Vulnerabilità e protezione (delle vittime di corporate violence)

These 'National guidelines for lawyers' are aimed at providing a practical and specific tool for a better implementation, by Italian legal professionals, of Directive 2012/29/EU, with specific respect to victims of corporate crime and corporate violence. Building on a previous theoretical and empirical research (within the framework of a larger research project on 'Victims and Corporations'), these Guidelines provide an overview of the minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime established by the Directive with specific respect to the peculiarities and problems related to corporate violence victimization, i.e. to criminal offences committed by corporations in the course of their legitimate activities, which result in harms to natural persons’ health, integrity or life, and whose victims experience a whole range of distinctive risks of secondary and repeat victimisation, of intimidation and retaliation, as well as of harm to their dignity and private and family life. The book chapter addresses in particular the topic of victims' protection. The usually collective dimension of corporate violence victimization, together with the frequently long latency periods which characterize the onset of the harmful effects, and with the recurrence of scientific uncertainty about causal links and, in some cases, about the meaning and relevance of symptoms experienced by victims, all add to the greater difficulty in protecting these victims who belong to a poorly recognised ‘vulnerable’ group of victims. These victims, in fact, present peculiar protection needs from secondary and, especially, repeat victimization, from intimidation and from retaliation, including against the risk of emotional or psychological harm.