Fear of Crime in Canada

While cautious about importing and applying American research to the Canadian scene, there is valuable and fundamental data in this regard. Numerous studies point to several common variables that account for who is afraid of crime: gender, area of residence (urban or rural), satisfaction with the neighbourhood, age, health, education, social class, marital status, experience of crime, helpfulness of people in the neighbourhood, number of persons living with you, and race. For the most part, those variables influence fears in Canada as well. The most important demographic predictors were sex, area of residence, age, health and whether the individual lived alone. A large body of research has confirmed that fear of crime is greater among women, the aged and the economically disadvantaged.

This demographic profile is significant when, as Vince Sacco has noted, those at high risk of victimization in this country do not in every instance coincide with those who have the highest levels of fear. The risks of victimization in Canada are greatest for those who are young, under 25, male, living in urban areas, members of ethnic minorities and/or economically disadvantaged. Their risks increase even more so if they actively engage in evening leisures, frequently consume alcohol and if they hold certain types of employment. Interestingly, this profile of victim is quite similar to the profile of offender, who also happens largely to be from the same group as has just been described. Glaring exceptions to this risk profile are women who are victims of sexual assaults and victims of break and enter crimes in more affluent homes.

Those young males in urban hot spots may or may not be fearful. Few are at telephones waiting for Statistics Canada to call! They appear either to be a low fear group or do not admit their fear for a number of reasons - a mix of male macho and youth bravado, a feeling of invincibility and their self-confidence against any danger in the street or the neighbourhood.

But there are many primary fear groups which have been studied.

(i) Women and Fear of Crime

"Fear stalks the city. Although you might think it would prefer the shadows, it is not really afraid of the light.... Fear can strike at any time. It starts growing in childhood and is passed down from mother to daughter.... Fear knows no age limits but, like violence, carefully chooses its target. It lives and grows in the hearts of all women, regardless of their appearance, age or colour because... fear belongs to women."

"What, then, makes the death of Georgina Leimonis more frightening still? I think it is that in the dark stairwell and the night-time parking garage, I have always known the risk was there, in the shadows. Every woman does. We take it because it is, after all, a very small risk, and this is still Canada. We have calculated the odds and made our choice. At least that much seems in our control. But what are the odds of death from sitting in a brightly lit cafe on a Tuesday evening with your friends, in the midst of a cheerful crowd of strangers indulging a sweet tooth? There used to be no odds on that, not in this country, not even for a woman. Now, it seems, there are."

Women were a high fear group who were not at high risk of victimization, so the traditional theory in criminology concluded. This line of reasoning was founded on a fear of crime concept that too narrowly looked at violent crime committed in public places, mostly by strangers, and almost totally ignored fear of danger from a woman's perspective. The standard thesis failed to capture women's lived experiences of sexual and physical violence.

In more complex analyses of fear of crime, being a female always emerges as the most significant risk factor. Many researchers conclude this is more closely related to a very specific fear of sexual assault. Women have an unique vulnerability to sexual aggression. This fear of sexual assault is then woven into anxiety about other crimes, such as burglary or robbery attended by the threat of sexual assault. And, in the words of Holly Johnson, Project Manager for the Violence Against Women Survey who is writing an academic text on violence against women and their fears, "young women learn about sexual danger at a very early age. It is young women who are seen as sexually attractive. It is open season on them. It is young women who are among the highest fear group."

Women are assaulted often by known male assailants, leading to fear of known and presumably safe environments and fear of violence in familiar environments, such as neighbourhoods.

Like men, women's fears are influenced by age, residence, income, race and marital status. Yet women's fears cross the boundaries of all those variables. This report has already cited the staggering statistics confirming that slightly more than four in ten women feel unsafe in walking in their neighbourhood at night.

"It becomes apparent when women's patterns of victimization are compared to men's," writes Linda MacLeod "that because a higher proportion of women are victimized in their own homes, because women are more likely than men to be victimized by someone known to them, and because women's victimization is related to economic, physical as well as social disadvantage and vulnerability, it is much more difficult for women to avoid their victimization or to predict it, even if women were to severely curtail their patterns of daily life by reducing their activities outside their homes. Thus women's feelings of helplessness in the face of potential victimization are higher than those of men, and fear among women naturally and appropriately escalates to a higher level than fear among men."

