Is there such a thing as a Non-Innocent Victim?

[margotb822]

Just wondering other people's thoughts on this.

edit to clarify: I think that if you're a victim, you are by definition, innocent. If you are complicit in an incident, you may suffer, but you're not a victim.

[TheWraith]

1. Yes, there certainly is such a thing.

Most confidence schemes, for instance, depend on the avarice of the mark and their interest in getting something for nothing. Same goes for the people who buy dodgy merchandise out of the back of a van, knowing that it's probably stolen, only to find out that it doesn't exist. There's a lot of ways in which somebody can be a victim without being innocent.

[slackmaster]

2. Those are perfect examples

:hi:

[blondeatlast]

3. When I saw this the OP I immediately thought of the Redford/Newman flick "The Sting." nt

[patriotvoice]

4. Yes, there are non-innocent victims.

A victim is "one that is acted on and usu. adversely affected by a force or agent". For example, cop hires a hit man to eliminate spouse's ex. Then arranges to get the hit man severely injured/murdered in a traffic stop. The hit man is a non-innocent victim.

[amdezurik]

5. Ok, which question is the poll for?

you ask the same thing two different ways to be answered 2 different ways? the one in the headline would be yes and in the body would be no...

[mrreowwr_kittty]

6. A man who goes to meet an underaged girl for sex.

Only to be beaten and robbed when he gets there.

[Bucky]

7. But that's guilt on a separate offense. He still had the right to use the sidewalk.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

10. Not on the sidewalk. In the hotel room where the tryst was to take place.

Even then you can argue it's not a perfect example but it would be difficult to feel bad for the victim.

[Bucky]

13. But the question wasn't "feel bad for." I think it's "Do some victims deserve it?"

If I knew the guy's intent, obviouly, I'd laugh if a grand piano fell on his head. But the question here seems to be just a half step removed from "Are some crime victims kind of asking for it?"

You can be stupid and place yourself in a crime prone neighborhood. You can get wasted & pass out in a flop house, for instance. I'll still argue that you don't "deserve" to be robbed there. The guilt is entirely on the perpetrator's account. Some victims may set themselves up, but doing a crime on someone is always a 100% choice by the criminal and is 100% undeserved by the victim--no matter how big a shit he might be in other regards.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

14. Is the guy in my example stupid or a criminal? Or both?

I'm going with both. Remember, MSNBC has a whole series devoted to catching guys who show up to meet what they believe are minors for sexual liaisons. They are placed under arrest on the spot, and from what I understand, are usually prosecuted successfully.

[Bucky]

15. The guy in your example deserves to be prosecuted. He doesn't deserve to be beaten up.

We have laws; we should live by them. The law itself can be a very binary calculation. One is guilty or innocent. The victim of a crime isn't even up for consideration of guilt or not. In that sense, every crime victim is innocent. If you want to deprive someone of their rights, find a due process of law to allow it. No matter how bad their other crimes, they don't deserve to lose their rights without due process.

Put another way for another generation: no matter how slutty the dress, the bitch is never "asking for it."

[BrklynLiberal]

8. Can someone truly be defined as a "victim" if they are NOT innocent?

[mrreowwr_kittty]

11. I believe so.

The definition of 'innocent victim' can often be highly subjective. The whole reason for rape shield laws is so that victims didn't have their lives and sexual histories dragged through the mud in order to portray them as sluts who were asking for it. Even still, the notion that the only true rape victims are virgins or nuns persists.

[nosillies]

9. I once watched two drunk girls in a fight.

This one chick was up in the other one's face, yelling at her, spittle flying, "C'mon, hit me you stupid bitch, I dare you, you stupid bitch, hit me, hit me!" in a horribly shrill voice.

So the stupid bitch punched her lights out.

And everyone watching was thankful.

[TahitiNut]

12. Yes ... but the penalty of being a victim almost always exceeds the 'crime.'

While the self-righteous and self-serving may opportunistically pile on, it's almost always overkill.

[Quantess]

16. What would you call Plaxico Burress's recent incident?

Does that qualify, or is that off topic?

[11 Bravo]

17. Hell yes, check out the Darwin Awards.

http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2008.html

[margotb822]

20. Victims of stupidity?

Haha, yea I love those.

[MedleyMisty]

18. I think that this attitude is one of the deepest splits between liberal and conservatives

Conservatives, in general, seem to think that you deserve everything that happens to you and that if someone else makes a decision to hurt you, you somehow controlled their mind and made them make that decision and that abusers have no free will and are in thrall to their victims. We tend to think it's the other way around and that victims have no free will.

I don't know - I admit that this is one issue where I may be a bit more towards the middle than I usually am, at least when it comes to mental choices. But I have been softening up some on that lately - I've realized that actually I am not normal. In a recent post I said that I didn't have special access to anything that the sheep didn't have and that it must be a choice to believe in propaganda and to allow yourself to be manipulated by social messages and advertising and all that.

Then I looked around the house and saw the five and a half bookcases double and triple stacked with books and the piles of books sitting around. Yeah, my parents were factory workers and I went to crappy rural schools. But my mother read books to me as much as I wanted her to and when I learned to read on my own (she says I started reading when I was two - I definitely remember coming home from kindergarten and asking her why the other kids couldn't even read really really easy words like "the" and "it".) she let me go. She bought me any book I wanted, let me check anything I wanted out of the library, and even made it a point to let me read instead of making me do housework.

And then I remembered this article.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081110_america_the_illiterate/

So, you know - maybe even the victims of propaganda are innocent.

I do definitely think that, as in most things, the more liberal view is the one based more in reality and mental health. The idea that victims have control over what happens to them is the product of insecurity and inability to deal with the random chaos that is life.

[Gwendolyn]

19. Of course there is. We wouldn't have literature without it. n/t