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Evidence is emerging of a link between being a teenage crime victim and becoming a perpetrator. Mark Hunter reports.

Anyone who has been the victim of a crime will know how mentally bruising the experience can be. Typical reactions range from anger and shock through frustration, humiliation and fear. Such emotional trauma is difficult enough to cope with as an adult. For a child, however, falling victim to crime can be totally bewildering and a source of deep distress.

Whereas most adults are able to draw on previous life events to put the incident into perspective, children do not have this depth of experience and can find even petty crimes difficult to shrug off. They may find it hard to understand what has happened and be unable to express their anxieties. There is a dearth of support for child victims of crime. Many fear the reaction of their parents, whose attempts to protect their children from further crime can unwittingly increase the feeling of victimisation. A child who is grounded for losing a mobile phone, for instance, may feel that he or she is being punished for someone else’s crime.

Worryingly, there is also growing evidence that children who become victims of crime are at increased risk of later becoming criminals themselves.

The amount of crime committed against children is astonishing. According to a study carried out for Victim Support earlier this year one in four young people in England and Wales aged between 12 and 16 had been a victim of crime during the previous year. More than 40 per cent had been subject to repeated offences, with some reporting up to five different incidents over the past 12 months. The most common offences reported were violence, assault and theft. When the children in the survey were asked how they felt about the crime, most said they felt angry. Four out of 10 said that they felt upset, a third were shocked and one in five reported feeling frightened.

Victim Support’s response to the study has been to develop a comprehensive pack of guidelines designed to help its volunteers support young victims of crime. Prepared in consultation with the Association of Directors of Social Services the guidelines include a service model specifying the minimum quality standards of service and practical guidance explaining how members should manage difficult situations and dilemmas in working with children and young people.

A child protection policy has also been prepared with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to explain how victim support services should liaise with police, social services, and the NSPCC if they suspect that a child or young person is in danger, or has experienced abuse. There is also a young people’s support pack to help children describe what has happened to them, and to enable volunteers to assess the service required.

"Although we’ve always provided services to younger victims of crime, in the past we’ve tended to work through their parents," says Victim Support’s head of research and development Peter Dunn. "More recently we’ve begun to realise that is a bit unsatisfactory because young people increasingly expect to be able to access

services independently." A key element of the guidelines is therefore to offer support that children can access without the

knowledge of their parents.

"A lot of young people are afraid of their parent’s reaction if they have become a victim of crime," says Dunn. "Parents often take sanctions against their children in an attempt to protect them - grounding them or whatever. But to the young person that feels like they are being punished for being the victim, and that is very unfair."

According to Julia Fossi, a co-ordinator at the Camden Young Victims of Crime Project in London, the ways in which children react to crime are as diverse as crimes committed against them.

"It really depends on the child," she says. "Sometimes even children within the same family might react differently, so you have to take the time to let them speak for themselves." Nor does the child have to be the specific target of a crime to be traumatised by it, stresses Fossi. For instance, a baby whose family home has been broken into can pick up on the parents’ emotional state and start to exhibit eating or sleeping problems. Likewise, toddlers may regress to earlier stages in their development, including bed-wetting and increased tantrums.

The Camden project has been running since February. Its volunteers offer confidential emotional support and practical help to victims of crime aged 17 and younger. The children either approach the project themselves or their details are passed on to the team by the police and youth offending teams. Volunteers will then offer to visit them at home or invite them into the project offices to discuss how they are coping.

The aim is to allow the young person to tell their story of the crime and to discuss their feelings about it. They are encouraged to talk about their fears and explore ways to resolve them. Crime prevention strategies are discussed and the project is able to refer the children on to other agencies if they require further specialist help.

"We also work with the parents to help family communication," says Fossi. "Children under 14 are always contacted through their parents, but older teenagers are contacted directly and can come to us without their parents knowing if they want." Although Fossi emphasises that each child’s reaction to crime is different, there are some generalisations that can be made according to the child’s age.

The three-to-seven year olds may be in the "magical thinking" stage of their development when they believe that they are the centre of the universe and can therefore make things happen. This may lead them to believe that they were responsible for the crime - "I wished for my brother’s bike to be gone and it has been stolen."

Fossi says: "It is important to make sure the child understands that they are not to blame for what has happened."

The seven to 10 year olds tend to be "concrete thinkers", who find it difficult to comprehend subtleties and vagueness, while adolescents often have the most complex reactions to crime. Already going through an intense period of loss and change they may become more moody, withdrawn or aggressive. Some express their distress through the use of alcohol or drugs, or forming inappropriate relationships. Some turn to crime themselves.

This phenomenon of victim turned perpetrator was highlighted by the latest results to emerge from the ongoing Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, being carried out at the University of Edinburgh.

The study, which has been following 4,300 young people who started secondary schools in 1998, has found that being a victim of crime at the age of 12 is one of the most powerful indicators that a child will offend at 15. Interestingly, the reverse association also appears to be true. Those children who commit crimes at the age of 12 have a strong possibility of becoming victims by 15.

According to the study’s co-director Dr Lesley McAra the results can be partly explained by the fact victims and perpetrators of youth crime often share similar lifestyles and personality traits. They may be impulsive, prone to taking risks, stay out late, drink alcohol or take drugs. The finding has important implications for initiatives that aims to deal with young offenders, says McAra.

"The philosophy should be to see the offender as a vulnerable child who needs support. At this age it’s often very difficult to distinguish between the victim and the perpetrator."