Victims of Crime Research Digest, Issue No. 5

Understanding the Experiences of Youth Victimization

Melissa Northcott, MA is a researcher with the Research and Statistics Division, Department of Justice Canada, in Ottawa, and is doing research on a range of victim issues.

Adolescence can be a tumultuous time—new schools, new peers, and ever-changing hormones and feelings. For some youth, these new experiences are sometimes also accompanied by other challenges, like victimization.

In Canada, information on the criminal victimization experiences of youth is available through national self-report and police-report surveys. The 2009 General Social Survey (GSS) on VictimizationFootnote 1 found that young Canadians aged 15 to 24 were more likely to experience violent victimization and theft of personal property in the year preceding the survey compared to older Canadians. Individuals in this age group reported a rate of violent victimization that was almost 15 times higher than those 65 years and older (Perreault and Brennan 2010). Furthermore, according to the 2010 Incident-Based Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR2) Survey,Footnote 2 the rate of police-reported violent victimization was higher among youth aged 15 to 17 years old (2,732 per 100,000) compared to young adults aged 18 to 24 years old (2,631 per 100,000).

These statistics provide some insight into the nature and prevalence of youth victimization in Canada. But do the definitions of criminal victimization captured in these national data sources reflect the whole picture of youth victimization? Many types of victimization can be captured on a continuum from non-violent to violent; for example, bullying may begin with excluding someone from a group and making derogatory comments, then may escalate to pushing and shoving and more hateful comments, and then move to more serious assaults. Because of the damaging impact of the less violent activities and the potential for the activities to escalate to more violence, it is important to understand the range of activities that youth experience. While a continuum may include activities that are captured in the common definitions of criminal victimization, there may be other activities that youth define as victimization that are not captured in the national surveys such as the GSS.

In order to gain a better understanding of the broad spectrum of youth victimization, the Department of Justice Canada contracted with two organizations to conduct research in this important area. In the spring of 2011, the McCreary Centre SocietyFootnote 3 and the Ontario Justice Education NetworkFootnote 4 (OJEN) each completed research on this topic and produced a report. In addition to asking questions about criminal victimization, both organizations explored a broader range of experiences, such as different types of bullying behaviour and discrimination. The results of both studies also provide valuable insight into the effects of victimization on youth and information on the help-seeking behaviours and support needs of youth. What follows are some highlights from these two reports.

Study 1: Smith, Annie, Elizabeth Saewyc, Colleen Poon, Duncan Stewart, and McCreary Centre Society.

From Sea to Sky: Perspectives on Patterns of Violent Victimization among Youth across BC. Vancouver: McCreary Centre Society, 2010.

This report examined the victimization experiences of youth aged 12 to 19 across British Columbia. The report focuses on several forms of violent victimization:Footnote 5 sexual abuse, forced sex, sexual exploitation, physical abuse, sexual harassment, discrimination, school violence (bullying), relationship violence, and cyberbullying. The report also examines multiple victimization experiences.

The study employed a unique methodology. Researchers took the findings of three different youth surveys the McCreary Centre Society conducted between 2006 and 2008 and used them as the basis for focus group discussions with 52 youth aged 12 to 19 who had experienced victimization. The focus groups were held between December 2010 and February 2011 in the five regions of BC: North, Interior, Fraser, Vancouver Island, and Vancouver. The youth were presented with the findings from the three surveys and were asked to provide their comments and recommendations on how to address youth victimization. The surveys included:

  1. the 2006 Street Youth Survey, a survey of 762 homeless, street-involved and marginalized youth in nine communities across BC;
  2. the 2007 Alternative Education Survey, a survey of 339 youth from 34 different alternative education programs in seven communities across BC; and
  3. the 2008 Adolescent Health Survey (AHS), a survey of 29,900 main stream school students in grades 7 to 12 in nine communities across BC.

Findings

The study found that the majority of youth in the three surveys had experienced at least one form of victimization based on the survey categories in their lifetime and that many youth experienced more than one type of victimization. Youth who participated in the focus groups corroborated these findings, stating that most youth in BC grow up experiencing some type of victimization.

Effects of Victimization

The surveys also revealed that experiencing victimization, such as bullying, can have a negative effect on mental health. Victimization was generally associated with a number of different negative health effects and risk factors, such as drug and alcohol use, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. The risk factors associated with victimization differed depending on the type of victimization that youth experienced. Additionally, the more forms of victimization youth experienced, the greater the likelihood that they engaged in risky behaviours. Bullying (including cyberbullying) increased the risk of attempting suicide and carrying a weapon to school more than any other type of victimization.

Help Seeking

Youth who participated in the surveys were also asked about their help-seeking behaviour. Although victimized youth were more likely to seek help from adults such as teachers and social workers than non-victimized youth, they were less likely to find these individuals helpful. Youth in the focus groups confirmed this finding, describing several instances in which they had sought help from an adult but found the adult to be unhelpful. They also offered a number of recommendations to address youth victimization and to provide victimized youth with helpful resources. For example, peer support and mentors are among the most important sources of support for youth. Youth should therefore learn how to support one another.