In Surviving Sexual Violence, Liz Kelly describes this continuum of violence drawing on the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of contiuum as denoting either a basic common character that underlies many different events or a continuous series of elements that pass into one another and which cannot be readily distinguished. Women can and too often do experience abuse, intimidation, coercion, intrusion, threat and force, primarily from men. Kelly documented and named the range of sexual violence women experience and fear: sexual harassment(including looks, gestures, remarks, acts), pressure to have sex, sexual assault, obscene phone calls, coercive sex, domestic violence, sexual abuse, flashing, rape and incest. These are not clearly defined, distinct categories stretching in linear fashion in a woman's life. Rather, they intersect in layers of acts and emotions, resulting in what Holly Johnson of Statistics Canada calls fear of crime becoming "a shorthand for many things associated with women's experience and fears related to violence".

Note: Much of this is feminist garbage.... twisting the facts to suit the prejudices and hatred of men The Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women which was a farce and waste of money, alluded to this continuum, noting that violence ranges from verbal insults through physical blows to murder and is the consequence of social, economic and political inequality built into the structure of society and reinforced through assumptions expressed in the languages and ideologies of sexism, racism and classism.

The Violence Against Women Survey in 1993 attempted to honour this "continuum of violence theory" by expanding the reference period of victimization from one year to any occurrences since the age of 16 and expanding the scope of threatening behaviour which had been previously not measured. For many, this represents a more accurate reflection of risk, although the survey had its critics for its description of sexual assault and for excluding men and everyone under sixteen.

Part of the difficulty in gauging whether the fears and precautions taken by women are warranted is in the debate on the reliability of statistics and the known under-reporting of crimes such as sexual assault. Victim surveys generally confirm that official crime rates substantially underestimate the magnitude of the problems, particularly in areas such as violence against women, children and the elderly.

The impact of violence on women is a complex matter. Acts of violence cannot be ranked arbitrarily in a line of severity based on seriousness of the offence, as if that automatically would determine the seriousness of its impact or corresponding level of fear to be expected. Yet that is what early research in this area did.

Flashing, for example, may be categorized as a minor offence vis-a-vis Criminal Code punishment and perhaps even minor from the perspective of the victim and the victim's circle of friends who might laugh it off and/or be grateful that nothing more serious happened. However, flashing is a poignant reminder of a woman's vulnerability, the victim terrorized because she has no control over the situation and knows it is largely up to the perpetrator how far it will go. Her fear of crime is linked inextricably to an imminent fear of danger. Her being "flashed" is tucked away in her book of life that will influence future chapters and future incidents where fear lurks. In the example of flashing, one immediate, localized effect is that a person may well not go to a particular place or engage in an activity at a particular time anymore. Flashing produces other negative and more general effects, adding to fears of open spaces or going out alone.

As well, obviously serious offences such as rape are seldom an isolated event. A rape may also involve a threat with a weapon, robbery, assault and even murder. In the eyes of a woman, every rape carries with it the threat of death. Rape can define a woman's life forcefully in terms of pain and terror. A woman named Linda told Elizabeth Stanko: " I think of my life as pre-rape and post-rape in some ways."

Gordon and Riger, in their book, The Female Fear, list seven factors contributing to women's fear: socialization teaching girls to be afraid of sex and men and giving women ambiguous messages about their sexuality; experiences with rapes or mini-rapes, petty rapes, unwanted hugs, pinches etc.; myths about rape which suggest women are responsible; the visible presence of a neighbourhood, anti-crime organization; personal knowledge of actual crimes; media sensationalizing of crimes; general societal condoning of sexual violence and male aggression in courtship. From her community dialogues with women, Linda MacLeod would add several more factors: isolation of the individual woman, insufficient contact with police; a general sense that no one cares about either the individual or the neighbourhood or about perceived problems; and feelings of powerlessness to affect perceived problems.

Fear is aggravated by the knowledge that women do not have power, status or even credibility in segments of society. Women's fears are intensified by their responsibility and altruistic fear for their children - that those children will be hurt or that they themselves will be hurt and will be unable to care for their children. Fears are magnified by a woman's feeling of physical vulnerability.

