Championing Victimhood.
A strange car pulled into the yard of our small farm, and out stepped a perfect specimen of the tweed-skirt-and-sensible-shoes that is usually encountered behind the cash register of a High Street Charity shop.
We homed in on her with expectant expressions – ‘Mr G’ she said brightly, ‘Oh good, I thought I’d never find you, my, you’re ever so isolated up here!’
‘Er?’ said Mr G, never a man to waste words where a grunt will do.
‘Victim Support, I’ve come to see how I can help’, she patted his arm in a conspiratorial manner and ushered him expertly towards the front door. She clearly knew a reluctant victim when she saw one.
I shouldn’t knock the lady, she had done all her counselling courses, she gave her time freely, indeed she had travelled some 80 miles to visit us this fine morning, but it was a mystery as to why…
Mr G’s powers of grunting in the right place having clearly evaded him for the moment, I made her coffee and asked whether she was quite sure she had the right address. She pulled out a sheaf of papers, and ran through all the details, ‘Yup, Mr G, ‘I-run-it-my-way Farm’, right village, right county’. She could see that Mr G was showing all the finger tapping indications of a man about to escape her grasp. ‘I do know you farmers are very independant’, she said, ‘but we know how much good we can do when you can talk about things’.
A strangulated gurgle escaped his lips – I knew the warning signs, he was working up to actual speech. The mouth opened and closed several times whilst he practised, and finally emitted a cautious ‘What about’? Years of experience had taught him to avoid women who wanted ‘to talk’.
‘You had a burglary’ she said in that tone you use to address small children, ‘didn’t you?’
‘I did?’
‘Yes, and you lost some tools, didn’t you? Tools can be very important to a man’.
She was good, I’ll give her that, but nowhere near good enough to persuade Mr G to emote over the loss of some £15 worth of ancient drain clearing rods on a night three months previously when several farms had been ‘raided’. The police had been to see if we had been ‘visited’ that night, and duly made a report to the effect that we had joined the growing throng of potential victims to be accorded counselling and support services….Mr G fled the kitchen, with na’er a backward glance, and left me to deal with her.
So I was a little surprised to find yesterday that Jack Straw was going to officially launch a ‘National Victims Service’ which would offer a dedicated support worker to help them get access to any assistance they need. Surely we already had one, and one with too much time on their hands, if our experience was anything to go by? More research was obviously needed, which led me into a stunning world of victimhood – stunning and expensive, to say nothing of expansive.
We can precisely date the time when losing your hated drain rods became as worthy of counselling as losing your grand-mother in a foul and heinous crime. 35 years ago. When the charity ‘Victim Support’ was first born into the brave new world of government grants. My, how the baby has flourished!
By 2002, the charity had a fine body of worthy trustees, and the Home Office was channelling some £28 million a year into this charity, on the basis of:
Some 28% of adults in England and Wales are thought to have been the victim of a personal crime or a crime on their household in 2001–02.1 Being a victim or a witness to a crime can be a life-changing event, whatever its nature or severity.
1 in 4 of the population – how could a Government department leave this to the private sector? Rich pickings for employment in the public sector were there for the taking.
Victim Support did their best to stay out of Government hands, by 2008 they had merged their network of regional charities into one amorphous blob, and were appealing for ‘development funds‘ to keep pace with ’social and cultural changes relating to crime’. Their annual costs had risen to £35 million.
But the Government had an ace up its sleeve – they had a ‘Victim’s Champion’ no less, none other than Sarah Payne, and she produced a report saying that the Government should take over.
But it is a pity that it has taken the common sense approach of a mother who lost her young daughter in tragic circumstances to tell the government the direction it needed to take on this issue.”
Mrs Payne – who is recovering after suffering a brain aneurysm before Christmas – published her report calling for the new service after spending nine months speaking to victims and witnesses and studying front-line services.
The empire building scarcely missed a beat, for guess what came next? A European element! Yes, we have a ‘European Forum for Victim Services’ with yet another layer of worthies engaged in conferences, and liaising with 21 organisations from 19 European Countries. Currently applying for ’structural financial support from the European Commission’.
I was going to say, this week Europe, next week the world, but they beat me to it……Still not content, at an international level – we have the grandiose ‘World Society of Victimology’ (I’m giving you links so you will know I am not making this up – you couldn’t!) and to co-ordiante all the research into ways of channeling tax payers money into consoling Shropshire farmers, we have the imaginatively named, ‘Intervict‘, an academic faculty focusing on developing victimological studies, and handing out victim ‘ologies’ to attentive students.
Coming soon – the Inter-Galectic Alien Victim Support Service.
Poor, poor, Tax payer, I wonder whether anyone will offer to counsel him on his sad loss? I suspect he just has to rely on the old fashioned stiff upper lip.
- Tweets that mention Championing Victimhood. — Topsy.com
- January 31, 2010 at 07:28
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
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January 29, 2010 at 08:27 -
I once had a burglary involving all of my very sentimental jewelry, which incidentally was grossly under insured.. Take note and update regularly.
