Revictimization (or secondary victimization)

Practice that forces a woman in a situation of male violence to experience additional suffering or abuse as a consequence of quantitative or qualitative shortcomings in the interventions performed by the agencies and professionals responsible for her care. It also designates the misguided actions carried out by other agents involved. Revictimization is perpetrated, for example, by the media when they inappropriately report on a woman who has suffered violence by employing an overly dramatic or sensationalist tone or using terms or images improperly. It also occurs when survivors are forced to recount their experiences over and over again to different professionals, thus causing them to relive the trauma they have suffered. In this process, they are often asked questions that imply value judgements about them or question their actions and the reliability of their version of events. In this way, they are victimized twice: once by the male aggression and once by the system that is supposed to defend them.