In addition, youth in the focus groups indicated that longer-term programs that build community connections and provide alternatives to violence are more helpful to youth than short-term programs. Youth also provided a number of suggestions to address specific types of victimization, such as bullying. For example, interventions should incorporate more engaging and dynamic forms of communication, such as small discussion groups, because they are more effective for difficult issues like bullying than speakers or presentations that do not involve interaction with the youth.

Study 2: Brooks, Mike.

Youth Experiences of Victimization: A Contextual Analysis. Toronto: Ontario Justice Education Network, 2011.

The Ontario Justice Education Network conducted surveys with 153 adolescents in Ontario. The majority of the youth in this study were in Grades 10 to 12 and were between the ages of 16 and 19. Four groups of youth participated in the study: students from a Grade 11 law class (14 students); students in Grades 10 to 12 who were recruited from a conference for visible minority youth (24 students); Francophone students in Grades 11 and 12 (52 students); and a group of adolescent females participating in a legal education program (63 students).

The survey consisted of questions pertaining to general and specific victimization experiences and to the impacts of victimization. Six forms of specific victimization experiences were studied: violent victimization (e.g., assault); non-violent victimization (e.g., destruction of property); online victimization (e.g., harassment through social networking sites); anti-social victimization (e.g., bullying); intimate partner victimization (e.g., verbal abuse by a romantic partner); and dating victimization (e.g., unwanted sexual touching).

Findings

The survey participants were initially asked if they had ever been a victim of a crime. This was a general question with no qualifiers. To this question, 41% of the participants stated that they had been victimized. The participants were then presented with a list of specific events that encompass the six types of victimization described above and were asked if they had experienced one of these events in the last year. Eighty-six percent of the youth indicated that they had experienced at least one of these events in the last year. Thus, the percentage of youth who had experienced this broader definition of victimization more than doubled when they were prompted by interviewers.

The most common form of victimization experienced by the participants in the twelve months preceding the survey was anti-social victimization (41%), followed by non-violent victimization (17%), online victimization (15%), and violent victimization (9%). Fewer youth reported dating violence (8%), intimate partner violence (7%), and other types of violence (3%). The study also revealed that victimization is likely to occur in a number of different contexts such as at school, in other social situations, and online. Many youth had also experienced multiple types of victimization in the preceding year.

Effects of Victimization

As with the youth in BC, the Ontario youth experienced negative impacts as a result of their victimization. Those who had experienced victimization were more likely to change their behaviour in order to prevent victimization than those who had not been victimized. Almost half of the victims had made some type of behavioural change as a result of the victimization, such as warning friends and avoiding certain places. Further­more, a higher level of anti-social victimization was related to lower self-esteem among female youth in this study.

Help Seeking

Youth were also asked about their reporting/help-seeking behaviour. Youth most often reported their victimization experiences to informal supports, such as friends and family. Very few youth reported their victimization to the police. A greater percentage of youth who experienced non-violent forms of victimization reported their victimization to both informal sources and to the police than youth who experienced violent forms of victimization. Non-violent victimizations were also reported to a wider range of supports than violent victimizations. These findings may be a reflection of the fact that non-violent victimizations were more often committed by someone not known to the victim, allowing the victim to feel more comfortable to report their victimization (perhaps due to a decreased fear of reprisal or fallout of the relationship).

Conclusion

These studies highlight a number of issues concerning youth victimization. Youth in both studies clearly indicated that their experiences of victimization are much broader than experiences captured under the common definition of criminal victimization. Findings from both studies also demonstrate that when victimization is broadly defined to reflect a continuum of victimization experiences, it is common among Canadian youth. Many Canadian youth also experience multiple forms of victimization.

The studies also showed that victimization can have many negative consequences, ranging from effects on self-esteem to drug and alcohol use and other forms of self-harm. Finding ways to reach and educate youth is therefore essential in mitigating these negative outcomes.

These studies also demonstrate that youth are more likely to seek support from friends and family rather than from more formal supports, such as the police or counsellors. Previous findings using the GSS have found that most people seek natural supports.Footnote 6 As the McCreary Centre Society report indicates, when victimized youth did seek help from a formal support, the youth often found these individuals to be unhelpful. Future research with youth could be conducted to determine how adults could better support these youth. This research could use a dynamic approach to engage youth, such as participatory action research or, at minimum, focus groups, as this was one of the recommendations of the focus groups from the McCreary Centre Society study.

Youth in the McCreary Centre Society study also provided a number of other important recommendations on how to best address youth victimization. As one youth who participated in the focus groups indicated, "No one thing will fix [violent victimization], but there are lots of things that would help it to change."

By listening to youth, both organizations have gained invaluable information that can and will be used to inform and improve programming for youth in the future. More research from the other provinces and territories will help to move forward our understanding of the experiences of youth victimization.

References