Content area
Full Text
Most of the literature on child maltreatment and victimization focuses on separate, fairly narrow categories of experiences, such as sexual abuse, physical abuse, bullying, or dating violence. However, there are many reasons to believe that children who suffer one of these victimizations also suffer from others (Saunders, 2003). First, the sheer frequency of victimizations in childhood suggests some of these victimizations should overlap (Nishina & Juvonen, 2005). Second, many of these victimizations seem to have common risk factors, like family instability and family substance abuse. Third, the clustering of victimization among some high risk individuals is a well-established finding in the study of crime victimization among adults (Outlaw, Ruback, & Britt, 2002; Saunders, 2003).
Unfortunately, studies of children rarely assess the intersection of a broad range of victimization, tending to constrain themselves to narrow categories like school victimization, family victimization, or exposure to community violence. Moreover, to the extent that the literature has been interested in the intersection of victimizations, it has been the intersection of only a few victimization types (e.g., sexual abuse and rape), and frequently has considered these events only at widely displaced points in time (Messman & Long, 2000).
Using an instrument designed to assess a much more comprehensive range of childhood victimizations, the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ; Hamby, Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, 2004a), we have demonstrated that multiple contemporaneous victimization is the norm for victimized children (Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, in press-a). Half of a national sample of youth ages 2-17 experienced two or more different kinds of victimization over the course of a single year, and among victims, the median number of victimizations was 3.
The clustering of victimizations almost certainly has multiple explanations. There are common risk factors for different kinds of victimization, both in children's environments (families and neighborhoods) as well as in their personal and behavioral characteristics. It is also very likely the case that some victimizations create vulnerability for other victimizations, through mechanisms like lowered self-esteem, learned helplessness, and distorted cognitions. In the criminology literature these two particular classes of explanation have been contrasted with the terms: "population heterogeneity" versus "event dependence." In more colloquial terms, these have been described as "flags" (of enduring risk) versus "boosts" (increased vulnerability resulting from victimization; Tseloni & Pease,...