Short and Long term effects of crime

In the law and order episode we watched on Friday, the victim (Harper) had a man come through her unlocked window in the middle of the night, beat her, and then sexually assaulted her.
With crimes like this that happen, the long term effects will sometimes stay with you forever. Whether it’s PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder), or fear and paranoia. In Law and Order Harper was at first angry that the crime happened to her, and after she was re-victimized It brought back the memories she tried to suppress. The short term effects of crime can at the moment can be as bad as long term, and with different types of people the (what could have been) short term effects turn into long term. For example, months after the crime has happened to her, on a checkup police see that she still wears running shoes to bed. That type of paranoia can be carried around with a person for many years. With the crimes that happen a way of dealing with them would be through therapy. Although that doesn’t make the problem go away it’s still a way of dealing with the situation at hand.

June 10^th 1991 in South Lake Tahoe Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped for 18 years in 1991 she was not only raped, but forced to have the children of convicted sex offender Phillip Craig Garrido. Although Garrido had a criminal record of sexual assaults put onto other young women in the year 1976, police failed to see the connections. In August of 2009 Jaycee (otherwise known as “Alissa” from her capturer) was taken into identification when Garrido went to a college because he felt he could cure other sex offenders of their “need”. While Jaycee was in questioning with a security guard from the college she stated that he was a “changed man”, he was “good with children”. Once Garrido confessed to kidnapping her and raping her many years ago, Jaycee Lee Dugard after 18 years couldn’t tell the security her real name.

After being traumatized and tricked for 18 years the Victim did believe that he was an honest man who just wanted to help her. He gave her a name, a place to stay (in his backyard) and although he raped and abused her, he made her believe that it was because she deserved it. Police thought that Jaycee might have had Stockholm syndrome. (Empathy and sympathy aswell as positive feelings towards their capturers).

The long term effects that Jaycee Lee Dugard had to go through were life changing for her. She had 2 daughters from the man who had raped and kidnapped her, and because of that she has to see him in her children every time she looks at them. Jaycee told the media she would never do anything to harm her children and although their father was a terrible man that, that doesn’t mean they have to grow up feeling weak or like they were a mistake. Another long term effect of a kidnapping / sexual assault was that she was away from her family for 19 years and wasn’t able to grow up the way her family had originally intended. Her life was taken from her as a child and she has to live with that for the rest of her life. But Jaycee Lee Dugard decided  to write a book regarding her imprisoned time as a result to show her capturer that he didn’t take her life away from her like she once believed.