Which victims are truly the (good guys,) and which are more deserving of inaccurate depictions than others?

Which victims are truly the (good guys,) and which are more deserving of inaccurate depictions than others? Objectivity

is needed to resolve this victim versus victim infighting.

Next, consider how victims of highly publicized crimes could be outraged by the way the news media portrays them. Rather than side with the injured parties or with the journalists covering their cases, shouldn’t a victimologist adopt the stance of a detached and disinterested observer who investigates these charges of insensitivity and inaccuracy perhaps by carrying out a fine-grained content analysis of press coverage in those high-profile cases?

Third, consider those situations where well- intentioned officials and groups put forward compet- ing criminal justice policies, both of which claim to be pro-victim. For instance, prosecutors’ offices have adopted one or the other of two alternative ways of responding to violence between intimate partners. One policy enables a battered woman to remain in control of “her” case and ultimately decide if she wants to press charges against her husband or lover whom she had arrested for assaulting her. Advocates of letting her choose whether to prosecute or not emphasize that this approach empowers her to weigh her alternatives and take her personal safety into account. The other policy mandates that the prosecution of the arrestee should go forward on the basis of the available evidence (police officer tes- timony, photos of bruises, eyewitness accounts, hos- pital records, and 911 recordings), even if the injured party wants to drop the charges (either because she fears reprisals or seeks rapprochement). Supporters of this policy believe that when batterers know they will be held responsible and punished, domestic violence will subside as a societal problem. In other words, her ability to determine what she wants to do about her individual situation must be sacrificed for the “greater good,” which is to use cases like hers to gen- erally deter would-be batterers from assaulting their partners. Only an impartial analysis of scientifically gathered evidence can determine which of these two ostensibly pro-victim approaches best serves the long-term interests of most domestic violence victims (see O’Sullivan, Davis, Farole, and Rempel, 2007; and Nichols, 2014).

The Pentagon has tried for several decades to reduce the number of sexual assaults inflicted by

10 CH APT ER 1

F O S T E R , C E D R I C 1 6 9 2 T S

members of the marines, army, navy, air force, and even the coast guard upon their comrades in arms in service academies, barracks, military bases, and even foreign battlefields. After the U.S. Senate debated alternative ways to bring the problem under control, two competing bills, both claiming to be pro-victim, came up for a vote. Supporters of one proposal argued that soldiers, sailors, and mar- ines who are sexually assaulted fear that if they dare to file a complaint, their superiors may not act in their behalf. So they urged legislation that would have stripped commanding officers of their ability to decide which cases reported to them should lead to a court martial and would have empowered mil- itary prosecutors to make that decision about press- ing charges or not. But the majority voted against this proposal, and instead the Senate passed the Vic- tims Protection Act of 2014 that provides complai- nants with special counsels to advise them about the pros and cons of pursuing their cases in the military as opposed to the civilian criminal justice system (Jordan, 2014).