Victims Of Domestic Abuse Research Articles

Offenders become the victim in virtual reality: impact of changing perspective in domestic violence

The role of empathy and perspective-taking in preventing aggressive behaviors has been highlighted in several theoretical models. In this study, we used immersive virtual reality to induce a full body ownership illusion that allows offenders to be in the body of a victim of domestic abuse. A group of male domestic violence offenders and a control group without a history of violence experienced a virtual scene of abuse in first-person perspective. During the virtual encounter, the participants’ real bodies were replaced with a life-sized virtual female body that moved synchronously with their own real movements. Participants' emotion recognition skills were assessed before and after the virtual experience. Our results revealed that offenders have a significantly lower ability to recognize fear in female faces compared to controls, with a bias towards classifying fearful faces as happy. After being embodied in a female victim, offenders improved their ability to recognize fearful female faces and reduced their bias towards recognizing fearful faces as happy. For the first time, we demonstrate that changing the perspective of an aggressive population through immersive virtual reality can modify socio-perceptual processes such as emotion recognition, thought to underlie this specific form of aggressive behaviors.

“All the System is Simply a Soap Bubble”: Legal Help-Seeking for Domestic Violence Among Women in Kyrgyzstan

This paper examines limitations in how law enforcement and public health systems respond to domestic violence in Kyrgyzstan. Findings from interviews with domestic violence victims show that these women are subject to ineffectual practices and negative attitudes that tend to minimize domestic abuse and disempower victims. The findings reveal several problematic issues: inconsistencies in the implementation of the law, impunity for abusers because of both personal attitudes and social affinities between the police and abusers, ineffective enforcement of protective orders, and superficial processing of domestic violence cases by the legal system. Additional barriers to help-seeking include a lack of institutional support and guidelines for offering mental health services for victims as well as a scarcity of housing, childcare, and employment opportunities for women seeking to break the cycle of abuse. The findings underscore the need for society-wide changes in attitudes toward domestic violence, stricter mechanisms for enforcing the law, and mandatory training for service providers to facilitate the provision of more accessible and affirmative support to victims.

Predicting Domestic Homicides and Serious Violence in Dorset: a Replication of Thornton\u2019s Thames Valley Analysis

Research QuestionWhat facts known to police, if any, could have predicted the 107 domestic and family murders and near-murders in Dorset (UK) police area over a recent 7-year period, using methods identical to Thornton’s (2011, 2017)?DataThe data were gathered from all 107 cases of domestic murders, manslaughter, attempted murder or grievous bodily harm with intent in Dorset between April 2009 and March 2015, plus a matched control sample of 214 arrestees for less-deadly violent offences.MethodsReplicating Thornton’s Thames Valley analysis, two methods were used: (1) calculating errors in predictions from previous risk assessments using the UK’s DASH (Domestic Abuse, Stalking and Harassment) risk assessment protocol and (2) making a case-control comparison of Thornton’s risk factors between the deadly domestic violence cases in Dorset to a Dorset sample of victims and offenders in all violence cases during the same time period.FindingsFalse negative risk assessments were found in 67% of the deadly violence cases with prior police contact (45 of 67) not classified by DASH as ‘high risk.’ The false positives in the same time period totalled 12,279 cases of no serious harm among 12,301 cases receiving high risk assessments, for a 99% false positive rate. Possible alternative predictors were found in differences between deadly offenders and controls, both male and female, although it is not known whether these variables were added to the records before or after the deadly violence event. Male offenders in deadly violence cases were 120% more likely to have their police records note a self-harm warning, 20% more likely to have a suicide warning, yet only half as likely to have a mental health warning as control males. Female offenders in deadly violence cases were 355% more likely to have a weapons warning on file, 244% more likely to have a mental health warning and 146% more likely to have a drugs warning than female control case offenders.ConclusionsThe current risk assessment tool (DASH) failed to predict the majority of deadly domestic violence cases over 6 years in Dorset. Other factors could do better, but more research is required before highly accurate forecasting tools can be applied to help save the lives of more domestic abuse victims.

