if a man's a man's been sexually assaulted or he's been raped he even faces a few additional hurdles than women do right a woman comes forward you're going to get blamed in shame possibly not believed um where a man he's going to have his masculinity questioned or sexuality questioned and that's really harmful we shouldn't do that and I I won't be surprised someday maybe when I'm on my deathbed if I get a lot more years that those numbers equal out a little bit and we see that men are they feel more free to come forward and say

I was raped I was raped when I was six or here in school or in a sports deal it happens and I think that they're um kept quiet from the patriarchy and this toxic masculinity stuff that we're not fully letting them be the full people they are they don't have to prove their manliness by harming other people things like that that would be a fabulous change it would benefit everybody great can we do a rapid fire round oh good do you have a minute okay I have all day okay before we get to patreon questions a quick few messages from sponsors of the show who help make allergies possible and who definitely make it possible for us to donate to a charity of theologist choosing each week now instead of one though we're going to do more than one I think we're

going to do five charities this week first up is a donation to rain.org which is the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization rain created and operates the national sexual assault hotline and carries out programs to prevent sexual violence to help survivors and to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice next a donation will be made to torana berks just be incorporated which is a youth organization focused on the health well-being and wholeness of young women of color they say in the face of media music and pop culture that increasingly diminish the importance worth in a steam of girls and women particularly women of color our organization deals specifically with the range of issues teen and preteen girls are faced with daily our program

center around empowerment and guidance for girls as they grow and begin to define themselves we'll also be sending a donation to commonjustice.org whose mission is to develop and advance solutions to violence that transform the lives of those harmed and foster racial equity without relying on incarceration also a donation goes to iwgia.org they are a global human rights organization dedicated to promoting protecting and defending indigenous peoples rights and one more on a personal note my boyfriend never got a chance to meet his maternal grandmother she was murdered when his mom was just 12 years old and that loss is very present in their family's lives and his mom Christine Mason grew up to be a speaker and an author total badass a victim's advocate

she wrote a book about her experience called indivisible and she's on the board of an organization called grip guiding rage into power which works with offenders in the california state prison system and she is a victim offender liaison again her book is called indivisible and i want to thank christine mason and their family for giving me a much better insight on the ripple effects of violence and changing the way i process stories like their families and even my own narrative so another donation will be going to guiding rage into power and one of the things that brings cali great joy our parrots and she recently lost her parrot dale and i know she works with all parrots rescue dot org so we're going to be sending them a donation as well okay so here are some sponsors

who are making those donations and this podcast possible all right and now your questions so tyler q wants to know are there any truly victimless crimes i don't think so i absolutely don't think so i mean right now we're talking about some white collar crimes and people go like this victimism it's not people lost stock money people lost jobs so no um coming to prostitution and this is a really interesting place because there's a camp that says adult women can make these choices right if they want to be a prostitute or not um and i do agree with that however where do adult prostitutes come from often sex traffic children and so if you're a sex traffic child your ability to maybe go on other paths of life have been cut off so then i struggle with it so no i personally

don't think so um and even if you want to broaden the definition more say um even that secondary victimization maybe the individual involved in something is like it's not hurting me but how does it affect a spouse or a child or something so no i i don't think there are any victimless crimes jennifer dorsett wants to know i'm interested in the trauma portion of being victimized and how that can be passed on generationally think holocaust slavery or even just migration or political up people um do these things affect future generations in a way that's beyond just the culture oh my god that's such a great question i know jennifer dorsett i wish jennifer i was a smarter person than i am but yeah um i wow other than culture i think absolutely so i mean even

some things i've read about alcoholics right so say your parents are an alcoholic the way you're raised is different and there are problems but then even if the child of an alcoholic has children there are consequences there so i think it's culture but it's also some socialization maybe some fears and things like that so my best guess being as smart as i am um i think i think so that's a fabulous question i hope she's in graduate school and pursuing a degree so she can get out there and help us yeah jennifer dorsett you have been called the action um ray cascio wants to know what can we do to stop the criminal from receiving what seems to be praise and glory as well as a media spotlight while the victims and survivors get very little attention and sometimes even blame

