Young victims’ positioning: Narrations of victimhood and support

Introduction

Young people, particularly young males, are the group most likely to become both perpetrators and victims of crime (Dodsley, 2017; Furlong and Cartmel, 2007; Hopkins Burke, 2016; Muncie, 2015). Being the victim of a crime might result in a need for support and make one eligible to receive support from the community (e.g. professional support or family and friends), especially when it happens to young victims. However, becoming a crime victim and being offered support are not unproblematic. The term ‘victim’ can have several different meanings depending on the context, and includes a vast number of experiences from insignificant to life-changing events. The legal definition of victimhood, which depends on establishing a consensus that a crime has taken place, differs from a narrative definition of what being a victim entails. Narrativity is an ontological condition of human existence (Somers, 1994) that interweaves people’s life experiences with their social contexts, negotiations of values, ethical dilemmas, perceptions and aspirations (Saarikkomäki, 2016) to construct a narrative identity – a story of who-I-am. Narrating victimhood therefore necessitates incorporating the story of the victimizing event into the story of who-I-am, past, present and future. It also means that an event that, from a legal standpoint, can be seen as a minor offence, can in fact be narratively life-changing. The narrative might have to include re-negotiation of relationships to others and restoration of a sense of trust in the community, as well as the re-establishment of a moral self (Crossley, 2000; Fleetwood, 2016; Somers, 1994). The present study focuses on the latter of these two definitions: the victim narrativity of young people; thereby, the crime itself is of lesser importance than how narrativity is constructed in relation to the crime.

In mundane language, the word ‘victim’ often has negative connotations of being weak and passive, and victims are sometimes even blamed for the victimizing event (Van Dijk, 2009). The notion of the ideal victim (Christie, 2001) is widely criticized within the research community as being stereotypical and as not representative of a complex set of victimizing experiences (e.g. Pemberton et al., 2018a, 2018b; Van Dijk, 2009; Walklate, 2011; Walklate et al., 2018). Van Dijk (2009) argues that the term ‘victim’ derives from an understanding in Western languages of victims as religious sacrifices. The modern discourse of victimhood still builds on the notion that, among other things, victims must sacrifice their right to revenge on their assailant by transferring that right to the state via the court system (Van Dijk, 2009). The discourse of victims and victimhood affects how people narrate their victimization, which in turn may affect whether and what type of community support they are offered by society (cf. Fohring, 2012, 2015; Jägervi, 2016).

In a Swedish context, crime victims’ right to support after victimization is regulated in the social services legislation, and children and young people are given specific attention as needing support to handle the victimization (see Ljungwald, 2011). Despite their legal right to support, if victims are not able to negotiate and accomplish a victim position, their victimhood may not be deemed legitimate (cf. Christie, 2001; Walklate, 2011), and community support may fail to be provided or be unsuccessful (Jägervi, 2016). Children and young people are understood to be particularly vulnerable (Christensen, 2000; Meyer, 2007). Young people are supposed to become increasingly independent from and detach themselves from parents, resulting in the youth period often being described as stressful in itself, affecting young people’s well-being (e.g. Bynner, 2005; Geldard et al., 2016). These aspects affect young people’s construction of their narrativity (Eckersley, 2011). Children and young people exposed to violence are believed to develop into maladjusted and possibly violent adults (Andersson and Cater, 2014), and therefore are in need of support in order to correct a potentially problematic course of development. A body of literature has also shown the consequences of victimization before the age of 18 to include anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and lacking school achievements (Banyard and Cross, 2008; Cater et al., 2014; Thunberg and Källström, 2018). Hence, being victimized during youth can have serious consequences both in the short and long term, as it might disrupt the development of independence, mental health and narrativity, calling for a need for support.

