Voices from the Group: Violent Women’s Experiences of Intervention

Abstract

This study discusses the experiences of women who participated in a program for partner-violent women by understanding their views of the treatment process, outcomes and the meanings they attached to it. This study followed a Husserlian descriptive phenomenology. Interviews were conducted with seven English women who used physical intimate partner violence in heterosexual relationships. The data were analyzed using by the method developed by Colaizzi (1978). The qualitative findings suggest the women experienced the treatment as positive and meaningful and experienced personal transformations. Deeper analysis of the data, showed that there were two key areas of benefit to the women, one involving the connections and bonds formed with other women in the group and the facilitators, and the second including the skills and strategies the women learned for managing anger and negative emotions.