What Happens to Children When Their Mothers Are Battered? Results from a Four City Anonymous Telephone Survey

This article presents results of a study examining what happens to children when domestic violence is committed against their mothers. While many investigations have pointed to child exposure to violence in homes where women are battered, few have examined direct reports about what happens to children when adult domestic violence occurs. This study collected direct reports from mothers on real-life events and was designed to go beyond earlier research by eliciting information on a larger array of family and contextual factors that may account for variation in mother’s and their children’s direct and indirect exposure to violence within the same home. Anonymous telephone interviews with 111 battered mothers in four metropolitan areas across the United States elicited detailed information from women on the violence against them and their children. Findings confirm the seriousness of co-occurring mother and child exposure to violence. The research also revealed that women and children were often injured while trying to protect each other from the abuser. The article concludes by recommending further enhancing collaboration between child protection and battered women’s services; augmenting prevention and early intervention services to families experiencing adult domestic violence; and focusing on protecting and increasing the safety of both children and their battered mothers.

Cognitive and interpersonal factors in woman abuse

As part of a larger ecological analysis of woman battering in Israel, this study examined the combined ability of selected cognitive and interpersonal measures to differentiate among couples in which women were battered and those in which they were not. The ability of these variables to predict men's physical violence and verbal abuse and women's verbal abuse was also executed. Results indicate that a combination of low marital adjustment, high levels of conflict over children, and more perceived self-control over one's life characterized violent men; low marital adjustment and high conflict over child rearing characterized battered women. Both men's and women's verbal abuse was moderately predicted by lower marital adjustment while men's physical violence was predicted by increased levels of conflicts with his partner over child rearing. These findings suggest the importance of marital relationship factors in domestic violence and highlight the need for further study of the interaction between perceived control and marital relationship problems in relationships where men physically abuse women.     

What doctors and policymakers should know: Battered women's views about mandatory medical reporting laws

Medical professionals in forty-five states and the District of Colombia are under a legal obligation to report a variety of injuries to the police, including those believed to be the result of domestic violence. Responses to these laws by doctors and battered women have been mixed. Using logistic regression analysis, this study explored battered women's views about mandatory medical reporting laws controlling for and examining a variety of demographic, situational, and legal factors. Three of the four dependent attitudinal measures (perceptions of general support for mandatory reporting as well as perceived benefits of the law for themselves and others) demonstrated little variation across all factors. The fourth measure - willingness to seek medical care in communities with a mandatory law - however, produced a number of significant relationships among the demographic, situational and legal factors. The results and policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Domestic Violence Victims Support Mandatory Reporting: For Others

Five states now have mandatory reporting laws when a victim of domestic violence is identified in a clinical setting, and many other states are considering such legislation. Advocates for battered women have frequently warned that abused women may not wish mandatory reporting laws. Published data derived from the opinions, wishes, and beliefs of women victims of domestic violence have been noticeably lacking. This study presents a preliminary study of 45 abused women. Results indicate that women victims overwhelmingly support mandatory reporting laws. In an apparent paradox, however, they were much less certain that mandatory reporting would have been helpful to them in their specific case.     

When Does a Battered Woman Seek Help From the Police? The Role of Battered Women’s Functionality

This study explores how women’s functional limitations resulting from domestic violence lead to police involvement. Examining functionality is a broader approach to exploring domestic violence outcomes than looking at injuries or impairments, and in this study we look at the social participation aspects of social functioning. One hundred eleven battered women in four metropolitan cities in the U.S. participated in anonymous telephone surveys. Approximately 80% of the battered women in the sample were involved with the police due to their experiences of domestic violence. Women’s functionality was significantly associated with battered women’s police involvement after controlling for socio-demographic and violence-related covariates. The current study identifies one aspect of women’s functioning–social participation–as a critical predictor of their seeking of help from the police, and suggests implications for practice, including the need for police and domestic violence agencies to have awareness of the concept of functional limitations within a broader context of understanding disability.     

Effects of Family Violence on Child Behavior and Health During Early Childhood

Looking at families where children have been abused/neglected in early childhood, this study examined measures of child behavior and health to see if they tended to be worse when domestic violence is or has been present in a family. Further, caregiver and family characteristics as well as other case factors were examined, as possible moderators or mediators of the effects of domestic violence. Results indicate that domestic violence, of the type and severity occurring in our sample, does not have a direct effect on child outcomes by Age 6, when other associated variables are taken into account, but has considerable indirect effects. There is a pronounced impact of domestic violence on family functioning, the caregiver's general health and well being, and the quality of the caregiver's interaction with the child, which in turn are significantly associated with decrements of child functioning related to behavior problems and health. Some implications of this study for research in the area of domestic violence and child maltreatment are discussed.     

