Every addition to the rapidly growing literature of American reform movements is a welcome one ; and a biography of Elizur Wright, abolitionist, temperance advocate, and life insurance reformer, is long past due. When Elizur Wright was six years old his father, a Connecticut farmer and teacher, removed to the Western Reserve; and after his graduation from Yale young Wright taught at Western Reserve College until he abandoned his professorship for the cause of abolition. Like so many other abolitionists, Elizur Wright was inspired by evangelical faith to carry on his long sustained and important work as editor of various antislavery publications. His story is similar to that of so many other humanitarians : arduous labor, great personal sacrifices (at times his family was on the verge of want), and occasional physical danger at the hands of an enraged mob. Wright parted company with Garrison and advocated the formation of an antislavery party. This decision did not, however, mean that he was less militant in his devotion to the cause of the slave.Probably Wright's sensitive reaction to the physical sufferings of English slum-dwellers prompted his criticisms of industrial capitalism and his championship of the white worker. Although he advocated free land for everyone as a partial solution for the problems of the wage earner, he clearly visioned a collectivist society : the time would come, he believed, when great agricultural combinations would replace the isolated, individually-managed farm, when every member of the community would enjoy his just share in the common industry. In somewhat the same way he favored the development of associations of capitalists and laborers in which each person would be rewarded from the common gains in accordance with his contribution in capital, in labor, or in skill. One wishes that the authors had elaborated the methods by which Wright believed such collective organizations could be developed within a profit-making and competitive society.As editor of the Chronotype Wright severely criticized the current practices of life insurance companies. In 1853 he began lobbying in the

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A victim advocate is one who is intent on assisting the victim in responding to and recovering from a crime‐related incident. While their primary goal is to help victims, they also engage with actors within the criminal justice, medical, social service, and other fields to ensure the fair treatment of victims and, when applicable, help to secure victim participation in the justice process. A victim advocate is one who walks the recovery walk with victims, as needed and as invited, to both decrease the deleterious impact of crime and improve the recovery outcomes for victims overall. This entry will describe the history of victim advocacy, the roles of victim advocates in the public and private sectors, the utilization of victim advocacy, the perceived effectiveness of services, and remaining challenges for those in the victim advocacy field.

The physical actions associated with a rape/sexual assault often lead to the deposit of biological materials, and in some cases visual evidence of harm (bruising, scratches, and other physical marks) that can be collected as evidence to identify, charge, and prosecute a suspect and corroborate the narrative of the crime victim that an assault has occurred. The process by which this evidence is collected is known as a sexual assault medical forensic exam , more commonly termed “rape kit.” The process of evidence collection is detailed, lengthy, and may be painful, and it is guided by specific protocols developed to ensure that contamination does not spoil the materials collected. One would think testing of the evidence collected would be automatic, but recent research has found that it is not uncommon for a kit to be neglected, left on an evidence room shelf, and the evidence within to remain untested for years. Many questions remain regarding the contributing factors leading to the failure to test rape‐kit evidence; the answers to these questions will help to bring justice to victims and to identify and/or remove dangerous perpetrators from the public.

Until the advent of the women's movement in the 1970s, victims of rape and sexual assault were seen to be primary provokers of the acts that were perpetrated against them. For this reason, little attention was paid to the short‐ and long‐term psychological effects of the crimes on the victims. As American society gained a better understanding of the impact of other types of trauma on those experiencing traumatic events (war, in particular) and the introduction of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a validated illness from which one might suffer, there also came a greater appreciation for the impact of rape and sexual assault on the victims of these crimes. The terms rape trauma (RT) and rape trauma syndrome (RTS) were coined to explain the long‐term impact of surviving a sex offense. Therapeutic methods could then be utilized to better address the symptoms associated with RTS (akin to PTSD) to aid victims in recovering from these traumatic events. However, the use of RTS in court has not been as widely accepted as PTSD.