Tag: victim blaming

Victim stories as a prevention strategy

I woke up with an insight the other night.  I was part of a group brainstorming with Consumer Affairs Victoria. They want to do something about romance scams and were looking at intervention points.  The insight I had is that one of the biggest resources for prevention messages is scam victims, yet it is virtually untapped.  I’ve been saying for some time that more needs to be done for romance scam victims.  There is currently very little done for or with them. Yet they have great stories to tell.

They are encouraged to report their scam to ScamWatch or ACORN,  and they might get an automated response back with no identifying name, but to the victim, there is very little indication of anything else happening.  They are left alone to deal with the grief, the shame, and the often devastating financial circumstances.  They suffer through depression, low self esteem, lack of self worth, as well as sometimes suicidal thoughts and actions.  I know this from personal experience, and from the many contacts I have with victims who tell me this, saying they are still in this state even many years after they have been scammed. Continue reading Victim stories as a prevention strategy

Susceptible to scams? 66 percent are..

Whenever I speak publicly about being scammed there is often either an innuendo or a direct attribution that because I have been lonely I am likely to be vulnerable to a scam.  For ‘lonely’ translate to ‘faulty individual’.  Thus the formula follows, in their minds:  I am not lonely, therefore I am not ‘scam-able’.  I reject the formula, but more on that later.  Now there is research which has looked specifically at susceptibility to cybercrime.  Low and behold “In total, 60% of the population surveyed presented as being in the higher risk categories for susceptibility to cybercrime.”[i]  So, for a great many people, it could happen to them.

Undertaken by Lee Hadlinton and Sally Chivers, and published in Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice[i], this research looks at susceptibility to cybercrime levels through the lenses of information security awareness,  trait impulsivity, and cross references these with age and employment factors. Continue reading Susceptible to scams? 66 percent are..

Victim Blaming endemic in Romance Scams

[How victim blaming applies to romance scams. The latest research from Dr. Cassandra Cross explains how scam  victims are blamed,  how they are impacted and the influence on the reporting of scams.  Who you should not tell about your scam, from Dr Brené Brown.]

The term ‘victim blaming’ has come to the fore recently in relation to photos of schoolgirls being published online, and one school’s response to this.  As with rape and other sexual assaults in the past, the victim (schoolgirls) were blamed for their actions, clothing, etc inciting their abuse.  The same happens with victims of romance scams.

“Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially responsible for the harm that befell them“, according to Wikipedia. RationalWiki describes further: “Blaming the victim describes the attempt to escape responsibility by placing the blame for the crime or other abuse at the hands of the victim. Classically this is the rapist claiming his victim was “asking for it” by, for example, wearing a short skirt.”

The past years has seen an increasing understanding that rape victims are not to blame for their rape, no matter what they wear, and women walking through parks, or on their way home after a night out are not inciting their sexual assault simply by being out. The change in understand has been brought about by a concerted effort by women’s groups raising  and successfully addressing the spectre of the sexual double standard involved. Continue reading Victim Blaming endemic in Romance Scams