‘Lucky Boy!’; Public Perceptions of Child Sexual Offending Committed by Women

This exploratory study addresses the existing gaps on the public perceptions of child sexual offending committed by women. Using thematic analysis, the study extracted, coded and analysed the comments ( N = 1,651) made by the general public to nine Daily Mail online newspaper articles published from 2018 to 2019, reporting the sentencing decisions of female sex offenders, who have been charged and found guilty with the offence of sexual activity with a child. From those comments, 170 coded themes were identified, and this amounted to 3,394 coded incidences. Unlike previous research, this study cross-examines public responses to different typologies of offending behaviour; teachers, mothers, same sex offenders, co-offenders and finally those who offended for financial gain. The impact of these typologies was analysed through key descriptive case variables, which were quantitively evaluated against the prominent themes that emerged. It found that while people demand equal sentencing decisions between male and female child sex offenders, this is limited by public perception when the abuser is an attractive female and, as a result, perceived as less harmful to the child, who is not seen no longer as a victim but as a ‘Lucky Boy’. Such preconceptions fuel shame, social stigma and stereotyping towards sexual exposure and prevents victims to disclose their abuse and achieve closure and justice.

Status of Crime Victims in Bangladesh

Though a few provisions for the victim of crimes were indirectly recognized since the nineteenth century, from 2000 onwards, legal entitlements for crime victims are realized in Bangladesh with a specific focus on women and children. So far, few analyses are found to be performed mainly by the legal experts, emphasizing legal rights and remedies with recommendations for legal reform. However, studies on the status of victims’ rights seem to be incomplete without considering administrative as well as social reality—dominated by colonial legacy and traditional practices—beyond the written clauses in the law books. This study is one of the pioneering attempts in Bangladesh to understand the status of crime victims against the backdrop of recent legal changes and to examine the argument whether the legal provisions itself are enough in providing victims with intended benefits without simultaneous social and administrative changes. Within the theoretical framework of balancing victim’s rights and informal social control (victim blaming), this qualitative study (through content analysis) reviewed all criminal laws and research findings related to victim’s rights within a socio-legal approach in terms of victim’s access, participation, protection, services and compensation. Along with the rights legally granted to victims, available research findings were interpreted in connection to those particular rights. It is found that there are unsupportive social milieu, administrative subculture and political practices, where victims of crime are strongly restrained from enjoying their rights. Particularly, the status of crime victims is found to be undermined in the face of corruption, low public confidence on enforcing agencies, gross withdrawal or discharge of criminal cases on political grounds, limited geographical coverage of victim support services and shelter homes, lengthy process for compensation and unavailability of rules or guidelines to enforce the rights.

The Expressive Function of #VictimsLaw: Developing a Substantive and Enforceable Framework of Rights and Remedies in Response to Local Need and the Emerging forms of Victimization

All too often, the law fails victims because it is placatory and unenforceable. The law fails to provide real support and redress when victims need it. Recent international attention has moved to consider the benefits of a victims’ law, one that provides for recognition, dignity and respect for victims by enhancing victim agency through a type of justice which is both substantive and enforceable. It aims to provide higher levels of transparency and accountability of public officials, including the police, prosecution and courts. Such a law builds upon previous attempts at enforceable rights by ascribing a more comprehensive human rights framework compatible with the fair trial process, by granting victims the right to be informed, present and heard within the investigative and trial process more broadly. This article will consider the feasibility of a victims’ law by examining what it offers the recently addressed or emerging forms of victimization. Three examples trending on the #victimslaw hashtag are selected for analysis—domestic and gendered violence; modern slavery and servitude; and coercive control, cyber-abuse and harm. The extent to which a victims’ law provides a meaningful way of ratifying international standards and norms against domestic law and policy is assessed against the needs of those most vulnerable victims of abuse and neglect.

Personal Reflections on Shared Identity and Contemporary Relationships of Mutual Support and Intersectional Solidarity of Rwandan Tutsi and Jewish Human Rights Advocates

This article is a qualitative case study of the relationships being formed between Jews and Rwandan Tutsis and the ways in which six individuals, four Tutsis and two Jews involved in advocating for the human rights and welfare of Rwandan genocide survivors articulate their understanding of the bonds between the two communities, their shared experiences, and how their history of having survived persecution and genocide brings them together. Through their testimonies, it examines similarities and differences between the Jewish and Tutsi experiences of vulnerability and persecution, ways in which Tutsis and Jews work in partnership to advance human rights and, in particular, the rights of Rwandan genocide survivors, and how their narratives of identity have evolved in interaction with one another and continue to develop. It discusses the particular projects and advocacy efforts in which both groups have engaged to advance the human rights of Rwandan genocide survivors and how through these efforts Jews and Rwandan Tutsis give expression to a shared understanding of and commitment to human rights.