Additionally, previous research has shown how victims of different types of crimes themselves understand their victimization and construct a victim narrative (cf. Åkerström et al., 2011; Burcar, 2005; Burcar and Åkerström, 2009; Fohring, 2018; Jägervi, 2014, 2016; Löfstrand, 2009a, 2009b). However, young people’s narrative constructions of victimhood, in relation to their need for community support, have not yet been explored in detail. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to analyze how young people narratively negotiate their position as victims, how their social surroundings react to their victim positioning and what types of support they are offered.

Narrative victimology

Narrative analysis can be traced back to the study of Russian folktales (Propp et al., 2012), in which particular characters were found to have the function to move the narrative forward. The same functions can be seen in stories of everyday life (Bruner, 1991). Recently, criminologists (see Dollinger, 2018; Maruna, 2015; Presser, 2016) and victimologists (see Fohring, 2018; Pemberton et al., 2018b; Polletta, 2009; Van Dijk, 2009; Walklate et al., 2018) have taken an interest in how stories of crime and victimization are important in constructing meaning and identity. Narratives help people make sense of troublesome events (Walklate et al., 2018), but narrating victimizing events of a criminal character can be problematic, as the narrator risks rupturing his or her previously coherent narrative identity, social position, ‘relational setting’ (Somers, 1994) and preferred identity (Davies and Harré, 1990). Walklate et al. (2018) point to the fact that some stories are more successful than others. Appropriating a legitimate, social position as a crime victim is a narrative achievement contingent upon social acceptance. In order to become a legitimate crime victim, you have to be heard as a victim and seen as a victim (see also Polletta, 2009). However, the victim position is problematic due to its negative connotations (see Åkerström et al., 2011; Burcar and Åkerström, 2009; Jägervi, 2014; Walklate et al., 2018 etc.), though it also renders individuals support, benefits and inclusion in the community (Loseke, 2003).

According to Lerner (1980), people have an inherent need to believe in a just world. The idea is that good things happen to good people, while bad things happen to bad people, which has been described as a ‘fundamental delusion’ (see also Pemberton et al., 2018a). At its core, a victimizing event is a bad thing, which in this way of thinking means that the person, the victim, must have done something wrong. This is also known as ‘victim blaming’ and is more common in circumstances such as intimate partner violence and sexual violence (see Meyer, 2016). This is a delusion because victimization can happen to anyone, and good people are not exempt from victimization just because they are good. It is upon this delusion that the victim discourse is unremittingly constructed (Lerner, 1980; Pemberton et al., 2018a).

A victimizing event can disrupt the continuity of a person’s life story, threatening the person’s sense of self through a loss of control and sense of order (Crossley, 2000). By focusing on experiences of intentional harm and wrongdoing, narrative victimology therefore centers on how people repair their life story by restoring the chronology in order to include the victimizing events in the pre-existing narrative (Pemberton et al., 2018a). The rupture caused to a life story through a victimizing event can be seen, firstly, as affecting the victim’s sense of agency, which includes aspects such as respect, control and status; and, secondly, as affecting the victim’s sense of ‘communion’. Communion concerns the social surroundings around the victim, and the social representation of communal bonds (Pemberton et al., 2017, 2018a). When the victimizing event occurs, the social relationships around the victim are tested, and sometimes torn or even ruptured. Because of this, the relationships might fail, generating feelings of uncertainty, doubt and shame. Therefore, social acceptance of the victim’s narrative is of importance for his/her ability to handle the victimization and make sense of it. Lack of acceptance can instead result in secondary victimization, including recasting the narrative and character of the victim, and victim blaming (Hafer and Bègue, 2005; Meyer, 2016).

The concept of victimization in the present study is used specifically in relation to a criminal offence having taken place (also called a victimizing event). In relation to this event, each individual, regardless of type of crime, will negotiate a victim identity based on the surrounding social setting.