The many voices of women in fear were heard when Linda MacLeod did a series of community workshops in 1990 sponsored by Secretary of State Canada. Fears of sexual assault outside the home by a male stranger or a slight acquaintance, as well as sexual and/physical assault in the home by a partner, may have dominated the discussions but there were other fears:

• fear of being unprotected by the justice system.

• fear particularly pronounced by aboriginal and other racial and ethnic minority women of being assaulted physically or sexually by police.

• fear of people in authority more generally, including church leaders, health-care workers, social workers and lawyers.

• fear of being isolated by geography, lack of knowledge, illiteracy, language, racism or the lack of people's concern for one another.

• fear of intolerance and racism.

• fear that their children will not be safe.

• fear of sexual harassment and physical or sexual assault in the workplace.

• fear of prevalent portrayals of violence against women through the media, through sexist or implicitly violent advertising and through the widespread availability of pornography.

• fear of men generally.

• fear of living in a violent society.

As this report was being written, Statistics Canada released a study, Women Assaulted by Strangers, based on more detailed analysis of the Violence Against Women Survey data; the study announced that women's safety fears are also traced to encounters with strangers, with one quarter of the women surveyed from age 18 to 24 acknowledging they had been assaulted by a stranger at least once since the age of 16 in acts that ranged from unwanted sexual touching to rape involving injury.

Judging from the initial media fallout, it seemed that the pendulum had swung back to the perception that women had more to fear from the stranger than from those they knew. Holly Johnson said the very first media question asked of the Statistics Canada author was: "We were led to believe that the home was the place women should fear the most. Now this report is saying the opposite."

Holly Johnson comments: "The author's response was that this report is just the latest analysis of data from the Violence Against Women Survey. It is added to what we already knew. It doesn't contradict earlier findings. Those questions and reactions seem to indicate a lack of appreciation for the women's perspective and the continuum of violence.... We also get locked into a crime prevention mode that says it has to be either public or private danger and that the public danger has to be the stranger, the monster predator. Not enough distinctions are made."

The Women Assaulted by Strangers study indicated that only nine per cent of sexual assaults were reported to police. Forty-four per cent of the women who chose not to report those sexual assaults gave as their reason that it was too minor while another 14 per cent felt the police could not do anything about it. Holly Johnson said it is very difficult to interpret from a survey what the women mean when they describe a sexual assault as too minor. It may in fact have been minor or, quite to the contrary and typical of battered or assaulted women, they may be minimizing the offence, think no one will understand and that the criminal justice system will not be helpful.

The location of the stranger assault varied - the street, a bar or dance and public building being more common but a car, her workplace, public transport, her home and a rural area also proving unsafe. Consequently, a "geography of fear" for women slips into a "geography of limitation", curtailing lifestyles and mobility. It begs a thorny but necessary social policy debate about who is responsible for male aggression; where does one draw the line between expecting women to take reasonable, prudent precautions for their safety and their right to live full, equal and whole lives.

Meanwhile, the fears of more and more women who are either in single-parent or two parent families are aggravated in Canada because most do not have the choice of restricting movements outside the home. They must work.

Significantly, with respect to fear of crime, this new study found that among women who had been physically assaulted by a stranger, almost half reported being more fearful and two of every five women said they were more cautious or aware. For sexual assault victims of strangers, one in four women was more fearful and slightly more than one in three women more cautious or aware.

Any fear of crime study and any fear-reduction or crime prevention program needs to give prominent attention to this experience of women. Perspective is demanded too. It is good news that almost three of every five Canadian women are not afraid of walking in their neighbourhoods at night. Surely there are lessons to be gained from their lives about fear and coping with fear. Yet for too many women in our country, their fear is increased by their understanding and/or experience that they have no "safe" place. In the words of Elizabeth Stanko, "if women commonly encounter threatening and/or violent behaviour from men who are strangers and from men who are known to them, how can they predict which man will be violent to them and in what instance?"

The Elderly
Getting older in Canada does not put one at greater risk of victimization but it does increase one's fear of crime in some substantial ways. This is a significant group to assist in their fears related to crime, for a number of reasons:
in certain situations, seniors exhibit high levels of fear of crime; the fragility and pronounced vulnerability of some seniors demand greater attention; this is the fastest growing segment of the Canadian population.

