Perfect Victim

Colleen Stan was a sweet-natured, lively twenty-year-old when she set out to hitchhike from her home in Washington to Southern California. Seven years later she emerged from hell, the victim of a bizarre and chilling crime. Cameron and Janice Hooker had literally made her their slave - and forced her to endure all of Cameron's twisted sexual perversions. During these seven years the Hookers had two children, entertained their friends at home and held down jobs - while Colleen was held captive in a coffin-like box under their bed. This is also the story of Christine McGuire, a young, inexperienced deputy district attorney who prosecuted Cameron Hooker for kidnapping and successfully explained why Colleen - who had numerous chances to escape - stayed captive for so many years.

FBI profiler Ulysses Grove is distressed to learn that a draft of his textbook on psychopathic murderers is being used as a manual by a serial murderer.

One night in March 1999, fifteen-year-old dance student Rachel Elizabeth Barber vanished. No one could have guessed that she had become another girl's 'perfect' victim. Happy. Beautiful. Talented. She had everything her killer could want. Perceived by crime experts everywhere as one of the most bizarre homicides they had encountered, Perfect Victim recounts two stories: Rachel's mother Elizabeth Southall tells of her family's heart-rendering experience – how they lived through unimaginable tragedy, going to extraordinary lengths to prove their daughter wasn't a runaway. Criminal court reporter Megan Norris provides another side of the picture; the analysis, the astonishment of professionals when faced with the killer's weird and unsettling letters, and the police proceedings that led, eventually, to the Rachel Barber case being solved. Confronting and compelling, this is an incredible story about a callous and calculated crime. Also available from Foxtel Movies as 'In Her Skin' starring Guy Pearce, Miranda Otto and Sam Neill.

Nils Christie’s (1986) seminal work on the ‘Ideal Victim’ is reproduced in full in this edited collection of vibrant and provocative essays that respond to and update the concept from a range of thematic positions. Each chapter celebrates and commemorates his work by analysing, evaluating and critiquing the current nature and impact of victim identity, experience, policy and practice. The collection expands the focus and remit of ‘victim studies’, addressing key themes around race, gender, faith, ability and age while encompassing new and diverse issues. Examples include sex workers as victims of hate crimes, victims’ experiences of online fraud, and recognising historic child sexual abuse victims in Ireland. With contributions from an array of academics including Vicky Heap (Sheffield Hallam University), Hannah Mason-Bish (University of Sussex) and Pamela Davies (Northumbria University), as well as a Foreword by David Scott (The Open University), this book evaluates the contemporary relevance and applicability of Christie’s ‘Ideal Victim’ concept and creates an important platform for thinking differently about victimhood in the 21st century.

The Black Dahlia case. The Manson murders. The Zodiac Killer. The slaughter of JonBenet Ramsay. These killings, among many others in Bill James's astonishing chronicle of the history of American crime, have all created a frenzy of interest and speculation about human nature. And while many of us choose to avoid the news about gruesome murders, Bill James contends that these crime stories, which create such frenzy (and have throughout history), are as important to understanding our society, culture and history as anything we may consider to be a more 'serious' subject. The topic envelopes our society so completely, we almost forget about it. James looks at the ways in which society has changed by examining the development of how crimes have been committed, investigated and prosecuted. The booktakes on such issues as the rise of an organized police force, the controversial use of the death penalty, the introduction of evidence such as fingerprinting and DNA, and the unexpected ways in which the most shocking crimes have shaped the criminal justice system and our perceptions of violence.

Moral Wages offers the reader a vivid depiction of what it is like to work inside an agency that assists victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Based on over a year of fieldwork by a man in a setting many presume to be hostile to men, this ethnographic account is unlike most research on the topic of violence against women. Instead of focusing on the victims or perpetrators of abuse, Moral Wages focuses exclusively on the service providers in the middle. It shows how victim advocates and counselors—who don't enjoy extrinsic benefits like pay, power, and prestige—are sustained by a different kind of compensation. As long as they can overcome a number of workplace dilemmas, they earn a special type of emotional reward reserved for those who help others in need: moral wages. As their struggles mount, though, it becomes clear that their jobs often put them in impossible situations—requiring them to aid and feel for vulnerable clients, yet giving them few and feeble tools to combat a persistent social problem.