The storyline of victimizing events

Narratives are always social achievements (Gergen, 1994), and have to both fit into pre-existing narratives about who we are and serve as resources for future talk (Taylor, 2006). Andersson (2008) has shown how young men, in talking about their own use of violence, organize their narratives according to a culturally valid storyline (see also Georgakopoulou, 2005; Søndergaard, 2002). The storyline functions as an interpretative repertoire (Wetherell, 1998) or master narrative (Nelson, 2001; Pemberton et al., 2018a), structuring the narrative chronologically around particular characters and events, and providing the story with a moral logic. Telling the story of a victimizing event is contingent on constructing a moral order around the event, and the experience must include an event intended to harm the person exposed (Pemberton et al., 2018a; cf. Van Dijk, 2009). The event also makes particular positions available, including those of the victim, the perpetrator, possibly a hero or helper, witnesses, and people supporting the victim before, during and/or after the event. All of these positions can be questioned and are ambiguous.

The storyline organizing the narrative must consist of a prologue, a main event and an aftermath, with the prologue introducing the relevant actors in the event and positioning them in relation to the event and the narrator. In narrating the event, the intent to harm is central (Pemberton et al., 2018b), and this may be explicitly expressed in relation to the event or be conveyed in the prologue or in reflections after the event. How the social surroundings react to the event is also crucial, which includes immediate reactions as well as the ensuing investigation, trial and support efforts. Finally, the ramifications of the event, whether it has long-lasting or less severe consequences on identity constructions, reshape the victim’s narrative and what positionings are made available. The victimizing event and context of the experience can require the victim to reconstruct his or her narrative identity. Such a reconstruction is a social achievement and depends on the co-construction of a partly new narrative of who-I-am in relation to what has happened, reconstructing the narrator’s agentive position and communal bonds (Pemberton et al., 2018b).

Method

Nineteen narrative interviews with young people who had experienced victimizing events were analyzed in relation to how they positioned themselves as ideal or non-ideal victims and whether they received support or not. Four narratives were chosen because they illustrate the diversity of victim positionings and differently expressed needs for support. The participants were recruited as part of a larger study of young victims, using district court verdicts from 2013 to 2015. At the time of the court proceedings, the participants were between 15 and 19 years old, making them between 18 and 22 years old at the time of the interviews. They were contacted using an information letter, followed by a text message. This resulted in 270 potential participants being contacted, of whom 65 answered, and 19 agreed to participate. The interviews ranged from 20 to 120 minutes in length, with an average of 48 minutes. Information from the verdicts was used as cues to help the participants tell their stories (cf. Hollway and Jefferson, 2000; Riessman, 2008), for example, in relation to the course of events during the judicial process. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Eleven of the 19 participants were female, making women overrepresented, as more young men than women were plaintiffs in court proceedings during this time period. Ten of the participants had been victims of assault and/or threats, one of robbery, three of theft, two of harassment, and two of intimate partner violence (IPV)/teen-dating violence (TDV). ¹

In relation to the aim, a narrative analysis was used to capture the participants’ own experiences of victimization and support, and how nuances in their victim narratives construct different victim positionings. A narrative interview is to be understood as co-constructed by the participant and researcher in a particular context, meaning that the interviews differed in terms of language use and emphasis on certain parts of the narrative. The micro-analysis offered by the narrative method makes these shifts possible to analyze (cf. De Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2012). How the victims constructed their narratives was investigated using a thematic and structural approach (Riessman, 2008; cf. De Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2012), in order to understand how they positioned themselves as victims and how this could affect their help-seeking and the availability of support. In the ensuing analysis, the victim narratives of the four participants are presented as brief stories.

