"Victims have discovered that they are treated as appendages of a system appallingly out of balance. They have learned that somewhere along the way, the system has lost tract of the simple truth that it is supposed to be fair and to protect those who obey the law while punishing those who break it. Somewhere along the way, the system began to serve lawyers and judges and defendants, treating the victim with institutionalized disinterest."

~President Reagan's Task Force on Victims of Crime, December, 1982.