yeah yeah i feel exactly the same way yeah in my intro book i talk a lot about the role of the media and i'm not a media basher either i wish the media would focus more on the victim and the consequences of that and their children and yeah we might show a picture of somebody and say and they left behind three kids but let's hear more and let's talk about what we can do more versus focusing on the on the offender so i wish the media would get involved with it more cali noted that when she writes with her colleague mary dodge that they really try to establish the importance of the victims experiences so victimology has come a long way since it's finger pointy 1940s beginnings animic david and maria kumro both wanted to know more a little

bit about why victim blaming is a cultural epidemic and what's the best way to change victim blaming yeah i mean my guess kind of goes back to what i said earlier is i think for a lot of people if they feel they can blame the victim for what happened to them then they can falsely protect themselves from being victimized i think that's a large part of it right um which is just not true at all and i have seen people who have engaged in victim blaming and then i've seen them go through a victimization and they struggle almost more because they have to come to grips with their beliefs and to understand i was really wrong and i have kind of done this damage too um yeah i think we just have to keep talking about it keep being supportive you know if somebody

comes to you saying the right thing getting them help and and saying it you are not to blame for this you did not deserve this i don't care if you are in a tiny skirt and high heels in a in a you know sparkly bra you don't deserve to be victimized any of it she said just try your best to be supportive and empathetic like you would be to a friend who might be grieving a death it will never be the same restorative justice kind of talks about this right which is a great way to look at some of these things is that we're going to try to restore the victim i love that idea but i also realize there's no restoration it's never going to be the same it's going to be different and how do you go through life with this different world it's still got good things and

things but it's different i hope that makes sense yeah no it does um elissa bean and jocelyn vinson both had kind of similar questions off that note like how often does revenge and justice help and does the prominence of um vigilantism and revenge fantasy and pop culture have an impact on how real victims think of their situation like do we see too much of um of revenge people getting revenge and we think ah that's what's gonna help me yeah maybe so and i mean i'll even admit on some things in my life where i've got some pretty fantastic revenge fantasies vengeance but i'm not going to engage in them for some people it might make it feel better but i don't think for most of us it will i don't think so but i think you think about it all you want if that's helping you then do that

but um yeah you've got to find another healthy way to deal with it too this next question made such an important point and i'm so glad that you asked it my dear friend this was an interesting question from the laurax a gay forest s um says in cases where an actual trauma is not present what are the most common ways that ptsd can arise and he says personally growing up gay in a conservative christian household has led me to quite a battle with ptsd like symptoms in non trauma based ptsd what are some of the therapies that have led to the most promising results so if someone maybe doesn't consider themself a victim because actual trauma wasn't present is there still trauma if you say grown up in a household that you didn't feel accepted you right no i i would say to think about

how you're defining trauma if you're just thinking about the physical attack okay maybe there wasn't a physical attack but let's look at like domestic violence or intimate partner violence there's the physical part of it but there's the emotional there's a psychological and there are some people that can tell you some of the psychological and emotional abuse is worse than some of the physical i don't want to say one's better one's you know whatever because they're all terrible so i would say there is still trauma there um and and again ptsd isn't my big area but i i don't know i would i would say think a little bit more about it and broaden his idea about what trauma is and that yeah that is trauma not being accepted being in a household where your parents didn't want you or

accept you or like you that's awful does it get worse than that i don't know it's pretty terrible i'm sorry yeah yeah and i imagine in terms of victim statistics the lgbtq community has got to be staggering is are there certain resources or ways you've seen that get any better any worse yeah i mean there's a lot more tension getting drawn there and and let me say this too it's not the victimologist haven't thought about it um but it's a data issue you have to get enough data to work with to do things and it's hard as we don't have a master list of the lgbtq community and over the recent you know recent years more and more people are more comfortable coming out when i did uh the sexual misconduct survey at my university that you had the option to note that