10 Reasons to Reject Unique Public Duties of Care in Negligence

In Michael v. the South Wales Police the UKSC struck out a fatal accidents claim brought by the family of a victim of domestic abuse. Two different police forces bungled Ms. Michael’s calls to the emergency line immediately before she was murdered. The claim failed because the court held that the law ought not to recognize unique public duties of care, that is duties not owed by similarly situated private defendants. Michael has been described as one of the most important negligence decisions ever rendered in UK law. Although the SCC has created unique public duties, the case for doing so has never been evaluated. This article considers 10 reasons why the Canadian courts should no longer create unique public duties. Two reasons are particularly compelling. First, the “Good Public Samaritan” principle created in Anns and followed unreflectively in Canada constitutes an objectionable and unworkable intrusion by the courts on the prerogative of the legislatures. Second, unique public duties are unnecessary to do justice in a case like Michael. The Canadian courts would probably have permitted the Michael case to go to trial based on ordinary negligence principles that apply to private parties; specifically, those based on an assumption of responsibility.

A human right to legal aid? – The implications of changes to the legal aid scheme for victims of domestic abuse

This article explores the extent to which the human rights of victims of domestic violence have been interfered with by the restrictions on legal aid introduced by Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. It argues that in failing to ensure that victims of domestic abuse have access to legal advice and representation their rights to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights have been breached. Further, requiring them to litigate in person against an abuser constitutes a breach of their rights to respect for their private life under Article 8. Further still, the state in not ensuring that victims of domestic abuse have effective representation in disputes over child arrangements orders is breaching its obligation to protect them from further violence under Article 8.

Exploring the belief systems of domestic abuse victims: an exploratory study

PurposeSupport service provisions for domestic abuse victims have typically focussed on the immediate risk and etiological factors associated with abuse. Consequently, there is limited research exploring more persistent and pervasive factors involved in this cycle of abuse, such as subjective experiences and beliefs held by victims of domestic abuse. The purpose of this paper is to preliminary explore individual experience of domestic abuse including the belief systems of participants. Increasing our understanding of key factors and beliefs in the experience of domestic abuse could enable support services to create more long-term sustainable support for victims.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 12 women with a history of domestic abuse participated in an exploratory interview about their general beliefs and thoughts surrounding their domestic abuse experience. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis.FindingsThe thematic analysis identified four belief themes: personal responsibility, antisocial attitudes, environmental factors and negative attitudes towards police.Practical implicationsThe paper highlights the value of understanding subjective, personalized experiences and beliefs of domestic abuse victims; identifies the importance of belief systems as potential treatment targets for domestic abuse victims; and acknowledges an avenue for more effective support provision for victims of domestic abuse.Originality/valueThis preliminary study offers new insights into the role of belief systems amongst a sample of domestically abused women. Understanding the significance of personalized, subjective experiences of domestic abuse victims is a step towards designing and implementing effective interventions. The findings further emphasize the need for more empirical research and theory development within the area of beliefs and domestic abuse victims.

Language disorders in victims of domestic violence in children's homes.

The sample consists of 104 participants divided in two groups. A group of children who have just been institutionalized due to domestic abuse (VG) (Age: 8 years 2 months with a standard deviation of 1, 5 years) without previous treatment; a group of comparison (CG) made up by children who have not been victim of domestic violence (Age: 8 years 6 months with a standard deviation of 2 years and a month), with similar characteristics of gender, age and schooling. The Child Neuropsychological Assessment by Matute, Rosselli, Ardila and Ostrosky (2007) was applied. This test includes metalinguistic, oral and written comprehension and expression skills. The VG group showed low scores in all components of the analyzed language with exception to the discourse, syllable and non-word dictation compared to the CG children. The alterations of the language observed in these children semantic suggest a lack of consolidation of phonological coding and a low use of code. From our findings an early language evaluation in these children can be of especial interest to apply timely intervention programs with the aim of diminishing the impact caused by domestic violence on school failure which is a frequent trait in these children.

