Fear of Burglars
Scelerophobia
Scelerophobia is a fear of attack and harm by wicked persons, burglars and robbers among them, and the reference work that defines it puts the word fears in quotation marks. What follows the definition is an assertion about children and television with nothing behind it.
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What the reference book asserts without evidence
The entry runs to three sentences. The first defines the fear. The second states that these fears, with the word in quotation marks, have increased in prevalence and intensity to the point where fear of attack and harm by wicked persons is among the greatest fears of children today. The third begins with the word certainly and blames television programmes with graphic depictions of violence.
No survey is named for the increase, no measure is given for the intensity, and the causal claim arrives with an adverb where the evidence should be. The quotation marks around fears are the most interesting part: the book is signalling that it does not consider these fears irrational, which by the standard definition would disqualify them as a phobia. It does not follow the thought up.
Why scelerophobia names the criminal not the crime
The first element is the Latin scelus, a crime or a wicked act. The word therefore names a fear of criminals rather than of crime, of the person rather than the event, which is what separates it from a fear of losing property. Someone who fits new locks because they do not want to be burgled is protecting the house. Someone with scelerophobia is afraid of who might come through the door.
That focus explains why the avoidance behaviours described run in two directions at once. A person may avoid unfamiliar or crowded places for fear of being pickpocketed, and also avoid leaving the house at all, because leaving it means leaving it unattended. Both are the same fear and each cancels the other's remedy.
Where the checking behaviour leads
Repeated checking of doors and windows is described as a route from this fear into obsessive-compulsive disorder. The distinction is the usual one and it is hard to draw from outside: a person who checks the lock is being careful, and a person who checks it for the ninth time is doing something else.
The risk factors given are the ordinary ones for a specific phobia, with one addition worth keeping:
- being brought up by people who were themselves markedly cautious about intruders
- trauma transference, meaning watching someone else struggle with the fear, which is learning a phobia by observation rather than by experience
- experiencing a burglary, the one route that has actually been written up
What the only first-person account says
Wiktionary's sole citation is a Business Insider article of 26 September 2023 by Abby Roch, headlined around her house being broken into and her having since developed a fear of thieves. The quoted passage is a clinician's advice: someone in high distress from scelerophobia whose social and occupational functioning is affected should see a medical provider or a mental health professional.
That is standard advice and it is the closest thing to a clinical statement the term has. There are no studies on the condition. What exists in its place is the figure for phobias generally, which UK health information puts at around 10 million people with at least one, roughly one person in seven.
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Burglars
- Fear of StrangersBoth put an unknown person at the centre. Xenophobia in its clinical sense fears the stranger anywhere; this fears the one who has come inside, and the Latin root names the wickedness rather than the unfamiliarity.
- Fear of CrowdsThe avoidance of busy or unfamiliar places for fear of pickpockets belongs to this fear rather than to enochlophobia, and the two are easy to mistake from outside.
- Fear of Home SurroundingsBoth make the home the site of the problem. Oikophobia is an aversion to the home itself; here the home is the thing being defended and cannot be left.
Common questions
Questions about Scelerophobia
- Why does the reference book put fears in quotation marks?
- It does not say. The effect is to signal that the author does not regard these fears as unwarranted, which matters, because a specific phobia is defined by fear out of proportion to actual danger. A reference work hedging on that point in the definition itself has raised the central question about the term and left it there.
- Is the claim about children and television supported?
- No. The entry asserts that the fear has grown in prevalence and intensity to become among the greatest fears of children today, and blames graphic violence on television. No survey is named.
- What is the difference between this and a fear of being robbed?
- The object. Scelus is Latin for a wicked act, so the word names the criminal rather than the crime. A person protecting property fits a better lock; a person with this fear is afraid of who would be behind the door, which is why the avoidance can extend to crowds and to leaving the house at all.
- How does it become obsessive-compulsive disorder?
- Through checking. Repeatedly confirming that doors and windows are locked is described as a route from the fear into the disorder, and the line between careful and compulsive is drawn by repetition rather than by content. The first check is prudence and the ninth is a symptom.
Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26
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Related entries
- Fear of StrangersStranger anxiety runs to a timetable, peaks before a child's first birthday, and is graded by the stranger's height, sex and distance.
- Fear of CrowdsThree Greek names, no article, no study and no figure. Every reference resolves it to agoraphobia or claustrophobia, both of which claim the crowd as their own.
- Fear of Home SurroundingsIn psychiatry it would mean fear of the bathtub and the light switches. In practice it means whatever the person using it wants it to mean.
- Fear of Being RobbedRobbery is legally theft by force or fear, so the fear sits inside the offence, and the word for fearing it gets seven words in print.
- AcephobiaTwo studies found asexual people rated as less human than other orientations, and a built-in control for unfamiliarity failed to explain the result.
- AnglophobiaA Glasgow study measured Anglophobia and Islamophobia side by side and found the same predictors. The object of the prejudice was close to interchangeable.