Every single crime committed has a victim, who has suffered in some way or the other. It could be physical, emotional, psychological or financial in nature but most crime victims go through a painful ordeal in order to come to terms with reality.

However, when the crime is of a violent nature, it can lead to some serious repercussions. Let us first understand what a crime victim goes through after he or she has been subjected to a gruesomely violent crime. These are the issues a crime victim tries to battle with:

• Fragmentation of the story - For crime victims, the horrifying events of the crime lead to numbness, disconnection and often shock. The crime victims find it increasingly difficult to find the right words to describe the events and cannot express in a cohesive manner. Many even get hysterical when they cannot explain what they so desperately want to, leading to further frustration and anguish.
  
• Trauma and fear - Most crime victims have difficulty dealing with the fear after a violent crime. This makes them feel disoriented and traumatizes them even further. They feel emotional, physical and mental trauma that further makes them want to disconnect with reality in the hope that they will overcome the fear. More often than not, they panic and feel physically ill as well.
  
• Disjointed grief - Many a times, the crime victims have suffered many losses in the cat of crime. However, because they are feeling terrorized and unsecured as well, they find it very difficult to emote and grieve in a normal way which makes them feel even worse. Any kind of unprocessed grief becomes unhealthy for a human being and more often than not, crime victims have a great deal of difficulty in expressing the appropriate emotion because they are overwhelmed with too many emotions at the same time.
  
• Time and memory warp - This is very common amongst crime victims where they cannot co-relate with the time. They feel they have no control over their life and have huge blank spaces in their memory as their minds try and deal with the situation. This usually ends up leaving the crime victims feel like their minds are in a chaos and time loses its meaning.
  
• Disabling harm - Many a times, the crime victims find it difficult to lead a normal life after the crime has occurred in their life. These hold true even in cases where there has been no gruesome violence but the victim has faced financial, emotional, spiritual and mental violation. The crime victims may find it difficult to cope with their marriage, their job and their day to day life because of the trauma caused by crime.
  
• Guilt and confusion - Most of the times, crime victims end up feeling guilty after a period of time when they cannot cope with their emotions. Irrespective of how big or small the crime was, after sometime the victim might want to place the blame on someone and that person ends up being them themselves.

• Right to be treated with compassion and dignity
  
• Right to be protected from any further harm
  
• Right to be informed at every stage about the case's progress. In cases where the crime victims are required to appear in court to testify, they are informed well in advance and given all the protection and counseling they might need.
  
• The right to receive due compensation for the losses incurred
  
• The right to preserve their employment and their property
  
• Right to seek the right kind of counsel
  
• The right to be treated equally in a court of law, irrespective of age, sex, caste or color

Useful Links:
The Law Society
Criminal Injury
Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority
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