Do We Have the Knowledge to Address Homelessness?

AbstractVarious forms of housing exclusion are a reality for millions of people across the globe. For people who are homeless in advanced industrialized economies, housing exclusion often co-exists with social service engagement. This essay reviews three books about how homelessness is conceptualized and caused, and how we, as social service providers and social scientists, respond to homelessness: Housing First: Ending Homelessness, Transforming Systems, and Changing Lives, by Deborah Padgett, Benjamin Henwood, and Sam Tsemberis; Women Rough Sleepers in Europe: Homelessness and Victims of Domestic Abuse, by Kate Moss and Paramjit Singh; and The Value of Homelessness: Managing Surplus Life in the United States, by Craig Willse. It concludes that Housing First achieves justice for deeply marginalized individuals but that the effectiveness of Housing First represents a disturbing reminder of our failed welfare states and public institutions.

Beyond Schoolmarms and Madams: Montana Women’s Stories ed. by Martha Kohl

Reviewed by: Beyond Schoolmarms and Madams: Montana Women’s Stories ed. by Martha Kohl Victoria Lamont Beyond Schoolmarms and Madams: Montana Women’s Stories. Edited by Martha Kohl. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 2016. xi + 319 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $19.95 paper. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the passage of Montana women’s suffrage, the Montana State Historical society published the blog Women’s History Matters over the course of 2014, a series of short essays that collectively convey the diversity of Montana women’s history in all its surprising and delightful messiness. Beyond Schoolmarms and Madams: Montana Women’s Stories is an anthology of these essays. Readers looking for broad narratives of Montana women’s history should look elsewhere; this collection deliberately resists master narratives through its emphasis on specificity and diversity, signaled in the first two essays, which feature, respectively, Indigenous women warriors and ethnic women’s groups. Indigenous Montana women figure prominently in the collection as activists, witnesses to forced removal from tribal land, practitioners of Indigenous art forms, and professionals in white-dominated occupations such as nursing and journalism. Despite the racism they faced as residents of small-town Montana, black women like healthcare worker Rose Gordon and pioneer Mary Fields not only survived but left lasting marks on their communities. Black women in Montana also worked collectively to advocate black civil rights and support their local black communities. Women on the extreme margins of Montana society, like Chinese immigrant Mrs. Wo Hop, are harder to recover. We know Mrs. Who Hop only from the legal papers she had to carry with her at all times to prove she was in the country legally. Such documents are powerful reminders of just how much of women’s experience is lost to history because their lives were not deemed worthy of remark save by the authorities who sought to control their movements. Records of the Montana Territorial Prison speak cryptically of prostitutes, domestic abuse victims, women with disabilities, and others whose existence would have gone unnoticed by historians were it not for their encounters with the prison system. There are, of course, essays that address more familiar sites of western women’s history: the involvement of predominantly white middle-class women in pursuits such as health care, education, social work, temperance, and midwifery and their presence in traditionally [End Page 243] masculine spaces like rodeos, ranches, and popular novels. Serving as counterpoints to these traditional historical subjects are eclectic figures like new age mystic Elizabeth Clare Prophet, bootlegger Josephine Doody, and poultry specialist Harriette Cushman. Not all the women treated in the volume are the celebrated kind. Essays on women’s involvement in the KKK and eugenics movement are sobering correctives to the celebrity model of women’s history. The essays are all well documented and accessibly written, making this both an interesting read for the nonspecialist and a reliable teaching and reference resource for scholars. Some readers may find the organization frustrating—it jumps around thematically and chronologically in ways that may obscure larger historical patterns. As an attempt to unsettle the “Schoolmarm and Madam” stereotype of western women’s history, though, the collection works admirably. Victoria Lamont Department of English University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) Copyright © 2017 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Self-esteem of Kurdish women faced domestic violence in Erbil city