Early in the next century, one in four Canadians will be a senior citizen. Studies have shown today's seniors to be more independent and financially secure than past generations with, of course a notable exception being that a disturbing number of seniors are at, or below, poverty levels. One sensible hypothesis is that crime will increase against seniors as their numbers and assets increase. Their fear of vulnerability is also likely to increase. That will result in seniors placing more calls to a police force that has trouble even now meeting all the demands from the public. Constable Chuck Prince, a British Columbia community police officer, describes seniors as a "victim waiting for a crime to happen".

We have already reported on Vince Sacco's Juristat article which suggested that there is mixed evidence for the view that fear of crime is a more serious problem for the elderly. They are almost twice as likely to indicate feeling "unsafe" about walking in their neighbourhood at night - an exercise they may not regularly do in any event - but their fear levels matched other groups when they were asked about being home alone in the evening or assessing their general safety from crime. Interestingly, elderly women had significantly lower amounts of fear about being home alone at night. Holly Johnson speculated that may have something to do with women outliving their partners and being more accustomed to being alone in the home. Those in their home alone who do report fear have difficulty managing a home and implementing sound crime prevention strategies.

The elderly have concrete fears about specific crime. They worry about grocery shopping while carrying money in their wallet or purse. Some resist and even fear the technology of credit cards or instant banking cards. In Winnipeg, according to Rick Linden, they are concerned about auto theft, purse snatching and break and enter. However, the elderly are not specifically targeted for most crime, except for a few crimes like scams or frauds.

They are a good group to examine for an understanding of the analysis that the crimes committed against them may not rank at the high end of seriousness but may have very serious consequences. There are profound differences for the lives of a twenty-five-year-old woman, as compared to a sixty-five-year-old woman, of either having one's entire savings wiped out by a fraud, or falling and breaking a hip during a purse snatching. So seniors may have high amounts of fear for crimes which many in society might not categorize as serious. Their physical and financial circumstances may hinder their recovery from crime.

Their diffused fears are related more to vulnerability than to victimization. Seniors represent three per cent of all victims of violent crime while they are 16 per cent of the population. Their rate of victimization was so low according to the 1993 General Social Survey that it could not even be measured, given the survey's sample population of 10,000.

While not seemingly at actual risk now as a senior citizen, that is not to say that earlier life experiences, including victimization, may well be colouring their fears in the present and future.

The elderly's fear of criminal victimization seems more linked to their physical and social vulnerability. It may include a logical assessment of their ability to defend themselves physically in the face of an assailant who, often enough, is much younger and a male. As a consequence, they are more frightened before, during and after the commission of the crime.

Many seniors struggle with increasing vulnerability because of aging, frailty and losing control. They are afraid of becoming ill, or poor, or being abandoned by their family and friends and, according to Ron Melchers, there are a host of far less remote fears which plague their minds constantly. If communities assisted them with their fears about crime, - both the concrete fears and the more diffused fears which relate to their other fears - that may lessen their sense of powerlessness and help them deal with the other fears which are not related to crime. Those struggles cannot be eradicated completely in the human journey but there are social supports that might well enhance the quality of life during a period many find fearful.

Research from several American studies on the fear of crime among the elderly deserve mention:

• fear of crime was related to dissatisfaction with the neighbourhood, low morale and involuntary isolation. The elderly lose access to many community facilities as they age, including churches, community centres, the neighbourhood grocer, doctor and druggist. The elderly who are poor are more afraid.
  
  
• an interesting fear of crime study on elderly Jews living in Boston and London, England revealed the significance of community interaction in dealing with those fears. Residents in both cities had comparable experiences and language to describe the problem of crime and its impact on them. But the Boston seniors retreated behind closed doors while the London residents continued their daily routine almost uninterrupted. Researchers discovered that the London group felt much more a part of their community.
  
  
• "members of kin" networks may act as threats to the elderly through their warnings of dangers from crime. Fear of neighbourhood crime was greater for those who more frequently socialized with relatives, presumably hearing the "news" and gossip of the community. This points to the need for a de-briefing and support group for seniors to speak about their fears and what they are hearing about crime. Even that group itself needs skilled facilitators to ensure that the telling of stories will not make matters worse.

• compared to rural populations, a larger proportion of urban residents are fearful in certain situations. Urban residents are twice as likely to feel unsafe when walking alone in their neighbourhoods after dark. One-half of urban residents and over one-third of rural residents feel worried when using public transportation alone in the evening.

