The use of this word in this sense seems quite recent. The earliest meanings in the OED involve sacrifice, death & destruction, cruel or oppressive treatment. Then, & only “In weaker sense: One who suffers some injury, hardship, or loss, is badly treated or taken advantage of”
It also rather presupposes that the crime has actually taken place
Although nobody would deny that there are problems in the prosecution of rape cases, we ought first to concentrate on how these are investigated, because it is becoming increasingly clear that it is not true that even in cases of what we now call ‘date rape’ there is only the word of the two people directly involved to go on. Just recently there have been cases where the police clearly failed even to attempt to trace witnesses who could have had something useful to say about the alleged perpetrators actions around the relevant time
But if we keep on calling ourselves victims – whether of rape, mugging, or any other crime, the perpetrator has won. The criminals hold us in their power - our future health & happiness lies in their hands. The best revenge is a withering look of contempt & getting on with a good life, better than they will ever know
Words such as prosecute, impeach, charge are no longer available to describe what we do when we go to court to explain what crime has been committed on us, because those have been taken over by the professionals
I was thinking about whether we could switch to using the word complainant, so that one function of the police becomes that of citizens’ complaints department. But complain itself has become more of a whinge
For now I favour the adoption of accusator
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