Book Review: The Victimization of Women: Law, Policies, and Politics

• Author: Edward J. Schauer
• Published date: 01 September 2012
• Date: 01 September 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734016811418820
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

M. L. Meloy and S. L. Miller

The Victimization of Women: Law, Policies, and Politics Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011. 3, 246 pp.,

$24.95. ISBN 978-0199765119

Reviewed by: Edward J. Schauer, Equip the Saints (NPO/NGO), Prairie View, TX, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016811418820

The authors explain the main emphasis of this book as (I)nstead of taking a more gender-neutral

approach, we focus on crimes of personal violence committed by (mostly) men against (mostly)

women and girls, such as sexual assault and rape, battering, and, to a lesser extent, stalking. This

choice is deliberate: while we acknowledge the existence of male victims of such crimes (and the

existence of female offenders), these crimes are disproportionately ones in which men victimize

women (p. 11). In a scholarly, clear, and concise way, the authors present the intricacies and multiple

deviations of the victimization of women. They clearly summarize the perspectives and positions

that criminal justice practitioners, victims rights advocates, policy makers, scholars, and the general

public support.

The first author, Michelle L. Meloy, is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology,

Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, Camden. Meloy has had the intensive

experience of supervising sexual offenders as a member of an elite probation team. The second

author, Susan L. Miller, is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the

University of Delaware; Susan L. Miller is the author of two recent books, Victims as Offenders:

The Paradox of Women’s Violence in Relationships and Criminal Justice Research and Practice:

Diverse Voices from the Field. Miller served at several battered women’s shelters and has conducted

an analysis of a program that uses postconviction therapeutic models for victims of rape, domestic

violence, and incest (p. 168).

Together, the authors have conducted research with women and girls who were victims of incest,

rape, and battering. They have interviewed the family members of similar victims and of women

who were victims of homicide and they have dialogued with women living in violence shelters and

women who have been arrested as perpetrators within their intimate relationships.

The authors invited LeAnn Iovanni from Aalborg University, Denmark, to critique their writing.

She contributed the essay that has become the third chapter in the book, The Violent Victimization of

Women: An Overview of Legal, Empirical, and Measurement Issues.

Chapter 1 consists of an introduction and a detailed and comprehensive overview. It begins with

the explanation that the injured party is often blamed for his/her own victimization. This sort of

blame shift is done by American citizens, criminal justice practitioners, and policy makers. When

a woman is battered or raped, the questions often asked are What did she do to make him so angry?

Why does not she just leave him? Did she know him? and What was she wearing? Each of

these common replies accuse the injured woman herself of at least partial responsibility for her own

violent victimization by a man and furthermore absolve the man of responsibility for the violent

affront against her.

Chapter 2 explicates the varied images of victims and discusses how victim blaming and our

understanding of victimization relate to these images. In Chapter 3, Iovanni first presents a historical

overview. Then she critiques the research of interpersonal and sexual violence against women,

including battering, sexual assault, and stalking. Iovanni quickly accepts at face value the passionate

and allegory-supported statements found in the writings of the feminist advocates of the 1970s: She

assumes, for example, that Brownmiller can document the concept that for centuries ... the father

of a raped daughter was permitted to rape the rapist’s wife, ‘‘a rape for a rape’’ (p. 45). Statements

like these stretch the credibility of Inovanni’s thesis. This is not the only instance of unwariness

Book Reviews 401