Linda’s story

Linda was the victim of a robbery, which took place when she was 14 years old. Together with her boyfriend, Lucas, she had been at the local youth center by their school, called the Hub. At the center a group of boys approached them and asked for a cigarette, which they did not have. Linda described how they had been encircled by the group and ‘well, they didn’t look so nice, they were silent and you couldn’t make out their faces ‘cause they had hoodies’. She says she was made uncomfortable by the guys. A few minutes later Linda and her boyfriend went to get their bikes, which were parked behind the youth center. She recounts:

So we go there and start unlocking our bikes, and it takes some time. Then the guys come and I take out my phone and start checking it, ‘cause I felt uncomfortable and didn’t know what to do. So I take out my phone and check it. I don’t really know what Lucas is doing then, because he’s behind me. Then the guys come and jump us, or like not jump, but they come at us fast, and two of them, or one of them tries to grab my phone, while the other is behind me, watching so no-one runs away or anything, I don’t know. He tries to grab my phone and the other…[…] The other is standing like this on Lucas (indicating that he holds his arm around Lucas’s neck, like a stranglehold) and says like, ‘ah, give me the PIN code for your phone’, ‘cause he handed over his phone right away. I stand there screaming, like ‘Help!’ Lucas tells me to be quiet, ‘cause no-one’ll hear anyway. So then I did as he said, I guess, I gave him the phone. I knew I would eventually, but I screamed anyway ‘cause someone might have heard, you never know. Then I gave them the phone and right when I gave them the phone, they ran away.

Her narrative follows a plot typical of crime victimization (Pemberton et al., 2018a) and has a clear dramaturgy, offering a strong argument for her to claim a victim position. In her narrative, Linda ascribes herself a very active role; she resists the assailants by not giving away her phone right away, and she screams for help in case someone will hear her. In contrast, her boyfriend Lucas is described in the narrative as passive, going along with the assailants and telling her to hand over her phone. A potential hero is introduced in the narrative, as the youth counsellor reacts resolutely, chasing after the gang. Linda positions herself with authority as a legitimate victim in the story.

After the victimizing event, Linda was offered professional support from a counsellor, but she left the meeting not wanting to talk about the robbery any more; she felt it was enough to talk with her mother about it. She also explicitly requested support from her family, the school and her friends. She wanted her parents to come to get her, and her friends to accompany her home when she had been out. She wanted the pupils and teachers at school to sympathize with her, but they mostly just wanted to know what happened, not how she felt. She reflected on why this might be:

Either it’s ‘cause they can’t sympathize or it’s ‘cause they think I’m exaggerating. ‘Yeah, but she got robbed, yeah, but it was only someone who took her phone and now she’s afraid to go out at night.’ That’s how it feels. So I didn’t feel like I got any support from them, ‘Yeah, I’ll walk you home’.

Linda never stated directly whether she was a victim or not, and when asked about the concept, she stated:

In the end I can say that I’ve been mugged. I’m not ashamed, if that’s what you mean. I’m really not. No, absolutely not, and I didn’t when I was robbed either. I was more like, I didn’t say anything in school…although I did. I told everybody, so it wasn’t something I felt ashamed about. It’s always been like I told people I was robbed.

Fiona’s story

At 18, Fiona became the victim of assault. The assailant, Minna, had previously bullied her in school. Fiona gave a long prologue to the victimizing event, describing in detail the circumstances of the bullying that happened years before the event, as well as her relationship to Minna. Throughout the interview Fiona provided ample details about all the events leading up to the attack, the attack itself, and the aftermath. On the night of the victimizing event, Fiona was at a nightclub with some friends. A little drunk, she spotted Minna on the dance floor:

So then I felt, ‘oh no, not Minna, yuck. Now I’m gonna say something to her.’ I don’t even know why, I could have just passed her, but this also turned out to be the only thing I said to her. It was what caused the assault. I passed by her and saw her and then I said ‘Fatty’ to her face. I don’t know why. I don’t even know why I said that word.