and many people identified as in different ways but there wasn't an update to do much with it the research that's out there does show that this group does experience victimization in certain ways at higher rates because i mean people see them as outgroups or something or bully so they do face some specific things i mean imagine being a transgender woman who's been raped and then i mean just deal with the criminal justice system in hospital nobody can tell me they're going to have the exact same experience who somebody is not transgender so yeah i think there's a whole lot of additional hurdles and issues that they're going to confront and there are more and more places that are popping up in to help i mean and maybe force

doesn't want to call it trauma and that's okay i think that as a victim or survivor you can call it whatever you want i think um people working in the field criminal justice system need to call it by specific definitions but as that victim or survivor if calling it trauma is really uncomfortable don't do that but i also wouldn't want somebody to think well i didn't really experience anything so i don't know why i'm going through PTSD yeah that's a terrible experience you did experience that and i would acknowledge it again it's not all about physical at all and you mentioned the word bully and that's the first time that word has come up in this interview and which led me to think about the way that we look at bullying in schools i feel like when i was going through

schools like if you got bullied it was like you're out of luck and there wasn't really anyone to go to but i feel like we're becoming much more aware of bullying is bullying getting worse are we getting better at calling it out and what do you think is the best way for like kinder victims who are maybe getting shit on at school yeah i yeah i don't know about the numbers i think it would probably be this sort of situation that we're calling it out more and recognizing it so if there were um like my particular data doesn't focus on bullying specifically but it probably looks like it's gone up but that's more of recognizing and disclosing um and i am glad schools are are dealing with it i mean when i just think back on my own personal experiences so these are just anecdotes is that

the bullies that i know came from families that bully right so this is the one where you find the parent is this is where they're learning this behavior and i think sometimes the bullies don't know other ways to interact and this isn't to minimize what they've done but i am glad schools are taking you know taking care of kids who are being bullied um because the same thing i could remember back in school and they would put us in this big we call it the mall before they let us into classes every morning always the same scenario same kid being bullied by the same bully and everyone just sat around and looked at it it was almost just normal whereas today i hope that that gets called out yeah yeah yeah some statistics show that because of increased

attention to bullying the rates may be going down now if you have a little one who's getting bullied at school or is having a hard time having a hard time making friends maybe look into the app sit with us it was created a few years ago by a then young teenager natalie hampton it's been downloaded like a hundred thousand times it helps kids find a table it's cool to sit at and they can specify their interests and find nice cool welcoming buddies again it's called sit with us and i personally am hoping that natalie wins like a Nobel peace prize or something bater al shawaf uh john worster and jessica auster all kind of asks when someone discloses that they've been a victim what's the best way that we can be supportive without scaring them away or pushing them off yeah yeah i think

just thanking them for trusting you not to question listen it's going to be listening first thank you for trusting me this what can i do to help you how can i support you can i help you find resources do not ask you know who they were out with or things that although well intention come across as blaming and also not trying to pull control away from them again because if you've been a victim of violence that's one of the things people talk about right is i was i had no control so really you say the words and it doesn't sound like much right but when you're in that experience it's really terrible so the last thing that person needs unless they say it is for you to go like we are going to do a b and c because you have now taken control away

from them again so i think being sensitive about that and and at least my experience is a lot of just listening people want to share and they want to get it out and process it and so listening and being supportive is key and then what resources let's go find some that's great advice maybe ice cream yeah ice cream is never a bad idea aki wants to know is there any truth for victims of abuse as children seeking similar abuse as adults and tyler and rebecca stifle um both kind of asked why do people in abusive relationships often struggle to end the relationship and people who essentially have been abused at one point in their life continuing to be abused abused or not being able to leave or feeling like they can leave something i see that as kind of two different

