Social work lecturer who played a key role in the foundation of Victim Support
The idea that the victim of a crime should have any expectations of the criminal justice system beyond informing the police or being called as a witness is relatively recent. In the 1960s there were isolated moves to care for victims, but it took till 1972 for the social work lecturer Chris Holtom to point to the law's systematic failure to recognise, look after and involve victims. This lack prompted him to take a leading role in the foundation of the organisation Victim Support, which has since helped more than 25 million people affected by crime. Chris has died at the age of 86 after a long illness.
His concern persuaded a group of people in Bristol – members of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (now known as Nacro), along with others from the police and probation service – to find out more about how victims were affected by crime. As well as learning a lot about the problems that victims faced, they realised that there was little or no help on offer. However, this first initiative ended in chaos because they had underestimated the demand, in terms of both emotional and physical need.
An appeal to local charities such as Rotary and Round Table enabled a restart in 1974, when the first group going by the name of Victim Support was established. A wide range of skills were needed: Chris had the rare gift of marrying academic knowledge of social work with the ability and drive to make it effective in practice. The regard in which he was held was evident at the reunion of the pioneers at the 25th anniversary celebrations in 1999. By that point, the organisation had established a national office (1980); Home Office leaflets were being given to victims and witnesses (1988); the government had issued a Victim's Charter (1990); and a telephone Victim Supportline had been launched (1998). The anniversary year itself saw the Witness Service operating in all magistrates' and crown courts in England and Wales.
Born in Reading to Marjorie, a VAD – volunteer – nurse, and her accounts clerk husband Reginald, Chris was educated locally at Leighton Park school. Its headteacher was EB Castle, whose daughter Hilary later became Chris's wife. In 1944 he joined the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman and after eight years left the service as a lieutenant. The experience that led Chris to consider a career in crime, punishment and rehabilitation came through being put in charge of a fellow officer awaiting removal to serve sentence in England, and witnessing the man's emotional deterioration.
Chris studied at the London School of Economics (1952-55), gaining a diploma in social administration and certificate in applied social studies, and later an honorary MSc in social science from Bristol University. He then joined the prison service as an assistant governor at Feltham Young Offender Institution for four years. But he found this "stultifying", so became a social work lecturer first at Edinburgh University, and then at Bristol (1962-85).
The design of a volunteer-run Victim Support was Chris's. As the care of victims grew by word of mouth and a helpful BBC Open Door television programme, other parts of the country started their own schemes, and it was the Bristol model that most of them followed.
This grassroots growth was regularised in 1979 by the instituting of a National Association of Victim Support Schemes, with Dame Helen Reeves as its first director. Chris's role now became that of a supportive figure, encouraging the development of the work internationally, while continuing diligently at the local level. In 1982 he became a life vice-president of the national body.
His own view, which went beyond Victim Support policy, was that the needs of both victims and offenders are inextricably intertwined, such that if stresses on victims can be reduced, then antagonism towards offenders may be too, and so the chances of offenders being reintegrated into society may be improved.
Chris was a man of wide social concerns: he started a Scottish branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform while at Edinburgh, and chaired the Bristol Discharged Prisoners Aid Society, later the Bristol Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (1962-85) and various schemes for older former prisoners and hostels for institutionalised young offenders. In 1991 he was appointed OBE and his work for Bristol was recognised with a Lord Mayor's medallion in 1994.
As an antiquarian bookseller for more than 40 years, he specialised in children's books. French life and culture was another passion and in his 80s, with no previous artmaking experience, he took up lino printing, producing sophisticated images that were realised by one of his daughters at Dartington Print Workshop, in Devon.
Chris married Hilary in 1952, and they had five daughters and a son. After Hilary died in 1986, he moved to Cornwall, where he lived with his partner May Roberts. Following her death in 2007 he moved to the Cotswolds. He is survived by his children, 15 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
• Christopher William Dupen Holtom, campaigner, born 2 May 1927; died 3 November 2013