After the assault her social network rallied to her support. Her father made sure she received legal counselling the following Monday. With the help of her mother, who is a doctor, she had already been given priority to see a psychologist at a clinic. In addition, she was offered and accepted support from Victim Support Sweden after the event. In her contacts with officials, Fiona positioned herself as their equal, complimenting them on the work they were doing as professionals. Fiona’s narrative identity is rather reinforced from the experience, and there is no need for her to rewrite who she is. She is a strong person who knows how to use the system, and she has a strong support network, although her actions to some extent can be considered impulsive. She did not need to make any changes to her life or redirect her energies in any way. Rather than being broken, her sense of agency is reinforced, and the same goes for her communal ties, which are strengthened rather than ruptured. Despite this, Fiona claimed a position as victim:

Throughout the entire process, I’ve seen myself as the victim, since I didn’t do anything. She is the one to be sentenced, and for aggravated assault. So I’ve seen myself more as the victim, but that’s not a negative thing. I haven’t found it embarrassing or anything, and the word doesn’t have a bad tone to me, since I’ve seen myself as the victim. I am the victim because she did these things to me. That’s what I think.

Zack’s story

Zack’s narration of the event that took place when he was 15 years old was very brief. Before the victimizing event he had been caught, but not charged, for bringing a hunting knife to school. He claimed it was a mistake and that he forgot to remove it from his jacket after a hunting trip. When asked about the victimizing event, he first had trouble identifying which event he was being asked about. Replying to the question ‘Can you tell me a bit about the assault and how it has affected you’, he recounted that:

It hasn’t affected…or yeah it made me stronger. That I shouldn’t back down from things. Well, how can I explain it? I wasn’t actually involved in it, not at all to be honest. I wasn’t, I wasn’t involved in it one bit. And I was just going to help a friend, ‘cause he needed my help. When I got there, he stood there dumping all kinds of shit on me. So the four guys who were on him went after me, plus him then. So that’s all that happened. But it has only made me stronger.

Interestingly, Zack used the phrase ‘ville skylla ifrån sig’, which translates as putting the blame on someone else. Zack became the scapegoat for his friend. Van Dijk (2009) argues that the term ‘victim’ originally meant a scapegoat to be sacrificed. In this sense, Zack’s situation can be understood as fitting the original definition of victim as sacrifice. The victimizing event was described by Zack very much as a one-off event; however, Zack ascribed it the status of a turning point in his life. This contrasts with his initial statement that he did not remember the event or the ensuing investigation and trial. Despite this, Zack was adamant that the event had life-changing effects on him, and he described a clear before and after the victimizing event, and claimed the event made him into the person he is today. Also, Zack’s sense of agency and the belief that he could act out the position of hero in this particular event, by being able to protect his friend, is ruptured for a moment. This is repaired, however, and in the long run Zack’s sense of agency has not changed. He maintained the notion that he was the active party, handling situations himself, defending his ‘loved ones’, putting himself in harm’s way, enduring injuries and violence, and never giving up – and always an equal opponent in a fight. During the victimizing event, however, he was not an equal party, but was subordinated to and out-numbered by the older guys.

Zack adjusts and reinforces particular aspects of the narrative about himself, in which he is strong and able to handle things on his own without other people’s help, as he has ‘learned to hit back’. He claims to have been a victim during this particular event and aspires to a victim position, but other people do not acknowledge and legitimize his claim and he is forced to renounce such a position. All of this has contributed to forcing Zack to change the narrative of who he is and adjust his narrative identity accordingly, which is expressed when he talks about it as a life-changing event, that he is strong, and able to defend himself and his loved ones. Compared to Linda, Zack has rewritten his narrative to include the victimizing event and thereby made it meaningful (Jägervi, 2014; cf. Walklate et al., 2018), in the sense that he claimed that it made him into the person he is today: he is strong, and able to protect his loved ones. He initially attempts to claim a victim positioning, but as he receives no recognition for it he needs to re-negotiate the positioning. In continuously describing himself as ‘strong’ and capable of defending himself and others, he is convincing his audience of his positioning, suggesting that he is still rewriting his narrative.

Ida’s story

At 14-years old, Ida became involved in a romantic relationship with a guy three years older, which lasted for two years and resulted in the victimizing event. She described that during their relationship he was ‘not nice to her’, and at 16 she had enough.