things in yeah there is some evidence of people who maybe have been abused as children end up in relationships where they're being abused and again i'm gonna kind of leave that to psychologists but there's a little bit of that we're what we're familiar with right um when you're a child in a household and you're being abused sometimes kids don't even know that that's wrong that's just what it is that's normal and so that's comfortable and normal and that sounds kind of strange and then they find a relationship that's comfortable and normal and then maybe they realize differently i did some work with christin carbone lopez who was at the university of missouri st louis she since moved on and we were looking at the movement from you know abusive relationship to

non abusive relationship to no relationship and we found evidence of a lot of people who were in abusive relationships did move to no relationships so it does happen why doesn't it happen all the time it's a resource structural issue um a few things say i am in a bad relationship and i'm being abused and there's a shelter down the street but you know what the shelter doesn't take pets there's no way i'm leaving my pets behind or they don't take male children or um he's gonna know where i am or my if i miss one more day at work i'm gonna lose my job there are a lot of things like that or he's kept and i'm using he she because i'm using myself as an example this does go both ways but if they have all control of the money and you have nothing and they don't give

you a cell phone it's not as easy as it seems another thing that i think um victim survivors recognizes that that period between leaving um and kind of getting free is the time most people are killed um you know watching a true crime show for example you see a woman who ends up murdered and in the beginning i'm like her husband did it and everyone's like how did you know because that's usually who did it and that's why so it's it isn't just so easy as like i'm fed up i'm getting in my car and driving away and starting over i mean any of us if any i would challenge any of us to say i want you to go today gather what's most important to you today and leave and start a new life now do that when you've got somebody who might kill you for doing that it's just not easy

so um gosh advocates are so great and more and more shelters are available and we're learning about the need to be able to take pets or children um and jobs but it's still incredibly hard i think i think it's almost like how anybody got out is pretty awesome it's it's amazing that i just can't even imagine what it takes but i hope people try if they feel it's the right thing to do and it's the safe thing to do but um it's not easy yeah i'll look up some resources for that too and put them in i found a great article on a site about of all things frugality called femfrugality.com and they wrote up a great list for example if you call 211 it will connect you with a local chapter of a united way and often they have special services for those who are going through domestic

violence they might even have special funds specifically to help victims get out um the site also recommended seroptimist that can help with job training may also have financial grants the national coalition against domestic violence can offer basic financial education if you're just needing to establish independence you aren't sure where to start on your own and the national domestic violence hotline is there to chat about everything from finances to like an actual exit plan and i'll put a link to this post from femfrugality.com up at alleyward.com slash oligies slash victimology there'll be a link to that in the show notes and encouragingly nearly 20 percent of intimate partner violence victims did receive assistance from a victim service agency so help

is out there. Heather Hutchinson asks i live in parkland florida and although my kids had already graduated from msd i know that they were deeply affected by the recent shooting there um as was i in a lot of the community um can you how can you cope with effects of something you were not directly involved with yeah yeah that's a really great question i i'm gonna answer it in kind of a weird way okay and i'm gonna go back to the media here the media has done i think a big disservice to the public in terms of school violence research is clear schools are safer than non-schools kids are far less likely to be victimized uh at or less likely to be victimized at a school than away from a school same with colleges we talk about campus violence all the

time it's not campus violence we're talking about we're talking about violence against college students that happens predominantly off campus and i think kind of sloppy use of words and highlighting these really rare although terrible terrible events has um led to people being really afraid of colleges and schools and i give talks on college student victimization i always have somebody come to me and say we're not sending our daughter to college anymore because it's not safe we're gonna keep her here at home and to me that's the worst outcome ever and i've written several pieces and they're in journals and i know people don't read journals and stuff and i'm trying to get it out there a little bit more for people to understand the true

risks again can you ever be totally risk free no but i'm telling you that risk of victimization is far less at school whether at the college level or k through 12 it's scary to think that it's so close to home it's scary to think it could have been your child that's killed um i don't know that we can take that away though but also the media does do a bit of a a good job of making us feel that that things are are scary and that there's danger everywhere right and as i try to tell my students the media and and again i love the media in many ways but there are certain things they have a job their job is to deliver deliver viewers to advertisers right and how do you do that you do that by keeping them coming back and how do you keep coming back scary stuff um and and

