Wife assault theory,research, and treatment: A literature review

Treatments for wife assaulters and their victims have been based on a variety of psychological and sociological theories. Tests of theory based on investigation of assailant and victim characteristics as well as evaluation of treatment effects based on empirical outcome studies have yielded diverse results. In reviewing the literature it appears that development of assailant typologies based on extent of psychopathology, severity of violence, and context of violence has potential utility in guiding future treatment decisions for assaulters. Further development of similar typologies for classifying responses of assaulted women could yield similar results. Population screening and matching programs to individual characteristics could be expected to improve clinical outcomes.     

Public's and police officers' interpretation and handling of domestic violence cases: divergent realities

The public's and police officers'interpretation and handling of realistic hypothetical domestic violence cases and their stereotypic views about domestic violence are discussed. A sample of 131 experienced officers, 127 novice officers, and 157 adult laypersons were randomly assigned to read a domestic violence case. Experienced officers were more likely to arrest only the husband than were laypersons or rookie officers even when respondents inferred that the husband was primarily responsible or had used violence before. Experienced officers considered their stereotypic beliefs about battered women's propensity to use self-defense in arriving at their arrest decision whereas laypersons and rookie officers did not. These findings indicate that the public and police officers have not adopted the feminists' message that arrest is the best response to handle all domestic violence cases. Policy implications are discussed.     

Fatal dog maulings associated with infant swings

We present three cases of fatal dog maulings of infants placed in mobile infant swings, a phenomenon not previously described in the literature. In each case, the victim was left in a mobile swing, unsupervised by an adult, and the attacking dog was a family pet. Case 1 involved an 18-day-old male infant attacked by a pit bull; Case 2 involved a 3-month-old male infant attacked by a Chow Chow and/or a Dachshund, and Case 3 involved an 18-day-old female infant attacked by a Labrador-pit bull mix. These cases not only underscore the importance of not leaving young children unattended in the presence of pet dogs, but also raise the possibility that mobile swings may trigger a predatory response in dogs and thus may represent an additional risk factor for dog attack.     

Appropriately Upset? Emotion Norms and Perceptions of Crime Victims

Victims who express less emotion in response to a crime are perceived as less deserving, less sympathetic, and they have less punishment assigned to the offender who committed the crime. This study considers the extent to which emotion norms underlie perceptions of victims who testify. Two studies investigate the circumstances in which emotional reactions to a crime are seen as "unusual" and whether a more general emotion norm underlies responses to victim testimony. We test a "victim-role" norm against a "proportionality" norm by crossing the severity of victim's emotional response (severe or mild) with the seriousness of a crime (serious or less serious). Results across two studies lend greater support to the notion that people expect victims to match the intensity of their emotional response to the seriousness of the event (i.e., a proportionality rule), although we also find instances in which expectations of the victim are not strong. Gender of the victim exhibited small and contingent effects. We discuss the relevance of emotion norms to legal settings.     

Intimate Partner Violence Victims’ Accuracy in Assessing their Risk of Re-abuse

Using four categories of accuracy (true positive, false positive, true negative, false negative), this study explored (1) how accurately intimate partner violence (IPV) victims are able to assess their risk of re-abuse; and (2) potential predictors of accuracy. Women seeking help for IPV (N = 246) rated the likelihood that they would experience physical re-abuse in the coming year and then reported 18 months later whether those risks had been realized. Victim assessments were more likely to be right than wrong, and were subject to neither a pessimistic nor optimistic bias. In the multivariate analysis, significant/marginally significant predictors of the accuracy categories were the history of violence from this and former partners, level of substance use, PTSD symptoms, and the recency of the violence. Among the more robust findings were the connection between level of stalking and true positives, and between substance use and false negatives. This study suggests that victim assessments have significant potential to inform practice, and deserve further exploration.