• Those fears are at least partly related to concerns about victimization; 27 per cent of urban residents reported that they had been victims of crime in the previous year, compared to 17 per cent of rural residents. The rate of personal victimization was 44 per cent higher among urban than rural residents and the rate of household victimization was 67 per cent higher among urban than rural residents.

• fear is not only a function of area of residence but also of gender. Women in both urban and rural areas consistently demonstrate higher levels of fear than men, with 38 per cent of women in urban areas and 32 per cent of women in rural areas saying they are "very or somewhat worried" about being at home alone in the evening(compared to 12 per cent and 9 per cent for the men in each group).

• people living in urban areas were twice as likely as rural residents to have installed new locks or a burglar alarm, taken a self-defence course or changed their telephone numbers to guard themselves against crime. Less than one-quarter of rural residents changed their routine or avoided certain places to keep from being victimized, compared to over one-third of urban residents.

The rural resident may have less fear of the stranger, not only because of the smaller, more tightly-knit community he or she resides in but because statistics confirm that almost three-quarters of violent incidents there are committed by an acquaintance or relative. (71 per cent in the rural population, compared to 57 per cent for the urban population)

"Given that urban populations are victimized at a higher rate and are more likely to be violently victimized by a stranger," writes Ms. Kong, "it is understandable that urban residents are more fearful when in certain situations and more likely to take precautions to protect themselves and their homes."

The urban resident is not afraid all the time but again in mostly concrete situations, maximized by when he or she meets the "stranger", stranger in the personal sense or stranger in the cultural sense. It is urban life that gives us those situations where we meet up with so many people from different cultures.

Victims of Crime
There has already been considerable reference elsewhere in this report to the effect of victimization on fears. It was mentioned that fear of crime is measured by two primary factors - perceived risk and perceived seriousness. A 1981 survey in Seattle concluded that these two factors carry equal weight but that fear levels were not necessarily always the highest for violent crimes. Reducing perceived risk did appear to be an effective means of reducing fear.

In Canada, while there are not obvious, sharp differences generally in the fear level between victims and non-victims, there are noticeable, increased fears and added precautions for those who have been the victim of a few serious crimes such as sexual assault and robbery.

Anyone who has had a home burglarized knows the lingering, emotional damage caused by the break and enter. People for some time cannot return to their home in ease. Once the key has opened the front door, eyes dart from room to room, furniture to furniture to see if anything is out of place. Ears strain to hear strange noises in the yard or driveway. People sense a personal violation because of the penetration of their private space. Some admit to recurring nightmares.

Those who have not been victims may minimize the impact of less serious crime. However, Howard Zehr, who has worked extensively with victims and victim/offender reconciliation programs, contends that being a victim is a deeply traumatic experience even for minor crime. As well, victims will have fears from the crime which they now associate with a whole gender, male for example, or an entire race. Zehr noted that the persisting emotional intensity for victims might suggest a crime happened recently when in fact it may well have occurred many years ago. Many victims report the experience of a re-victimization through their disappointing dealings with the criminal justice system after the crime. This can also exacerbate their fears. Signficantly, the "monster" created in a victim's mind tends to shrink in many cases to manageable proportions once the victim is able to confront the offender in a safe setting and begin to get answers about why he or she was selected as a target.

The General Social Survey data from 1993 indicated that two-thirds of victims of sexual assault were unable to carry on with their normal activities for at least one day following the incident and that twenty per cent said they found it difficult to resume their normal activities for ten days or more. Psychological injuries - including stress and fear-induced paranoia - are common outcomes of a victimization experience and may be particularly severe for victims of sexual assault.

In the literature, there was reference to an interesting project in Houston where police did follow-up contacts with victims every two months after the crime. The contact reassured some victims but there were also cultural differences in how the police were received and how the program impacted on victims. Some Hispanic groups with a history of tense police-community relations did not report the same reassurance felt by others.

Finally, there was the assumption in some of the research that fear in a victim will dissipate with time. Yet, there are other studies that observed that, despite an initial decline in the fear level for victims in a first phase after the crime, that the fear level later increased, as a result of changes to lifestyle and behaviour along with taking extra precautions such as buying a security alarm.

