VIRTUAL VICTIMS AND INVISIBLE CRIMES: EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF HARM

Abstract

The digital revolution has fundamentally reshaped human interaction, community, and identity. Digital era and advancements in technology have revolutionized the way people live. It is assumed that these technological advancements have made lives easier and have improved the standards of living but these have also changed way crimes are committed, reported, investigated, prevented and penalized. However, this new frontier has also become a fertile ground for novel forms of victimization that challenge traditional legal and criminological paradigms. This book chapter argues that crimes perpetrated within virtual environments, such as persistent online harassment, doxing, non - consensual intimate image distribution (revenge porn), and sophisticated virtual asset theft, constitute profound and tangible harms that are often rendered invisible by outdated frameworks of understanding. By examining the psychological, financial, and social impacts on victims, this chapter seeks to expand the definition of harm beyond the physicality, to include the digital erosion of self, safety, and community. It concludes that a paradigm shift is urgently required in law enforcement, legal doctrinal and empirical research, and public perception to recognize, validate, and redress the suffering of virtual victims. This chapter also posits that the primary objective is to humanize the experience of the ‘virtual victim’. The student driven to suicide by online bullying, the woman forced into virtual purdah after doxing, the family stripped of its savings by a digital con artist.