Environmental Crimes: Effect of COVID-19 on Non-human Victims

The article aims at finding out the impact of COVID-19 on forest and wildlife crimes, as the novel coronavirus or COVID-19 stalled our daily activities in the most unexpected manner. Studies have shown that the origin of any influenza virus is typically from animals.2 Thus, a direct nexus can be established between wildlife trade (primarily which is illegal) and the spread of coronavirus. United Nations Environmental Programme of 2016 identified issues of upcoming zoonotic diseases while discussing their emergence and re-emergence and its link with the ecosystem. In this article, an attempt is made to understand the framework and stance of International Criminal Court in regard to the environmental crimes. Further this article mentions the role International Criminal Court can play if the office of prosecutor were to try and prosecute the cases of environmental crimes. Further, Sustainable Development Goals 13, 14 and 153 play an important role in this secondary study. Since these goals have presented us with the opportunity to interlink goals with one another and thus discuss the need of protecting and conserving non-human victims of environmental harms along with human victims. Study of reports from international and national organizations, law journals, case laws, news reports, books, commentaries, etc., are used and finally the conclusive remark is based on the interpretation of this primary data. This article solely proposes to analyse and identify the challenges faced by non-human victims mainly forest and wildlife during the course of pandemic outbreak.

Sexual Violence at Music Festivals and the ‘Theory of Silence’: Unravelling the ‘Hideous’ Sexual Assault Problem in Nigerian Open-air Musical Events

This study confronts the prevailing culture of silence that trails sexual victimization in Nigeria to explore the scale of the problem of sexual violence at open-air music festivals. In-depth interviews involving 47 female attendees of musical concerts, who had experienced different forms of sexual violence, were conducted. Findings revealed high severity of sexual assault, low reportage, and strong influence of rape myth acceptance. Refusal to report sexual victimization is informed by the fear of isolation, stigmatization, self-blame and low confidence in the police. Cultural-shift that will change negative social perception towards rape survivors and women attending music festivals is suggested.

Maryland’s Underage Sexting Case: Punishing Revenge Porn Victims?

In 2019, the US State of Maryland’s highest court upheld the conviction of a 16-year-old minor for distributing her own ‘child pornography’ when she privately sent a clip of her performing a (completely legal) sexual act to a social media group of which only she and her two best friends were members. Considering that the child porn statute was never meant to prosecute legal and consensual sexting, this criminalization appears to be contra legem in light of the fact that the Court would not have regarded it as an offence if the girl was two years older (which does not make any difference to the legality of the sexual act since the age of sexual consent in Maryland is 16). The Court’s penalization of this act of sexting seems inappositely puritanical especially when it is noted that the convict was a victim of ‘revenge porn’ since one of the two friends leaked the clip in her school in an apparent act of revenge after their friendship ended. This paper analyses both the majority and dissenting opinions of this 2019 judgment to come to the conclusion that the majority ignores the true purport of the US Supreme Court decisions and wrongly invokes the doctrines for interpreting legislative intent to buttress its stance. As Maryland has criminalized acts of ‘revenge porn’, this article’s focus extends to examining how the Court’s failure of factoring in the effect of Maryland’s ‘revenge porn’ statute in discerning the legislative intent of the ‘child porn’ statute has produced an aberration of a statutory interpretation.

Happiness and Criminal Victimization: A Study of Relationship and Restoration

Even well-developed nations with the highest economic growth rates have failed to bring happiness amongst their citizens. Consequently, recent studies have shifted their focus from economic variables, such as Human Development Index (HDI), gross development product (GDP) per capita, etc., to happiness as an indicator of growth, development and social progress. Amidst others, criminal victimization is one of the important indicators of happiness. The present article intends to study the relationship between happiness using the happiness measurement index and criminal victimization using the crime statistics of selected nations. It consists of a descriptive statistical analysis of six nations selected based on their happiness score, including two nations each with a high, average and low happiness measurement index. The results show that people living in nations with high crime rates were less happy and satisfied than individuals living in nations with comparatively lower crime rates. However, the article could not conclusively establish the relation between the happiness level and the nature of crime.

Introducing Victim Impact Statement in India: Reconceptualizing Victim Status

The right to fair trial is inherent in the concept of due process of law, which now forms part of Article 21 of Indian Constitution after the Maneka Gandhi judgement. Pertinently attached with the same comes the responsibility of the criminal system to treat victims with increased awareness and sensitivity. However, the established convention shows that in planning and developing administration of criminal justice, proper attention is not given to the victims of crime in achieving goals of criminal justice; the major cause of it being that a victim is heard only as a witness not as a victim. A credible response to the said issue has emerged in the form of victim impact statement (VIS) in the modern legal system across the world. With that being said, the researchers through this article try to deduce the need for incorporating a VIS in India through the various jurisprudential understandings of what it means to be a victim, including the gap between the subjective experience of the sufferer and the interpretation of the same by others, and what restorative justice would mean to heal a victim. Establishing upon the same premise of victim status, the researchers try to suggest that the introduction of VIS, with the primary purpose of it being a therapeutic tool and not an instrument of changing the course of justice, will serve to make us reconsider our contours of a ‘victim’.

Road-mapping the Contradictions Around Premenstrual Syndrome: A Medico-legal Quandary

Even though the term premenstrual syndrome has entered the common lexicon, yet it still remains a Gordian knot that needs to be untangled by not only the medical profession but also the legal profession. Resolving this conundrum requires a balancing of the dichotomy between ‘medicalizing’ women’s lives and a need to affirm women’s experiences. There exist several legal impediments while presenting evidence of this syndrome for diminishing the responsibility of a woman in a criminal trial. The present research is undertaken with an aim to determine the relationship between female criminality and premenstrual syndrome. The research further examines the credibility of utilizing the evidence of premenstrual syndrome to excuse a woman from criminal responsibility during a trial. This article is a step in the direction of pushing the envelope for spurring a holistic development of law, which is inclusive of the specific needs of women.