Re-victimization patterns in a national longitudinal sample of children and youth

Abstract

Objective

To understand to the degree to which a broad variety of victimizations, including child maltreatment, conventional crime, peer, and sexual victimizations, persist for children from 1 year to the next.

Design

A national sample of 1467 children aged 2–17 recruited through random digit dialing and assessed via telephone interviews (with caretakers and youth themselves) about a comprehensive range of victimization experiences in the previous year, and then re-assessed (72.3% of baseline sample) after a 1-year interval.

Results

The risk for re-victimization in Year 2 was high for children victimized in Year 1, with risk ratios ranging from 2.2 for physical assault to 6.9 for sexual victimization. Victimization of any one type left substantial vulnerability even for different types of subsequent re-victimization (e.g., property crime victimization was associated with higher risk of sexual victimization the next year). Children with four or more types of victimization in Year 1 (“poly-victims”) were at particularly high risk of persisting poly-victimization. Persisting poly-victimization was more likely for children who scored high on anger/aggression and who had recent life adversities. Desistence from poly-victimization was associated with having more good friends. Onset of poly-victimization in Year 2, in contrast to persistence from Year 1, was associated with violent or maltreating families, family problems such as alcohol abuse, imprisonment, unemployment and family disruption. Having more older siblings acted as both a risk factor and a protective factor for different groups of youth.

Conclusion

Children previously victimized in 1 year are at higher risk of continued victimization, and the poly-victims are at particular risk. These findings suggest the potential merit of identifying these high-risk children and making them priority targets for prevention efforts.

Introduction

The concept of re-victimization or repeat victimization is increasingly of interest to researchers who study maltreatment and crime. This interest is grounded in evidence that persons who experience one victimization (an assault, a burglary, sexual abuse, etc.) are at greater risk for subsequent victimizations and the obvious merit of interrupting this pattern (Weisel, 2005).

The issue has been addressed in different ways in somewhat different literatures with different conceptualizations and terminologies. In some research, for example, the term re-victimization has meant a connection between a childhood victimization and an adult victimization, such as child sexual abuse and adult rape (Arata, 1999; Arata & Lindman, 2002; Desai, Arias, Thompson, & Basile, 2002; Merrill et al., 1999; Messman and Long, 1996, Messman and Long, 2000; Noll, Horowitz, Bonanno, Trickett, & Putnam, 2003; Wyatt, Guthrie, & Notgrass, 1992). In other research, where the more frequently used term is repeat victimization, it has meant two victimizations occurring in closer proximity, such as two burglaries over the course of several years (Farrell, Philips, & Pease, 1995; Hope, Bryan, Trickett, & Osborn, 2001; Lauritsen & Quinet, 1995; Menard & Huizinga, 2001; Outlaw, Ruback, & Britt, 2002). In yet another research context, it has meant the recurrence of an episode of child maltreatment typically at the hands of the same perpetrator after a first episode was identified (Depanfilis & Zuravin, 1999).

Despite these variations, an overall limitation to the re-victimization and repeat victimization literature has been the tendency to consider victimization in somewhat narrow terms. Typically, studies have examined the recurrence of only one or a few kinds of victimizations, for example sexual abuse or violent crime. But the possibility also exists that victimizations of one sort, such as child maltreatment, may create a vulnerability for other different kinds of victimization, such as peer assault or sexual victimization. Moreover, any single kind of victimization may signal a generalized vulnerability in that child for victimization. This could also lead to strong associations across victimization types. Defining re-victimization too narrowly as the reoccurrence of only a single kind of victimization may substantially underestimate the real magnitude of risk associated with victimization. In this article, we will be considering victimizations broadly to include conventional crime victimization, like theft and assault; child maltreatment, such as physical and sexual abuse and neglect; peer victimizations, like bullying; and even exposure to domestic and community violence.

Another limitation to the re-victimization literature is that it has tended, like much of the victimization field as a whole, to view victimization as an event rather than as a condition. Victimization has often been treated as a somewhat unusual, individual event of a particularly traumatic sort. But many victimizations are ongoing, as the literatures on bullying, child abuse, and intimate partner violence have made clear. Moreover, studies of peer relationships among young children have increasingly suggested that some children become trapped in a victimization condition, in which they are subjected to repeated attacks of different types from different children (Kochenderfer Ladd, 2003; Kochenderfer Ladd & Ladd, 2001). Such victimization proneness can continue for years. This suggests that an important focus of re-victimization studies should be on the persistence of victimization as a condition, rather than simply the recurrence of certain kinds of victimization events.

Still another limitation to the re-victimization literature is that it has not devoted much attention to the issue of how individuals escape re-victimization, or what might be termed “victimization desistence.” If victimization is viewed as an unusual event, then it can be assumed that most victimized individuals will not be re-victimized, and, therefore, all that needs to be explained is subsequent re-victimization. But if victimization is a persisting condition for many youth, then the question of how they escape such a condition is both interesting and of great practical and clinical importance.

To the extent that vulnerability for re-victimization has been considered, it has mostly been analyzed in terms of what have been called “static” risk factors, things about individuals and their conditions that are impossible or very difficult to change. Thus, questions typically studied are whether children from some ethnic groups or from lower socioeconomic status are more likely to be re-victimized. However, the search for ways to prevent re-victimization and promote desistence needs to focus on risk and protective factors more amenable to manipulation or amelioration. Such a search would focus on short-term and modifiable antecedents to the persistence and desistence of victimization.

The findings on re-victimization in this paper come from an ongoing longitudinal study of a comprehensive range of victimizations experienced by children and youth across the full spectrum of child development. The screening for a broad range of victimizations allowed an analysis of how some kinds of victimization create vulnerability for other kinds of victimization. It also allowed the identification of children with extensive victimization profiles, children who might be considered trapped in a victimization condition. The interviews with children and parents at 1-year time intervals also allowed for the study of re-victimization over a relatively short time period, and the identification of relatively short-term antecedents of persistent victimization.

There were several keys questions of interest in this exploratory analysis:

• Are children victimized in one year indeed at considerably increased likelihood to be victimized again during the next year? Based on the previous literature, we expected such enduring vulnerability to be present.

• Does victimization of one sort create vulnerability for victimization of another sort? We expected that it would over a broad range of victimizations, if only because different victimizations do have common risk factors (Finkelhor & Asdigian, 1996). We also expected, however, that repeat victimization of the same sort might be more common than one kind of victimization leading to a different kind of victimization.

• Are highly victimized youth in one year particularly vulnerable to re-victimization the next? We expected the most intensively victimized youth to be the ones most vulnerable to re-victimization. In earlier analyses of this sample (Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, 2007), we identified a subset of children with high levels of different kinds of victimization, a group we have termed “poly-victims,” for whom victimization was a potentially generalized condition rather than just a set of events. We expected these children to be especially vulnerable to continued victimizations. Moreover, based on literature suggesting the particularly large developmental insults posed by such experiences as child maltreatment and sexual abuse (Dube et al., 2005; Felitti, Anda, & Nordenberg, 1998), we also expected such victimizations might be particularly powerful “gateways” to persisting victimization or persisting high levels of victimization.

• What are risk factors that may lead to conditions of high victimization vulnerability and persistence, as well as resilience factors that may allow children to escape or “desist from” such a condition? A diverse range of factors have been cited as possible risk factors for different kinds of victimization (Finkelhor & Asdigian, 1996), including such features as family problems and instability, neighborhood conditions and life course adversities. Other factors such as social support and social competence have been seen as resilience factors. We expected some of these to contribute to revictimization vulnerability and desistence.