Gender effects in attitudes about family violence

We present results of perceptions of family violence from 176 telephone interviews conducted in a Standard Metropolitan Area in Northwest Arkansas. Four research questions are examined: (1) How do men and women differ in their perceptions about the seriousness and causes of family violence? (2) Do men and women differ in their acceptance of specific acts of interpersonal violence and does the gender of the aggressor and victim affect gender perceptions? (3) Do men and women differ in their views about the effectiveness of different intervention agencies? (4) Do men and women differ in their willingness to report acts of child abuse and does the gender of the parent and child affect the likelihood of reporting? Results indicate that females consider the problem as more serious and view public responses to family violence as more effective. Both male and females are more tolerant of acts of aggression and violence if directed by a woman toward a man. Females are more likely to report child abuse but there are significant interactions between the respondent's gender and the gender of the parent and child.     

Who is better for handling domestic violence? A comparison between Taiwanese female and male Officers

This study examined Taiwanese female and male police officers’ perceptions of handling domestic violence. Specifically, it assessed officers’ attitudes toward whether female officers, male officers, or a combination of female and male officers are more suited for handling cases of battered women, offenders, and domestic violence overall. Survey data were collected from 96 female and 156 male officers from two police departments in Taiwan. Frequency distributions showed that a combination of male and female officers were most preferred by officers for handling abused women, offenders, and domestic violence overall. Regression analysis found that female officers were significantly more likely than male officers to favor a combination of male and female officers over female officers alone for handling battered women. Female officers were found to be more likely than male officers to favor male over female officers and a combination of male and female officers for handling offenders. Police supervisors’ attitudes toward domestic violence also influenced officers’ attitudes toward who is more suited for handling offenders. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.     

Women and Men in Jail: Attitudes Towards and Experiences of Domestic Violence

This study explores the pre-arrest domestic violence victimization and attitudes towards domestic violence reported by women and men confined in a Midwestern metropolitan jail. Results indicated that women in the jail sample had more fear for the safety of battered women than men in the jail sample. Women in jail were more likely than men in jail to view the legal system as a deterrent to domestic violence. Logistic regression models were constructed to explore associations between jail detainees’ pre-arrest experiences of domestic violence and their gender, age, education, race, parental status and other violent victimizations. The variables associated with pre-arrest domestic violence victimization were being a woman, a parent, a victim rape and a victim of threats with a deadly weapon.     

Between normality and deviance: the breakdown of batterers' identity following police intervention

With the transformation of intimate violence from private trouble to social problem, police intervention in domestic violence cases became more prevalent. Research has focused mainly on battered women's perception of police intervention, their evaluations, and their level of satisfaction with the intervention. However, there is little research examining the perpetrators' subjective perceptions of such interventions. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze battering men's perceptions of police intervention. The study is based on semistructured, in-depth interviews with 20 batterers who had repeated encounters with police. Findings show a continuum of self-management, ranging from attempts to preserve a normative identity in the first encounter to struggling against criminalization in the second encounter and adopting a victim identity in the third encounter. The findings are discussed in the context of gender identity and power relations.     

Children's experiences of domestic violence: developing an integrated response from police and child protection services

Police notifications of incidents of domestic violence to child protection services constitute an acknowledgement of the harm that domestic violence inflicts on children. However, these notifications represent a substantial demand on child welfare services and the outcomes for children and victims of domestic violence have been questioned. This paper presents findings from the first UK study to examine these notifications in depth and examines the interface between the police and child protection services in responding to domestic violence incidents. The research reports on police interventions in 251 incidents of domestic violence involving children; the communication of information to child protection services and the subsequent filtering and service response. Social workers found that notifications conveyed little information on children's experiences of domestic violence. Forty per cent of families notified had had no previous contact with child protection services in that area, but those cases most likely to receive social work assessment or intervention were those where the case was already open. Notifications triggered a new social work intervention in only 5% of cases. The study also identified a range of innovative approaches for improving the co-ordination of police and child protective services in relation to children's exposure to domestic violence. Arrangements that maximized opportunities for police and social workers to share agency information appeared to offer the best option for achieving informed decisions about the appropriate level of service response to children and families experiencing domestic violence.     

An Ecological Study of Nonresidential Services for Battered Women Within a Comprehensive Community Protocol for Domestic Violence

This paper is an ecological study of services provided to 392 battered women under a comprehensive domestic violence protocol. It focuses on microsystemic interactions between battered women and battered women's services and legal systems. We examine the relationships between women's receipt of services from a battered women's agency, receipt of protective orders, and completion of prosecution of batterers. We also explore the associations between women's receipt of services and protective orders and their partners' subsequent arrests and police contacts. We use open-ended interviews with battered women and with staff of the battered women's agency to expand and illustrate the quantitative data. The analysis shows that when a woman received battered women's services or had a protective order, a completed court case was more likely and numbers of arrests rose. We found that these associations were strongest when women received both battered women's services and at least one protective order.     

