Ending Intimate Abuse: Practical Guidance and Survival Strategies. Albert R. Roberts & Beverly Schenkman Roberts

Abstract

Ending Intimate Abuse: Practical Guidance and Survival Strategies. Albert R. Roberts and Beverly Schenkman Roberts. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005. 256 pp. ISBN 0-19-513547-4. $34.95 (cloth). The cycle of abuse in relationships is a phenomenon that has stymied clinicians and intrigued researchers for many years. In their new book, Ending Intimate Abuse: Practical Guidance and Survival Strategies, Albert R. Roberts and Beverly Schenkman Roberts review their qualitative, exploratory study of 501 victims of domestic violence. The book is written for the victims of domestic violence, their families, and clinicians who work with these individuals. The use of extensive case study examples allows the victims to talk directly to the reader, making this a very powerful and moving story of the experience of abuse in intimate relationships. The authors present a typology of victims of domestic violence through chapters focusing on each category. Women who get out quickly (p. 23) and end the abusive relationship after only a few incidents of violence (short-term abuse) are compared with those who continue to be abused for several years before they leave the relationship (intermediate abuse) and those who spend their entire lives being abused (intermittent long-term abuse and chronic abuse). They also devote an entire chapter to those who either lose their life or take their partner's life, describing cases that ended in lethal consequences. The chapters in the first part of the book are presented in similar fashion. Each category of victim is presented through definitions of the category, descriptions of similar backgrounds and critical developmental incidents, and the initial and most severe incidents of violence they experienced. The categories are then compared in terms of how victims in some categories are able to leave the relationship, albeit many years later for some, while victims in other categories do not leave the relationship and the violence escalates, at times to lethal levels. The second part of Ending Intimate Abuse expands the value of this book to victims and their families, as well as to the counselors who work with them. In this section, the authors include chapters on developing a safety plan for getting out of the cycle of violence, guidelines for counselors who are intervening in crisis situations, interacting with law enforcement and court agencies, and understanding the effects of drugs that facilitate sexual assault and strategies to avoid this type of assault. …