Background and objective: In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in studying domestic abuse against women and its impact on self-esteem and coping style. The aim of this study was to make inquiries about types of domestic abuses among a sample of Kurdish women in addition to looking into the level of self-esteem of those who faced domestic violence. Methods: 120 women who were victims of domestic abuse living in Erbil rural and urban surroundings were recruited from July 15th to October 23rd, 2014. Two scale questionnaires were implemented in this study; domestic abuse questionnaire was taken from Iman and Ahmadi and self-esteem questionnaire by Rosenberg. The data were analyzed through the use of the statistical package for the social sciences (version 11). The analysis systems used for the data management procedures were Pearson correlation coefficients, descriptive statistics, frequencies, and One-sample t-test. Results: Physical abuse is the most frequently occurring domestic abuse type among Kurdish women, while the psychological abuse was reported to a lesser extent (mean 24.6167 and 13.2417 respectively). The levels of the study participant's self-esteems were found to be relatively high (mean score 17.64), while there was a positive correlation between self-esteem and psychological abuse detected (person correlation = 0.091) which was not statistically significant at the level of (P = 0.326). Conclusion: Study participants encountered physical domestic abuse more than other types of abuse; still the participant's mean score for their self-esteem is relatively higher than the hypothetical one

Keep the conversation going.

The launch of RCNi Nurse Awards 2017 is a lovely reminder of this fantastic event in 2015, when I became nurse of the year for supporting victims of domestic abuse. The story continues, as I sit waiting to do an interview with ITV about domestic abuse, keeping the conversation going.

Mining Electronic Health Records Data: Domestic Violence and Adverse Health Effects.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) often culminates in acute physical injury, sexual assault, and mental health issues. It is crucial to understand the healthcare habits of victims to develop interventions that can drastically improve a victim's quality of life and prevent future abuse. The objective of this study is to mine de-identified and aggregated Electronic Health Record data to identify women's health issues that are potentially associated with IPV. In this study we compared health issues of female domestic abuse victims to female non-domestic abuse victims. The Domestic abuse population contained 5870 patients, while the Non-Domestic Abuse population contained 14,315,140 patients. Explorys provides National Big Data from the entire USA. Statistical analysis identified 2429 terms as significantly more prevalent among victims of domestic abuse, compared to the general population. These terms were classified into broad categories, including acute injury, chronic conditions, substance abuse, mental health, disorders, gynecological and pregnancy related problems.

Former nurse of the year wins praise for Safer Steps.

Former RCN nurse of the year Amanda Burston will be recognised for her work supporting victims of domestic abuse at an event celebrating the achievements of women.

Male victims of domestic abuse: implications for health visiting practice

Domestic abuse is a significant public health issue globally. Although it is recognised that both sexes may be victims of domestic abuse, the phenomenon is commonly understood from the perspective of male to female violence, supported by a substantial body of research and policy focusing on female victims of domestic abuse. However, evidence shows that significant numbers of men are victims of female-perpetrated violence, but as the issue is under-explored, the extent and effects of abuse are poorly understood. For health visitors working within communities in the United Kingdom, knowledge of all aspects of domestic abuse is vital in the delivery of evidence-based practice. A systematically conducted critical literature review aimed at establishing the current body of knowledge on male victims of domestic abuse was undertaken, and implications for health visiting practice considered. Nineteen primary research studies were included in the review. A thematic analysis identified four themes: ‘violent relationship’, ‘harms and behaviours’, ‘risk’ and ‘seeking help’. Results show that men reported being victims of female-perpetrated physical, emotional, psychological and sexual abuse, with some experiencing severe aggression, control and fear. Health visitors have an important role to play in influencing policy and in practice addressing the health and social care needs of male victims of domestic abuse and their families.

