In the Fifties and Sixties, though, there are more interesting changes.In 1958 the New Statesman proposed that 'we ought to establish a new science of victimology, with chairs at the universities, field workers studying the effects rather than the causes of crime and a special department assessing the impact of sex crime on women'. The concept of the victimless crime arrives at around the same time in discussions of law and order.There is a profound shift here, from a morality in which we offend against God or against society (a morality in which you can be hanged for a lamb just as well as a sheep) to one in which the consequences may adjust the nature of your guilt.At the same time, the nature of what it is to be a victim has changed, too. The terms of admission have broadened, so that even a moderately quick-witted defence lawyer will find a way to represent his client as a 'victim of society', and an inescapable edge of contempt has tainted the word.A top Hollywood executive recently demonstrated the thinking that led to this change in a brutally memorable phrase: 'If you're not part of the steamroller,' he said, 'you're part of the road.' That everyone had a choice was simply taken as read.Indeed, to say of someone, witheringly, 'He's just a victim', is not to describe a pitiable condition but to pass a moral judgement. In discussions of domestic violence and in areas of psycho-babble the 'victim mentality' has been used to describe a passivity which encourages aggression.
In this sense being a victim is something you decide to do, or stop doing.These are entirely contradictory meanings, one reinforcing personal culpability and the other diminishing it. Unconsciously or not, the writer who described Vitas Gerulaitis as a 'victim of cocaine' was tactfully trying to ignore the fact that there are no recorded instances of the drug hiding in a dark alley and forcing itself up a passer-by's nose.The implication was that the tennis star, a likeable man, shouldn't be held fully responsible for his own actions. In this sense we need a new definition of victimisation - one that would describe the widespread process of converting a sinner into the one sinned against. It also provokes the thought Victim Support groups might bend their minds to finding a better word for those on the receiving end of crime, one less blurred by implications of evasion and helplessness.1 From the Latin accidere, to fall, happen. Originally the word referred simply to an event or incident.2 From the Latin specere, to look. Spectrum at first meant an apparition or spectre before its use as a scientific term.3 From the Latin diluere, to wash away or dissolve Cf lavare, to wash.. A SINGLE fact will keep the winning trainer of Saturday's Royal Lodge Stakes as snug over the winter as a bear in a hibernation bolt-hole.
For it was 12 months ago that Mister Baileys took Ascot's Group Two event before going on to victory in this year's 2,000 Guineas. If there is one trainer in need of some warmth to sustain him in the frosty months this year, it is Ian Balding, who will be represented on Saturday by Stiletto Blade. The bay colt is in a club all of his own at Park House, because of the 19 juveniles Balding has sent out this season to contest 43 races, he is the only one to return home with a garland.
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'The two-year-olds have all had problems of one sort or another,' the Kingsclere trainer said yesterday. 'But I wasn't surprised when Stiletto Blade won because he looked much the nicest of ours.'Balding fears the prevailing soft ground will be against his colt, though he does not see the mile trip as a problem 'I hope he'll stay in time,' he said.