Ethnocultural Groups
Barry Thomas and Sgt. Keith Wiltshire, from the Canadian Centre for Police-Race Relations based in Ottawa, are in the midst of a number of urban consultations with community stakeholders. While those consultations were not on fear of crime directly, the issue surfaced frequently in the discussions.

• Montreal: The Spanish and Latin American community aired its grievance about a 1994 World Cup Championship celebration in the city in which members complained that a police overreaction led to calling out the riot squad. The community said they were paranoid about making official complaints to the police. Immigrants spoke of being afraid of gang crimes and the police, the latter fear linked to the risk of deportation.

• Toronto: The concern for youth and particularly black youth predominated in the consultation here. There were references to the dangerous mix of black youth and firearms, "a daily occurrence in Scarborough". Many articulated an altruistic fear for the youth and for others in the community.

• Vancouver: Four separate consultations were held with the Chinese, Vietnamese, Black and Aboriginal communities. Barry Thomas watched a Chinatown jeweller take 25 minutes to put two steel grates over his store. Similar security was evident elsewhere. There were references to high levels of fear with personal safety and property concerns at the top of the list in the consultation with the Chinese community. Disorder and incivility are a problem for some. "You see people fixing themselves (drugs) right on the street. Chinatown is dead at 8:30 in the evening," Mr. Thomas said. The elderly have concerns with fears. Wealthier families from Hong Kong and Taiwan are concerned with the number of robberies and break and enter crimes. The Vietnamese consultation focused on youth gangs, including the threat of home invasions which are a reality in the city. Many of the gang members are from the refugee camps. "I guess the streets of Vancouver are tame compared to some of the camps and the experience of Vietnam," Mr. Thomas noted. "The kids hang around on the street, have time on their hands, get into petty and then more serious crime. They get hassled by the police, stopped, get a rap or a reputation and then bothered constantly. They get criminalized fairly easily."

Hate crimes are a source of fear for personal safety for ethnocultural groups and individuals, particularly hate organizations which promote racism. People feel threatened directly because they are members of a group which is attacked.

In cases of family violence, women may be afraid of how they will be treated by police and courts. They fear the adverse reaction that may result if they violate community norms by exposing private family matters to public scrutiny. Linda MacLeod and Maria Shin conducted telephone interviews with 39 women immigrants who had been abused as well as some community workers. These women spoke neither French or English as their first language. "We know very little about these women, for they are invisible to most people who are not part of their culture, who do not speak their language. Their abuse and suffering are often invisible even to people in their culture. They truly live silenced lives with silent fears and unheard hopes," their report stated.

The fear of reporting and its related fear of reprisal are both in evidence in ethnocultural communities. A Toronto Star story in 1989 referred to those fears and distrust of government in the Asian community making potential witnesses to crime reluctant to go to the police. Criminals then use this fear and distrust to flourish. Constable Quoc toan Trinh in Montreal estimates that 75 per cent of crime within the Asian community is not reported.

As well, those immigrants and even Canadian-born members of ethnocultural groups tend to congregate and settle in large urban centres because of their greater access to their cultural and community associations. So any fears related to crime are compounded by this urban factor. Fear of the stranger from another culture alienates these individuals even further.

When there is crime in their community, this group faces enormous obstacles. There tends to be a poor general knowledge of the law due to unfamiliarity with the Canadian way of life. People are discouraged by language difficulties. There may be limited income and apprehensiveness about dealing with people outside of their own cultural community, especially when the crime is within their cultural group.

One focus study by the Law Courts Education Society of British Columbia found that the Chinese community did not view the court system favourably and would avoid the justice system wherever possible. As well, a lack of proficiency in English can "in effect be the closed door behind which some seniors live in confined and sometimes fearful existence". People stay home, perhaps out of fear of danger, but also because it is more comfortable for them.

The Gay, Lesbian and Bi-Sexual Community

" Many of his colleagues didn't recognize (Jeff) Harris when he arrived in the emergency ward, vomiting blood. Nine doctors, including an eye specialist and oral surgeon, hovered over him, estimating he had lost more than six pints of blood. When the swelling in his brain subsided, it took more than six hours and 280 stitches just to close the wounds temporarily - and wire together the 27 facial fractures, including 11 breaks in his smashed jaw."

