Читать книгу Approaching Victimology as social science for Human rights a Spanish perspective онлайн

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To give us a grasp of that evolution, in 2007, the first training workshop for specialised prosecutorsssss1 in Spain was developed. In that workshop the following myths were debated:

• a) Victims lie or are not accurate.

• b) Victims behave too emotionally; they do not know what they really want.

• c) Victims are vulnerable and perhaps mentally ill people.

• d) Victims want revenge instead of justice.

Beyond evident progress on victims’ rights, particularly in what is understood as gender violence; to a great extent those myths continue to exist in society and in the criminal justice system.

Like in other countries, Victimology is a minor discipline in Spanish academia. Antonio Beristain (2000), a close friend of the Belgian Professor Tony Peters, another significant author in modern Victimology, is beyond doubt the most international author and pioneer in victimological studies in Spain and in many Latin American countries. Since his death in 2009 his works have remained among the most quoted in this field. Evolving from criminal law, Beristain argued for a ‘victim justice’ and a ‘recreative justice’ in the sense that justice should first aim at showing solidarity with the victims’ needs for recovery and reparation instead of punishing the offenders. Although he used criminal justice statistics and social surveys as secondary data, he focused more on theory rather than empirical research. Later authors like Myriam Herrera (1996; 2014), Noemi Pereda and Josep M. Tamarit (2013), Carolina Villacampa, Anabel Cerezo and Mar Gómez (2019), María Jesús Guardiola (2020), Helena Soleto (2019), Subijana (2006) and José Luis de la Cuesta (Varona et al., 2015; Varona, 2018) have contributed with significant works that incorporate theory and empirical findings. In any case, the predominant educational background of these authors is mainly criminal law, so it is not surprising that younger researchers coming from Psychology, classified now as a health science, have added a more quantitative vision of the discipline, particularly in developmental Victimology, in line with comparative research in Victimology worldwide (Pereda, 2016). Before them, Victimology from a general psychological standpoint had been promoted by Professor Enrique Echeburúa (Baca, Echeburúa and Tamarit, 2006).