We were together for quite a long time, and when I ended it he continued to threaten me. Then what made me really scared was when he wrote a message to me, threatening to kill me, something like that. I thought that it was the usual same old stuff, but then he actually came to my school. [He] made sure that no-one was around, that I was alone. Then he pushed me up against the wall and grabbed my arm, and was treating me badly. My neck got all red, and my chest and so on. My arms hurt really bad. ‘Cause he’s not exactly super weak, now is he? So he grabbed me and stuff. I thought that I should press charges, ‘cause it’s no fun having to go through this, and when he wrote those threats, he knew where I was and [I] knew that it could happen again. So that was that. So I pressed charges anyway, and then like, [I] don’t remember if this was before or after the trial, anyway then he continued to write these things to me.

Immediately after the event, her friend escorted her to the police station to report the incident. She describes being listened to, but also that no-one cared that she was only 16 years old. No-one asked if she would like to have her parents there. When she told her dad that she had pressed charges, he was accepting, which ‘felt good’. Her father was not, however, capable of supporting her in any other way than accompanying her to court. Her sister was quite young, and Ida did not feel that she could talk with her at the time. In school, the situation was not given any attention, so Ida felt that she had to handle it on her own. She appreciated the work done by the police officers during the investigation and how the court was treating her. However, when the threats continued after the trial, the police discontinued the investigation and nothing more happened. At this point Ida’s communal bonds are completely ruptured and she feels no support from any party.

Ida was eventually admitted to a psychiatric ward through compulsory care. She was depressed and suicidal, and had developed what she called schizophrenia, abusing alcohol and drugs. While in compulsory care she told the counsellor some of what happened, which felt good, but she did not say everything. With the support of her mother, she has quit using drugs, but still drinks quite heavily. She is working a lot as a means to manage her daily life. After the victimizing event she has used violence herself to show herself as strong and capable of defending herself, been charged for criminal offences, and has threatened people to get them to drop the charges. She still has not told many of her friends about her experiences, but acknowledged that it felt good to talk about what happened and that she probably should have talked more about it earlier.

In retrospect she thought that she needed more support after the victimizing event, and understood the consequences of having tried to handle the situation all by herself.

Ida was embarrassed about the things her ex-boyfriend called her, and she felt that no-one was there to tell her that it was not her fault that she was being abused verbally, psychologically and physically. At the time of the interview, Ida was in the process of creating a new narrative of who she is, going back and forth between seeing herself as a victim and not doing so (cf. Fohring, 2018). This is illustrated in her use of male friends for protection (victim), while also using violence to defend herself (non-victim). She did not describe in detail how she saw herself before the attack, other than that she considered her life to be ‘normal’. Since the victimizing event, her only way to deal with the experience was to use alcohol, drugs and violence. Ida was evidently heavily traumatized by the event and had not been offered any formal or informal support for the victimizing event specifically. She did not have a social network to mobilize and no community services were providing support. Instead she resisted support, when offered in the shape of compulsory care, and still had a hard time telling people about her experiences. Similar to Zack, Ida’s victimizing event can be described as a life-changing turning point, which resulted in a downward spiral as she attempted to handle the negative consequences. She described the support she received through compulsory care as not helping her handle the victimization, as it did not focus on that aspect. Rather, she is still rewriting her narrative and trying to find out who she is in relation to the victimizing event.

Discussion

The aim of the present study was to analyze how young people narratively negotiate their position as victims, how their social surroundings react to their victim positioning, and what types of support they are offered. Positioning oneself as a victim is an ever-changing process with constant negotiations between the young people’s own agency and self-image, and how other people react to them and their choices. Even though all four participants positioned themselves differently, a commonality in all four narratives is that in requesting support they positioned themselves as youth. All of them requested support in different ways from their parents and from school, but not all of them described receiving it.