Incident involving Ed Pollak's partner: "He was kicked in the face, in the head, shoulder, arms with boots. Like a sack of potatatos. He had bruising from his waist to his neck for a month."

Xtra, Toronto

People have been murdered, brutalized or harassed because someone thought they were gay, lesbian and bisexual. They are verbally abused, physically harmed and sexually abused. In Ottawa, statistics from the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police Bias Crime Unit indicate that 45 of 387 investigated offences since the unit's creation had to do with an incident based on bias against sexual orientation. Gay and lesbian students in high school report a high proportion of harassment, hostility and violence where gay jokes are rampant and many students sense an immunity in openly expressing their hatred. These students classify schools as the least safe place in the city.

The U.S.-based National Gay and Lesbian Task Force states that one in five gay men and one in ten lesbians reported being assaulted, one third reported being threatened with violence and nine of ten experienced some type of harassment, threats or assault based upon perception of their sexual orientation. Carol Holland from the Ottawa bias crime unit cited anecdotal evidence of gay bashing, including a woman beaten, a brother murdered, a harassed youth who dropped out of school and anti-bashing posters which were defaced in schools.

Hate crimes have a unique and extraordinary impact on victims. There is excessive brutality by the perpetrators - weapons such as bats, hammers or a screwdriver are not uncommon. There is the terrorization and personal rejection of someone for who they are. Gays, lesbians and bi-sexuals are viewed by the perpetrators as deviant sexual beings rather than human beings. As one young, heterosexual woman told a fellow crime prevention worker, "when heterosexuals meet another heterosexual, they see a whole person. When some heterosexuals meet a gay or lesbian person, they see only sex."

In most other hate or bias attacks, the victim makes the mistake of entering alien territory. But with "gay-bashing", attackers usually leave their own territory to hunt down their victims.

Victims of bias crimes suffer two to three times more symptoms of trauma than do victims of comparable crimes that do not involve prejudice, according to the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence in the United States. A bias crime can directly affect the victim, the entire target group and the community at large, in terms of the distribution of fear.

Kevin Berrill, an American hate crimes expert, is eloquent in his description of the pervasive damage from these crimes:

"As with racist, anti-Semitic, sexist and other bias-motivated crimes, these attacks are intended to violate and isolate not just the victim but an entire group. Unlike opportunistic crimes, these attacks are motivated less by the desire to rip people off than to rip them apart... they are acts of terrorism intended to punish gay people, women and people of colour for being visible and to frighten them from exercising... freedom of speech, association and assembly."

As with other groups, a combination of demographic factors - for example, a woman of colour who is a lesbian - greatly escalates one's fear of crime.

There were a number of other groups either reporting much lower levels of fear or for whom very little research has been done. This report now highlights several of those groups.

Men
The study of male victimization, vulnerability and related fears is a virtual wasteland.

Pockets of fear are acknowledged in the General Social Survey data, with only about one of every ten Canadian males fearful of walking alone in their neighbourhoods at night or being alone. Those levels of fear increase as men get older. Income levels affect male fears more than female fears. Men restrict their lives less than women.

Research indicates that men are more likely to show anger than distress or shock in response to burglary. They also feel an altruistic fear out of concern for their partners, parents and children.

Co-related factors again can compound fears. Gay men have a sense of how their homosexuality places them in many situations of vulnerability. Men from several minority groups have had to assess their physical vulnerability and negotiate risk because of experiences of racism.

There are a few reasonable hypotheses and some speculation about why we have such little sense of the impact of such criminal violence on men. For sure, men are almost completely excluded from the major victimization of reported sexual assault, although more recent studies are acknowledging more and more boys who have been sexually assaulted.

Often criminology's failure to explore men's particular experiences of violence is attributed to men's reluctance to report weakness. Are men reluctant to report or acknowledge fear because of masculine bravado and the accompanying childhood and adolescent lessons regarding their personal safety - who is better than who, who is bigger than who, who is stronger than who?

The little research there is indicates that male victims of assault view their victimization through a male frame, the essence of which sees victimization as weak and helpless. Many men who have difficulties in expressing feelings find themselves isolated and unable to ask for support. There is more of a tendency in men to externalize blame for the victimization while women will internalize that blame.

