ABSTRACT
Until recently it has been frequently asserted that the victim was the ‘forgotten party’ of the criminal justice system whose centrality to the workings of the system was underestimated, ignored and undervalued. This assertion lent weight to the view that when individuals participated in the workings of the criminal justice system, they more often than not felt superfluous to its requirements. The presumption of this ‘forgotten party’ status has differently fuelled political and policy responses to the victim, many of which are documented in the chapters that follow. However, one of the first questions to consider is whether or not this ‘forgotten party’ status has any real historical currency.