Distress resulting from perceivers' own intimate partner violence experiences predicts culpability attributions toward a battered woman on trial for killing her abuser: a path model

Intimate partner violence (IPV) constitutes the majority of assaults against women in the United States, and greater than one third of female homicide victims are murdered by an intimate partner. In a small percentage of cases, battered women kill their abusers, and evidence of battering and its effects may be used to support a plea of self-defense in these cases. Prior research has shown that culpability attributions toward battered women who have killed their abusers are influenced by perceiver variables, including gender. The present study expands on this research by examining the influence of psychological distress resulting from perceivers' own IPV experiences--and the mechanisms of this influence--on their culpability attributions toward a battered woman defendant. Female undergraduates in the present sample (N = 154) read a vignette, adapted from an actual criminal case about a battered woman who had killed her abuser. Data supported a hypothesized path model, wherein participants reporting greater psychological distress resulting from IPV perpetrated against them perceived themselves more similar to the defendant, in turn empathized with her to a greater extent, and, in turn, attributed less legal culpability to her. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Parent–Child Interaction Therapy with Domestic Violence Populations

Domestic violence continues to be a significant social problem impacting our society. Battered women and their children experience a myriad of negative consequences as a result of domestic violence. Of the possible negative sequelae that mothers and children experience, the disrupted parent–child relationship has received relatively little attention in the literature. Though psychosocial interventions are available to treat women who experience violence and children who witness violence, few interventions focus on the parent–child relationship. This article describes parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT), a relationship-based intervention. Although not initially developed to treat domestic violence, PCIT has unique characteristics that make it a promising intervention with this population. A rationale for the use of PCIT with battered women and their children is presented.     

Parenting Stress,Parenting Behavior,and Children’s Adjustment in Families Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence

Children exposed to intimate partner violence are known to experience a number of negative outcomes, including behavioral and emotional problems; however, possible mechanisms accounting for this relationship are unclear. There is considerable evidence that parenting stress has a direct effect on child adjustment problems and on parenting behaviors; parenting behaviors, in turn, have been repeatedly shown to be related to child outcomes. The hypothesis that parenting mediates the relationship between parenting stress and child behavioral and emotional problems according to Abidin’s (Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 21:407–412, 1992) model was tested in a sample of 190 battered women and their 4-to12-year-old children. No support for mediation was found for either mother- or child-reported outcomes. Parenting stress had a strong direct effect on child behavioral and emotional problems. These findings have implications for the viability of Abidin’s model, as well as for interventions with battered women that address parenting stress. The authors would like to thank the women, children, and staff at the shelters for battered women who participated in this study.     

Mock Juror Gender Biases and Perceptions of Self-Defense Claims in Intimate Partner Homicide

Findings are reported from an experiment that examined mock jurors’ gender biases regarding intimate homicide case adjudications. Mock jurors were more likely to convict a man than a woman who had killed an abusive partner, which was partially mediated by sympathy toward both the victim and defendant. Analyses revealed an abuser height and abuser gender interaction such that conviction rates for women defendants were higher when her abuser was taller compared to when he was shorter than she; abuser height did not influence conviction rates for men. Findings also suggested that when given information about a child being present, mock jurors perceived the killing of the abusive partner as an act to protect that child. The results are discussed in relation to how extra-legal factors impact juror perceptions of domestic violence cases in the courtroom.     

Factors influencing help-seeking behavior among battered Korean women in intimate relationships

In total, 123 battered Korean women who used domestic violence agencies were asked where they had turned for assistance in response to intimate partner violence. This study examined the factors related to use of formal and informal resources by these women. Formal resources included police, medical, legal, and shelter; informal were family or neighbors. Findings revealed that (a) the women studied used a variety of resources and that (b) income, violence-related injuries, and partner child abuse were related to whether they contacted police. Injury and partner child abuse were related to contacting a medical doctor/medical facility. Income, relationship status, and partner child abuse were related to approaching family or neighbors. The key finding was that partner child abuse increased the likelihood of battered Korean women seeking help from formal service resources and informal networks. This suggests the need for integrative services that link women's and children's protective services in order to meet the needs of both victims and children.     

Jurors' knowledge of battered women

An increasing number of psychologists with expertise in the area of battered women are participating in the legal system as expert witnesses and occasionally testify on behalf of a battered woman who has injured or killed her partner. Testimony about the battered woman syndrome has been offered to help the jury understand why the defendant reasonably perceived that she was in danger of harm. One of the requirements of expert testimony is that it be beyond the common understanding of the jury. Many commentators assume that jurors are uninformed or misinformed about battered women and, thus, that expert testimony is necessary to educate them. This study evaluated what jurors know about violent relationships. Approximately 300 jurors read scenarios about spousal violence and answered a questionnaire dealing with circumstances surrounding such abuse. Results suggest that on certain dimensions of spousal violence, jurors are aware of empirical research findings. On other dimensions, jurors are less well-informed and could potentially benefit from the testimony of an expert.