Men manage danger quite differently. Sometimes they physically challenge it because of their size and stature. Danger is seldom a part of their everyday experience and they rarely need to isolate themselves, as many women reported having to do. Some men enjoy the advantages of status - economic, racial or sexual -, with profound consequences for their levels of fear.

According to Elizabeth Stanko, while women's fears are placed within a wider structural context of economic, racial and gendered inequality - steeped in the analysis of structures of patriarchy - explanations of men's experiences of criminal violence neglect the structures of men's lives, unless it be the structure of class against class. There is very little research on how men feel about the assaults in their lives or how different men respond to violent victimization.

Any focus on younger men and their experience of violence highlights certain lifestyle choices which present criminal opportunities. In other words, a number of young men who are victims of crime are offenders too, getting injured in the act of crime.

One study in Britain interviewed 33 men to explore a male understanding of the gendered context of their responses to assault. It was quite apparent that their frame of masculinity, "being men", was at the heart of their emotional, physical and social responses to victimization. Some referred to the "John Wayne syndrome", "Macho Man", "cave man", "defender". Negotiating physical violence while growing up was a backdrop to their lives. These men acknowledged the complexities of race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability and geographical influences on this negotiation of violence. They thought violence was something one had to deal with, that danger and harm a physical challenge which many men accepted.

Fear was the emotional reaction most consistently reported. At the time of an attack, many feared for their lives. Fear was also clearly related to a particular venue or to situations which served as triggers to remind the victim of the stressful event. The British participants made the following comments: "I won't return to a football match"; "I won't casually talk to people like I used to"; "I'll never open the door to anybody, especially a knock on the door at night."

The men spoke of the trap they find themselves in, needing help but not wanting to burden their wives or mothers and sensing their response is "unmanly" and weak. Men are not a homogeneous group. Their experiences of victimization and any emotional fallout were mediated by their age, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religion, employment and several other factors.

There has also been practically no research on how police and other services respond to men who are assaulted.

Sexual Offenders and their Families
Many sex offenders live their lives in fear, not only literal fear for their lives within prison because they are the "scum of the scum" in the prisoners' own caste system but fear that an unsympathetic public will stigmatize them forever. After Toronto police had warned residents that a convicted sex offender was planning to live with his mother in the same apartment building, Fran, one of the residents, told the press: "His mother is taking him back in, so everybody on the floor is looking to move. Everyone is petrified."

As well, sex offenders have their own fears about loved ones; they are concerned about public backlash or vigilantism hurting their families. A Washington State mother told a newspaper after her 16-year-old son was identified publically: "This is our prison. We live in constant fear."

Inmates in Prison
Very little research has been done on fear of danger or fear of crime for inmates in prison, although anecdotal evidence strongly corroborates fears related to physical or sexual assault. One of the few studies, conducted on 300 inmates in a maximum security prison in Nashville, Tennesee, discovered that fear of victimization was an extremely important predictor of inmate well-being. Older inmates and those with more education reported better mental health as well as less stress and fear levels.

Those reporting the highest levels of fear tended to be young, socially isolated and more frequent targets of victimization. Fears can impact negatively on longer sentences and family and social ties can deteriorate rapidly.

Elizabeth Stanko noted in her research that it is the rare man who mentions the threat of sexual violence, an exception being men in prison.

There were isolated references in the research to other fear groups, almost none of which have been studied in any depth. Those groups are: street and homeless kids, persons with disabilities e.g. the legally blind, store owners and refugees.

Tony Doob is convinced that the generic phrase, "fear of crime" is a polite, neutral, depoliticized term masking Canadians' real fears of very particular types of criminals. People don't fear crime. People fear criminals who do crime and, in Doob's view, there are specific kinds of offenders who people especially fear. Young offenders. Sex offenders. Those from another race or culture, for example the black community with Jamaican roots in Toronto. It is Doob's contention that we need to be honest about that in order to begin to unpack those layers of fear; perhaps in some instances, in certain locations, those fears are grounded in genuine risk of victimization but Doob knows well the statistics confirming that those fears often have less to do with crime rates than with prejudices, attitudes, ignorance and misinformation.

Fear of the Young Offender

"The way they (violent schoolchildren) express themselves is a lot more extreme. I don't think teachers walk around all day worrying about their safety. But there is a climate of concern which, in a lot of cases, is bordering on despair."