I then received a phone call from a very nice lady who offered support. I thanked her kindly and told her I was fine. But I got the distinct impression that I had somehow let her down by not collapsing in hysterics.
Six months later I met a stranger in a pub who told me it was him wot done it and been sent to prison for it. A fact which the police had neglected to tell me. I was much more annoyed about this. I could have done with some support at that point.
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January 29, 2010 at 08:32 -
This Inter-Galactic whotsit …….they’re far too late, I’ve already been assaulted and battered by aliens; and several times over the last ten years.
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January 29, 2010 at 08:33 -
The best victims support is the certainty that little Johnny is going to be locked up for a decent period of time after being caught and not let off with a slap on the wrist to repeat creating more victims.
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January 29, 2010 at 08:45 -
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January 29, 2010 at 08:54 -
Another classic tail wagging the dog syndrome.
It started with good intentions and I’m sure that many people have benefited from it. But then budgets got involved and once again discretion was taken away.
Why is there such a rise in victim support when we are bombarded with M.P.s and Police telling us that crime is falling?
What was the motivation several years ago to instruct Police Officers to inform Victim Support for every crime? See above article for the truth.
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January 29, 2010 at 09:35 -
If anyone ever bothers to write a history of these last three, sad decades, it’s likely that Deckchair Rearrangement Syndrome will be the post-invented description they’ll choose to sum it up.
As those above suggest, the best way to reduce victim trauma is to reduce victims. Surprisingly, this means catching Sid Snott and then finding a way to give Sid something more positive to do with his life. This requires clear Government crime strategies, and cops who understand their role. These being absent in the UK, we shouldn’t expect any change.After my near miss in the Paddington disaster, I was badgered by Victim Support for months. Eventually, the Crash Inquiry wrote to me asking if I had post-traumatic wotsername and I replied yes, it’s called Victim Support.
Again, what I really wanted was the profiteering twerps in Great Western to be banged up. And of course, they weren’t.
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January 29, 2010 at 11:00 -
Another piece of socialism for Cameron to conserve.
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January 29, 2010 at 11:17 -
“Surprisingly, this means catching Sid Snott and then finding a way to give Sid something more positive to do with his life.”
Like trying to regrow his recently severed hands? I’d pay good money to see that happen.
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January 29, 2010 at 11:19 -
Returning home from work one Friday evening I found the patio doors had been smashed through and everything electrical had been spirited away. Some plods turned up eventually, along with a Scene of Crime Officer who gloomily dusted for ‘prints among the smashed glass. He eventually turned to me and announced that “Once, just once, I would like to find one of these burglars bleeding to death on the floor. That’s the only way we can catch ‘em.”
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January 29, 2010 at 11:34 -
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January 29, 2010 at 12:08 -
Not to worry – divine intervention is at hand:
Plod for God, perhaps?
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January 29, 2010 at 15:11 -
Is anyone interested in funding my new charity CS4VoVS?
The Counseling Service for the Victims of Victim Support aims to reassure and support victims through their encounters with other Victim Support organisations.
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January 29, 2010 at 17:09 -
I got a letter and phone call from victim support when I reported the theft of a large planter from outside my front door. I only reported it because there had been a lot of thefts of planters and garden furniture in the area. I was given a crime number although I said I would not been making an insurance claim.
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January 29, 2010 at 18:15 -
Husband flagged, or bed sagged, Madame?
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Cheeky! He was just looking too gorgeous, so I had to send him off for a few Pug-Ugly lessons! -
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January 29, 2010 at 19:39 -
When we Taxpayers start paying the Taliban to stop fighting whilst we invade their country, who will Victim Support visit? Us or them?
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January 29, 2010 at 23:19 -
It is easier to catch victims than it is to catch criminals.
To some extent the Police have made many rods for their own back. Particularly through their rote insistance that nobody should get involved in other people’s incidents, just peek through your net curtains and dial 999. That’s no way for a community to be. Another is that they really sell themselves well and people fall for it. It doesn’t help that they have loads of flash cars, choppers, cameras coming out their arses and fancy bits of kit. All apparently to aid the detection and prevention of crime. Funny that those crash, bang, wallop TV’s Daftest Police Chases type telly shows often end with the narrator saying such and such was let off with a caution, released without charge, etc, etc.
What is the point of the DNA database if it only helps secure 1 conviction in 150?(That is assuming each crime ’solved’ results in a conviction…)
Take the toys off them.
Given that the Police have largely reduced Policing to looking busy and giving people crime numbers I’m surprised the insurance industry doesn’t appear to be interested in funding private prisons. You think they’d be all for it really – if crime was costing insurers £35billions in 1998 imagine what it is costing them now. Prisons cost nothing like that. It would surely be worth their while to build a few.
Could even have the lags staffing the insurance Co. call centres…
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