There is a gap in the literature on the social information processing (SIP) patterns of adolescents exposed to victimization in school. Therefore, we examine the SIP patterns of young adolescents characterized by their teachers and by their own reports as victims, bullies, bullies/victims, and neither bullies nor victims. The 105 adolescents participating in this study were asked to respond to hypothetical social scenarios in which a protagonist is either rebuffed or provoked by peers. The scenarios were ambiguous in nature and thus could have been processed in different ways. Indeed, distinctive processing patterns were found for each of these groups: victims tended to avoid challenging social situations while expecting others to be purposefully hostile or ignoring; bullies tended to interpret others as purposefully hostile and stated their desire to retaliate; bullies/victims showed patterns more similar to those of the bullies than the victims; and those who were neither victims nor bullies tended to view the same challenging social situations as non hostile and more likely to end well for them. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Whereas the desire for revenge for an unjust deed is considered natural, its use within the therapeutic setting is scarce, specifically in sexually victimized children. The study aimed to find how experiencing sexual molestation during childhood and the revenge fantasy is reflected in drawings and narratives of sexually victimized children. Following ethical approval and signing a consent form, 14 children who experienced sexual abuse and were psychologically treated (ages 11–18) were recruited. They were asked to draw two drawings: “draw an unjust event that had happened to you” and “draw what you would have liked to happen to the person that unjustly treated you.” At completion, participants were asked to give a narrative to each drawing. Phenomenological analysis of the drawings and narratives indicated that most participants refrained from using more than two colours, did not draw the perpetrator and drew schematic figures. The main themes that emerged in the drawings and the narratives were feeling of loneliness, aloneness, and the desire for role reversal.