ABSTRACT
Even a sceptic has to acknowledge the remarkable changes in the last 25 years regarding the way in which the police, judicial authorities and scientists think about victims of crime. I remember my 1973 class when criminology professor Willem Nagel said: 'If you read about a murder - suppose it was your child, your brother'. Then he waited a moment and continued: 'Suppose your child was the defendant in the dock'. Of course at the time we, the students, were also thinking of the victims before the moment of silence, but we had to be taught that criminal procedure was about defendants: the interests of the victims were supposed to be subsumed under the general public interest. Nevertheless the same Willem Nagel was the man who introduced the term 'victimology' in the late 1950s in The Netherlands.
