Victim Blaming After a Scam
Information
Elder Victims typically feel a deep sense of shame, and many blame themselves for the experience. This keeps the focus on them instead of the criminals. It leads many, perhaps most, to not report the scam, making it difficult for the institutions involved to act. It also creates isolation, lowers self-esteem, and damages mental and emotional health. This accounts, in part, for scams against the elderly becoming one of the most underreported crimes in America.
Victim blaming allows abusers and perpetrators to avoid accountability and repeatedly victimize vulnerable people.
Victims, especially repeat victims, experienced higher levels of stress which may have put them in a more vulnerable emotional state, and hence a greater risk of being susceptible to scams. Stressful life events included negative changes in financial status and concerns about being lonely.
Some people who are vulnerable to scams are also lonely and lack social support – so they not only don’t have the necessary social network to share information with them, they are also emotionally vulnerable.
Blaming elderly victims perpetuates a false stereotype surrounding that older people that they are they are easy targets for acts of fraud and deception due to declining mental abilities and dependence on others due to their physical fragility or mental deterioration. Elders are thought to be particularly vulnerable susceptible because they are more trusting and perhaps more easily confused by fast- talking scammers.
The paragraph above contains a few grains of truth. However, people age differently. Dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease and severe cognitive decline are not part of the natural aging process. To paint all older people as the same is both ageist and wrong!
Anyone can be a victim of a scam. Victims include Steve Jobs, General John Shalikashvili, Oprah Winfrey, Sylvester Stallone, Billy Joel, and John Elway.
Blaming the victim distracts from the main issue: Scammers are predatory, professional, and, often, organized criminals who make a professional grade living out of committing fraud. They play by two rules: don't get caught and take the money. They are thoughtful, creative, and skilled opponents who will continue to victimize people until caught.
Scammer's Tools:
Exploiting the human tendency or assumption that others are telling the truth, especially when it’s repeated consistently. They could prey on loneliness and fulfil one’s need to belong by getting you to trust them.
Intimidate by claiming to be from official government sources (such as the IRS, Police, Building Inspectors). They could also establish credibility through the use of authority, which also results in greater trust.
Using large sums of money, promise of cures etc. Higher heuristic processing might lead to lower rational processing. They could also use scarcity, or time pressure to get people to respond immediately. This also reduces rational processing or the ability to verify information provided by scammers.
By getting you to commit to small commitments first, people want to remain consistent and are hard pressed to say no later after saying yes earlier. Scammers build momentum in this way.
After victims transmit a small sum of money, scammers explain that more money might be needed to complete the transaction. Victims comply because they do not want to lose the time, effort or money that they had initially invested, even if it might not be the most rational thing to do.
Scammers try to make victims believe they have something in common with them, to induce trust and reciprocity.
Doing small “honey-do” tasks or making minor repairs in order to get in good with the target as a “warm up” to the main scam. This is often used in home repair and disaster relief scams. According to Professor Sherry Hamby of the University of the South: “I think the biggest factor that promotes victim blaming is something called the just-world hypothesis. “It’s this idea that people deserve what happens to them. There’s just a really need to believe that we all deserve our outcomes and consequences.”
Reflect for a Moment
Holding victims responsible for their misfortune is partially a way to avoid admitting that something just as unthinkable could happen to you—even if you do everything “right.”
The scammer gets the victim to part with money voluntarily, albeit under false pretenses. Therefore, the fraud victim is seen as an active contributor to their victimization. It is this relationship between the offender and the fraud victim which leads to their being blamed. Their victimization becomes consequently perceived as justifiable or insufficiently reprehensible to warrant condemnation or outrage.