Review: Male victims of domestic abuse: implications for health visiting practice

Review: Male victims of domestic abuse: implications for health visiting practice

Former RCN Nurse of the Year to be honoured for her victim abuse training.

Award-winning nurse Amanda Burston, pictured, will be fêted for her work supporting victims of domestic abuse at the Women of the Year lunch in October, an event celebrating women's achievements. 'I am delighted to to be invited on behalf of every victim of abuse,' she said. 'I accept every opportunity to keep this vital conversation going.'

Mining Police-Recorded Offence and Incident Data to Inform a Definition of Repeat Domestic Abuse Victimization for Statistical Reporting

Following inspections in 2013 of all police forces, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary found that one-third of forces could not provide data on repeat victims of domestic abuse (DA) and concluded that in general there were ambiguities around the term ‘repeat victim’ and that there was a need for consistent and comparable statistics on DA. Using an analysis of police-recorded DA data from two forces, an argument is made for including both offences and non-crime incidents when identifying repeat victims of DA. Furthermore, for statistical purposes the counting period for repeat victimizations should be taken as a rolling 12 months from first recorded victimization. Examples are given of summary statistics that can be derived from these data down to Community Safety Partnership level. To reinforce the need to include both offences and incidents in analyses, repeat victim chronologies from policerecorded data are also used to briefly examine cases of escalation to homicide as an example of how they can offer new insights and greater scope for evaluating risk and effectiveness of interventions.

Barriers to disclosure of domestic violence and abuse in health visiting

Against a background of increased public concern about domestic abuse, and data showing a high prevalence of domestic violence against both men and women, this literature review examines the willingness of clients to disclose that they are victims of domestic abuse to health visitors and other health professionals. The review seeks to establish what factors are significant in encouraging clients to disclose domestic abuse or deterring them from doing so. It also aims to explore the health visitor's professional role in this area. While legislation such as the Human Rights Act (1998) and the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) place obligations on health visitors to respond proactively to signs of domestic violence, they may face practical difficulties in doing so. Findings indicate that clients may seek to repress signs of abuse and will only disclose when asked directly, emphasising the need for active encouragement and reassurance to allow clients to feel safe in talking about more general experiences. They also highlight factors such as lack of confidence, knowledge or training in preventing questions about domestic violence being asked. The review identifies a need for further research to gauge how domestic abuse is tackled in specific health visiting situations.

Police Response to Domestic Violence: A Case Study of TecSOS Mobile Phone Use in the London Metropolitan Police Service

Police forces are constantly seeking to improve their service to victims of domestic abuse and to facilitate reporting of these offenses. Using a variety of police data, this case study describes the London Metropolitan Police Service's use of TecSOS mobile phone technology in responding to domestic abuse. The case study indicates that the rapid response made possible by TecSOS activations reduces the risk of repeat victimization. It also results in victim protection and empowerment, it increases the risk of apprehension for the offender and it strengthens evidence for prosecution by apprehending perpetrators in action, whether or not in the victim's home. The case study also suggests that TecSOS has potential for wider cost-saving public benefits. Most importantly, it was found that only a small minority of victims ever activated their phones suggesting that these serve as a powerful deterrent to would-be perpetrators. Language: en

Criminalising Controlling and Coercive Behaviour

A new offence of controlling or coercive behaviour in intimate or family relationships has recently come into force in England. The parliament of Scotland is contemplating introducing a related offence. The offence is distinctive because it criminalises conduct – controlling and coercive behaviour – which has specified negative behavioural and psychological consequences without necessarily requiring that a victim sustain physical injury or fear death or serious harm. This significant extension of the criminal law supplements anti-stalking legislation and has been justified on the basis that it addresses a core feature of abusive relationships, is essential to protect the human rights of victims of domestic abuse, and has community support. In the context of the ongoing debate about how best to tackle the problem of domestic abuse in Australia, this development provides an innovative – albeit still untested – model and should be closely examined.