Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

This is my letter to the editor of a newspaper in Georgia re: pending legislation to forbid the word "victim" in the criminal code.  As the issue has come up in pending legislation in Congress re what to call victims in campus sexual assault matters - I thought I'd share it with this list.

Wendy Murphy

To whom it may concern;

Your story about the problem of substituting the word "victim" for the word "accuser" in criminal trials missed the most important point.  The word is problematic because it's false. Simply put, it is erroneous to attach the word "accuser' to a victim because the accuser in a criminal case is the government.  A private person has no authority to charge or prosecute people - and bears no burden of proof.  The power and the responsibility to file and prove criminal charges rests exclusively with the prosecution.  That the victim is a witness for the state - indeed is often the ONLY witness - changes nothing about this reality.

A rape victim is no more the accuser than is the sole eyewitness to a bank robbery.  Sure - the bank robbery eyewitness MAKES the accusation based on what he or she saw - but the STATE, alone, is the entity that "accuses" the offender and presses charges that may result in a loss of liberty. 

In sum, the defendant's opponent is the accuser-government - not the victim. 

The red herring argument that the word "victim" is unfair to the accused is silly.  If a jury is somehow duped into finding a defendant guilty because the word victim presumes that a crime occurred, then the word "witness" should be forbidden, too, as this word presumes the person saw what they say they saw.  And we'll have to dump the word "crime scene", too.  etc. etc.

This linguistic nonsense is the product of a defense-generated smoke and mirrors tactic that lawmakers and judges in most states have laughed off as distracting.

Here's hoping Georgia lawmakers and enforcement officials have the same integrity and chutzpah to call out the people behind this silly idea.

Wendy Murphy

Adjunct Professor of Sexual Violence

New England Law|Boston

617-422-7410