By Anna VanRoy

            When a violent act occurs, the harm rarely stops with the primary victim. Family members, loved ones, and even bystanders can be deeply affected, becoming what legal systems call secondary victims.[1] Secondary victims endure trauma—not through direct assault or other means of harm—but through proximity, kinship, or institutional responses that compound suffering.^[2] Yet, despite the severity of their harm, secondary victims often remain marginalized in law and policy.

            In criminal law, the victim is directly the target of a crime. Specifically, “crime victim or victim of crime means a person who has suffered physical, sexual, financial, or emotional harm as a result of the commission of a crime.”^[3] In United States tort law, a victim is someone who is harmed by an act or omission on the part of the tortfeasor.[4] The secondary victim, however, is the individual indirectly harmed^[5]—parents grieving a murdered child, siblings traumatized by abuse within the family, or partners burdened with caring responsibilities. Secondary victims exist in both criminal and tort legal systems because of the violent nature that both systems protect against.

            With the definitions of victims and secondary victims in mind, distinguishing between secondary victimization and secondary victims is important, as the terms refer to very different realities, but are often confused. First, under 28 C.F.R. § 103.3, secondary victimization means re-traumatizing a primary victim through institutional or societal responses after the crime.^[6] This might occur when police blame a survivor, doctors subject a survivor to invasive or insensitive medical procedures, or in court questioning retraumatizes a survivor .^[7] In this sense, the harm is “secondary” because it represents a second layer of injury inflicted upon the same person. Second, by contrast, secondary victims are different individuals who themselves suffer harm because of their connection to the primary victim.^[8] Unlike secondary victimization, which deepens the suffering of the direct victim, the harm to secondary victims is independent and distinct, and in some jurisdictions is recognized as actionable.

            Different international jurisdictions apply factors test for secondary victims’ harms and recognize cost and losses for secondary victims. For example, Israeli tort law uses a factored test to assess the amount of harm suffered to determine if it is actionable. There, secondary victims are recognized as individuals who suffer compensable harm if: (1) they are family members who witnessed the event or its consequences, (2) there is temporal and spatial proximity between the primary and secondary harms, and (3) the harm suffered by the secondary victim is severe enough to disrupt daily functioning.^[9] Further, French personal injury law recognizes not only pecuniary costs, but also non-pecuniary losses.[10] Such as, emotional harm that manifests as a medical condition—like depression—when calculating restitution for victims and secondary victims.^[11]

            United States case law demonstrates the uneven treatment of secondary victims. In United States v. Terry, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed sentencing enhancements where indirect secondary victims suffered extraordinary psychological harm provided there was a nexus to the offense.^[12] In that case, the Court defined victim in the statutes at issue to include the direct victim of the offense of conviction and indirect secondary victims.^[13] The Court specifically mentions that an indirect secondary victim is a person with a direct relation to the offense, not a person with a relationship to the direct victim.^[14] In United States v. Haggard, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals included family members of a murdered federal officer in victim status, deeming them incidental victims rather than direct victims.^[15] In that case, the Circuit Court held that although the deceased federal agent was a direct victim of the crime, the family of the direct victim were also victimized by Haggard’s criminal acts.^[16] Therefore, the Court found it appropriate to consider the psychological injury that the family members suffered when considering criminal sentencing.^[17]

            Beyond sentencing, restitution also exposes the lack of recognition for secondary victims. Under the Mandatory Victim’s Restitution Act (MVRA),  U.S. courts generally confine restitution to direct victims.[18] In United States v. Riviera-Solis, the District Court denied restitution for psychological service costs to the relatives of the murdered victim because they had not suffered bodily injury.[19] The Court conceded that the two secondary victims were indeed victims in their own right.[20] However, the Court was unable to order restitution due to the MVRA’s definitions and prior precedent. The MVRA’s narrow definition limits a courts ability to grant restitution to secondary victims. Specifically, a victim under the MVRA is “a person directly and proximately harmed as a result of the commission of an offense.”[21] By excluding secondary victims from the definition, the MVRA restricts secondary victims from receiving recognition that could have helped them to recover and heal from harm that they indirectly experienced. Not recognizing this unique category of victims creates the risk of reinforcing a hierarchy of suffering that undervalues the psychological burdens experienced by secondary victims.

            Recognition can help. Secondary victim’s experiences are not limited to emotional grief; these experiences extend into disrupted livelihoods, health deterioration, and strained relationships. Recognizing this extension of harm is not an act of generosity; it is a matter of justice.

[1] Tort Law: What Qualifies You as a Secondary Victim, LegalClarity (Aug. 31. 2025), https://legalclarity.org/what-qualifies-you-as-a-secondary-victim/ (defining a secondary victim as one “who suffers injury, typically psychiatric, from witnessing or apprehending harm to another person, known as the primary victim. Unlike primary victims, who are directly involved and physically harmed, secondary victims are indirectly affected by observing the event’s impact”).

^[2] Officer for Victims of Crime, Glossary: Victim, Off. of Just. Program https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/model-standards/6/glossary.html#demo2_tip (last visited Sept. 16, 2025).

^[3] 28 C.F.R. § 94.102.

[4] Kuersten Andreas, Introduction to Tort Law, Cong. Rsch. Serv., (last updated May 26, 2023).  

^[5] Office of Victims of Crime, supra note 2.

^[6] 28 C.F.R. § 103.3.

^[7] Id.

^[8] Office of Victims of Crime, supra note 2.

^[9] Baarbé v. Syrian Arab Republic, 679 F.Supp.3d 303, 414 (N.C. Dist. Ct. W. Dist. 2023).

[10] Id. at 426–28.

^[11] Id.

^[12] See United States v. Terry, 142 F.3d 702, 712 (4th Cir. 1998).

^[13]Id. (using both Black’s Law Dictionary and Merriam Webster to define “victim”).

^[14] Id. at 712.

^[15] See United States v. Haggard, 41 F.3d 1320, 1326-27 (9th Cir. 1994).

^[16] Id.

^[17] Id. (holding the district court did not err in considering the family as “vulnerable victims” for purposes of the statute at issue).

[18] 18 U.S.C. 3663A(a).

[19] See United States v. Riviera-Solis, 733 F.Supp.3d 46, 55 (D. Puerto Rico 2024).

[20] Id.; United States v. Patton, 651 Fed. Appx 423, 427 (6th Cir. 2016) (stating “[b]ecause the victim’s spouses suffered no bodily injury, the district court erred in awarding them lost wages under the MVRA”); United States v. Harwood, 854 F. Supp. 2d 1035, 1063 (Dist.  N.M. 2012) (holding that the “plain language [of the MVRA […] confines the scope of restitution for psychological services to when the victim has suffered a ‘bodily injury’”).

[21] 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(2).