i'm not saying that i'm not prone to it oh my gosh i remember one time i went on a trip and again i don't have a tv at my house and so i was so excited in the hotel room and i turned on the television i'm watching the weather channel how pathetic do you like weather and i'm watching it it's like oh my gosh it's like i'm again back home my god so i get on the phone and i call back home and i'm like is it okay there because you know it really looks like it's just all coming apart i'm like yeah it's totally fine i'm like damn it yeah they got me and and it did you know because i did i continued to go back just to make sure things were fine and and that's what it's about it's not about educating us generally this podcast being the exception well i try but

then it's about returning viewers to advertisers and that's a way we know is effective keep them scared yeah um claire bit is comb emily fiori and keila pooch asked is there a better more encompassing term for survivor what are your thoughts on the the use of the term survivor instead of victim we touched on that i mean there are victims who do not survive right um for those that do is there a preferred terminology um is and i see it different i see some people who say i am a victim do not call me a survivor and i see people who are like i am a survivor do not call me a victim and and they find being called a victim is disempowering right they survive um as a victimologist if i'm talking about my research i deal with people who are murdered and not murdered

and i tend to use the word victim so again i uh try to be sensitive depending if i'm talking to a particular person to use the term that they prefer but uh i mean no disrespect if i say victim versus survivor um but yeah it's there's not a total there's not agreement in the field about it although i would say that there's more use of survivor than not okay had a great question how are victims who don't trust the system to help them like gender-based violence survivors people of color undocumented folks expected to heal so what do you recommend for for maybe victims who don't trust the system to help them i'm not sure that the system is good for healing most anybody right maybe seeing as good of justice that can come from it possibly but yeah i think

for getting healing you've got to use another system and it's going to be you know counseling or psychology or volunteering or whatever and your specific situation is is good for you which feeds your soul and helps to heal you but man i i don't see the criminal justice system as a place to go to get healed sadly can they point you to resources yeah they can do that too and in the cj system now generally you should have access to a victim advocate if you're navigating the system but it doesn't make it easy it's still hard it's still really challenging so it's like two different things like going to a tire shop for a sandwich that's how i kind of see it right right um yeah okay that's good to know um and katie chavez and keith tea they both had questions about um either

being trained to become a police officer or being a correctional officer and they say as a correctional officer people i supervise often use their victimization to justify their crimes and minimize their offenses how can i invoke empathy from them about their victims that's a really tough one i've been in um some discussions this last year about the difference in terms like rape and sexual assault and one of the reason i'm very passionate about using the word rape when we're talking about a penetration um you know any orifice any object without consent is because i mean for a few reasons one to to call that sexual assault um for many victim survivors it minimizes it because when you say sexual assault to a lot of people they envision a

butt grab which is a sexual assault but that's very different than a rape and um so i want to use the word rape because it acknowledges that the actual violence that occurred to that victim but it also forces the offender to not be able to hide behind i only sexually assaulted her which is heard a lot um and it kind of goes to this point is that offenders need to understand the the damage they did to another human you know an autonomous human being that they hurt and that can be very hard i mean there's groups out there that work with offenders or say sexual offenders who are trying to go through a re-entry and that's a part of the goal is to make them acknowledge it so callie says that just booting an offender off campus or

incarcerating someone likely won't solve the problem they may go on to do it again just to different people and this is why therapy for violent individuals benefits more than just the offender punishment has its place but making sure they don't go do that again is far more important and this kind of goes back to our prison discussion earlier just throwing people in prison constantly is a a taxpayer drain it pulls away from education and other important social services right um and i mean punishing isn't enough teaching people to do differently and giving them the ability to do differently i think is far more important our country's not there yet we like to punish we still do let's lighten things up with a very stupid question