Constructing a victim narrativity is based on the relational setting in a specific context, which means there is a fluidity in how people position themselves. In this setting there is also a moral logic into which the positioning needs to fit (Gergen, 1994; Nelson, 2001; Pemberton et al., 2018a; Wetherell, 1998). In line with Lerner (1980), and the belief in a just world where good things happen to good people, victimizing events are difficult to fit into this moral logic. On a basic level, any victimization would suggest that the victim is a bad person (cf. Lerner, 1980; Pemberton et al., 2018a). Although this is a delusion, it is part of the victim discourse, meaning that the victim’s position as a good person is called into question. The more unforeseen, accidental or random the event seems, as in the cases of Linda and Fiona, the less likely it is that any blame will be put on the victim, whose position as a good person is less threatened. If the event is deemed possible to foresee, then the victim’s position is questioned, and the question of whether the victim is a good person presents itself. In the cases of Zack and Ida, the circumstances surrounding the event and their positions before the event render it possible that they could have foreseen the victimization. Zack was already associated with criminality, having been caught bringing a knife to school, and Ida had experienced intimate violence for some time before the victimizing event that turned out to be a turning point for her. Still, through this discourse, victimizing events cast a shadow of doubt on the victims.

Because of the negative effects of the victimizing events, it is necessary to rewrite one’s personal narrative to encompass the victimization. It could be argued that Ida’s use of violence and abuse of drugs is a way to embrace the image of herself as a ‘bad person’, and therefore not a victim worthy of support. Also Zack could be seen to embrace the position he was given as a non-victim. For both Zack and Ida the events were so life-changing that they needed to incorporate them into their life narratives to make sense of them (Crossley, 2000; Pemberton et al., 2018a). Ida realized that she could be killed by the man with whom she had been intimate, and therefore also by other men who come too close. She experienced guilt and blamed herself for what happened, and saw herself as therefore not deemed worthy of support. She was subsequently provided with support in compulsory care, but it did not help her to handle the victimization. Zack also had to reformulate who he is after the event. Although he did deem himself deserving of a victim position and support, he was denied it, as it did not fit into the moral logic of his narrativity (Gergen, 1994; Nelson, 2001; Somers, 1994; Wetherell, 1998). He then formulated a narrative about himself around the idea that he did not need help from others; he was guilty of starting fights, accepted being beaten sometimes, and after a fight could leave with his social relations intact, and described this as the ‘male way of solving things’.

In the analysis, it became apparent that Linda and Fiona were able to mobilize their social networks to support them and were able to accept the formal support they were offered. Ida and Zack, however, had no or only weak social networks to support them, and their need for formal help was therefore all the greater. Had Zack and Ida been granted legitimate positions as victims, and had their need to rewrite their narratives been acknowledged, then their narratives of who-they-are today may have looked very different. It is therefore of utmost importance that young crime victims are met with acceptance and understanding of their victim positions by significant parties in their everyday lives, primarily family and school (cf. Fohring, 2018).

In relation to the conclusions of the present study it is important to recognize that young people might need support to handle their victimization, even if they express no need for it. Such statements can instead be a result of their victim positioning not being accepted. For this reason, we suggest that a coordinating function for professional support should be established on a municipal level, as it is unclear which services are available to which victims. A coordinator needs to be designated whom all victims can contact, especially when support from the social network is lacking. Preferably, this coordinator should be within the social services, as they have the formal responsibility for support to young people after victimization. The coordinator can make an initial assessment concerning which type of support from which support organization will probably be best for the individual. This would both replace the current system, where victims need to contact each organization on their own, not knowing if something else would suit them better, and complement it by bringing the services together, enabling an overview if more services are needed or if those being provided are enough. Therefore, support needs to be individualized, keeping the victim’s needs in focus. A limitation of the study is the three-year gap between the trial and the narrative, as it might have affected the narratives as these years are formative of young people’s narrative of themselves. However, this was a conscious decision for ethical reasons to reduce the risk of the young people still being in a crisis when approached.