Volume 27, Number 3 · March 6, 1980
The Plight of the Victim
By Graham Hughes
The Invisible Victim
by Robert Reiff
Basic Books, 219 pp., $11.95
The charge that we coddle criminals and neglect victims is often heard as a cry from the hysterical right but it embodies a substantial, if distorted, truth. Criminals do get a lot more attention than their victims for many reasons. First, victims frighten us. Like someone struck by cancer or by an automobile, the person who suffers criminal violence reminds others disturbingly of the inscrutable nature of fate's game plan. It was surely not fear of contagion alone that caused people to shun lepers but also the psychic difficulty of viewing such vivid evidence of life's random cruelty.
Review, 2755 words
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