i always ask this one too are there any movies or any tv shows with victimologists that you're like you do a good job or you're like that is ridiculous that's not how it works since i don't have a tv i don't see i think all of the things on the tv shows or they create these positions that don't exist i mean we see students who come all the time going i want to be a csi investigator well nobody is like going to crime scenes then going into the lab and looking in my you know that nobody's doing all that that's many many roles so i think overall they're pretty unrealistic but i will also throw in the caveat that since i don't have a tv i don't know a lot about what's on there anymore either means needs to be a new show that's just about victimology yeah just deals

with victims story yeah um and what's the hardest thing about your job what just sucks the most what's difficult what's hard to work through the hardest thing honestly is not enough time yeah there's just not enough time and i had somebody who met me for coffee yesterday because they want me to help on a really important project and and i said yes of course and then i'm over committed and i'm so busy and um that's the hardest part of it so i'm like dead serious when i'm saying that i hope people out there are listening thinking about what do i want to do with my life i want to make a difference go out there become a criminologist victimologist and help us we need so many more people um so people like me aren't trying to do it all because i can't i can't do it all and all

the other victimologists out there i think are equally really just working like crazy because we care and we want to see change and it can happen but we need more of us time if you could give me tonight that would be great if anyone has discovered like a quantum wormhole that allows us to have more time in a day just please do holler what's your favorite thing about your job what's the most rewarding most fulfilling what keeps you going i think um i've i love research um because it really is an adventure i mean research done right is asking a question gathering data and answering it this notion that research is having an answer and trying to find data to support it that's not research those that is not a researcher and that's not research but i love to ask a question

and then answer it the best you know with the best data i can find because the answer often is surprising and the answer always raises other questions and it's so cool it to me i actually envision it's like seeing a bunch of trees and heading into these trees without a path and wondering where it takes you and it always takes you somewhere just like wow this is so cool and research is that way to me i i like that and i also like the fact that if i uh like oh i want to focus on such and such now i can do that i mean is there a better job than that just getting to be curious ask questions find the answer and then help people a long way absolutely what a job but i love this i love this call to action that like if you're interested in

this like to to start looking into victimology as a career absolutely i i mean i so so so so mean it and it's something anybody can do i mean have some curiosity i know okay i do statistics and people like oh my god it's so scary come take my statistics course it is not scary it's not scary you're doing this already you're just not using the language we use um and i i do love to teach stats it's like super hard and i teach it really well because it's not about math it's about language and it's about answering questions and here's the tools to do it and many of my students are placed in analyst positions around some in other cities i love that and they all come in some of them crying even before the semester begins because they're so stressed and they end up going like wow i can do

this and i love it and every single person is capable of it and we need you thank you so much for being on well thanks for asking this was super fun so ask smart people maybe stupid sometimes painful or uncomfortable questions because those are usually the most important ones so to find out more about dr cali marie renaissance work just google her work with university of denver to find allergies you can follow us on twitter or instagram at allergies i'm ali ward with one l on both and for more info on this episode plus merch and stuff you can go to ali word.com slash allergies thank you shannon feltas and bonnie dutch thank you to erin talbert and henna lipo for admitting the facebook group thank you to interns harry kim

and keela patten to assistant editor chariot sleeper of mind jam media especially for all the extra research and to his mom christine mason for being such an inspiration and of course to lead editor fantastico mustachioed steven remorse of the percast and see jurassic right and nick thorburn who wrote and performed the theme music now if you stick around to the very end you know i tell you a secret and this week my much more vulnerable and usual secret is that this episode made me look back on just comments i've made about crimes or things that were in pop culture in a way that treats them like characters in a story not people and i feel really shitty about it i feel a lot of shame about it um and i also very much understand why people might be drawn

to those narratives but i sincerely hope that dr renaissance work just makes us consider who needs help who needs advocacy people are three-dimensional human beings and what we can all do to make each other feel more cared for um and also i i haven't worn matching socks in at least a week i just keep pulling ones from the bag of clean unmatched ones because guess what y'all boots fixes everything okay take care hug someone tell people you love them bye bye