Violent girls in adolescent forensic care are more often psychotic and traumatized than boys in the same level of care

Background: Most research on violent perpetrators is based on male samples. Aims: To compare girls and boys admitted to an adolescent forensic unit due to physically violent and/or sexually coercive behavior. Methods: On an adolescent forensic ward, demographics, family, treatment, crime and victimization histories, diagnose, psychiatric symptoms and violent behaviors during care of all adolescents are collected in a cumulative database. These were compared between girls and boys admitted due to violent behaviors. Results: Girls were more often diagnosed with schizophrenia group psychoses. The symptom profiles and violence risk ratings did not differ by sex. The girls were less antisocial in general. They were more suicidal and displayed more promiscuous behaviors, and they had more commonly been victims of sexual abuse. During inpatient care they displayed much more often violent and uncontrollable behaviors than the boys. Conclusion: Treatment approaches that respond to the special needs of aggressive girls are required.     

Hearing parties' voices in Coordinated Family Dispute Resolution (CFDR): An Australian pilot of a family mediation model designed for matters involving a history of domestic violence

This paper discusses the Coordinated Family Dispute Resolution (family mediation) process piloted in Australia in 2010–2012. This process was evaluated by the Australian Institute of Family Studies as being ‘at the cutting edge of family law practice’ because it involves the conscious application of mediation where there has been a history of family violence, in a clinically collaborative multidisciplinary and multi-agency setting. The Australian government's failure to invest resources in the ongoing funding of this model jeopardises the safety and efficacy of family dispute resolution practice in family violence contexts, and compromises the hearing of the voices of family violence victims and their children.     

COMT基因与精神分裂症患者暴力攻击行为关联性的研究进展

精神分裂症患者的暴力攻击行为发生率高于一般人群,暴力攻击行为在某些方面具有显著的遗传倾向性,与精神分裂症患者暴力攻击行为研究最多的是儿茶酚氧位甲基转移酶（catechol-O-methyltrans-ferase , COMT ）基因。本文从COMT Val158Met 和COMT Ala72Ser 的SNP 多态性、COMT 基因单倍型、COMT基因启动子区DNA甲基化等方面对COMT基因变异与精神分裂症患者暴力攻击行为的相关性研究进行综述,并提出精神分裂症患者暴力攻击行为的遗传学研究方向。     

U.S. child custody outcomes in cases involving parental alienation and abuse allegations: what do the data show?

ABSTRACT

Family court and abuse professionals have long been polarized over the use of parental alienation claims to discredit a mother alleging that the father has been abusive or is unsafe for the children. This paper reports the findings from an empirical study of ten years of U.S. cases involving abuse and alienation claims. The findings confirm that mothers’ claims of abuse, especially child physical or sexual abuse, increase their risk of losing custody, and that fathers’ cross-claims of alienation virtually double that risk. Alienation’s impact is gender-specific; fathers alleging mothers are abusive are not similarly undermined when mothers cross-claim alienation. In non-abuse cases, however, the data suggest that alienation has a more gender-neutral impact. These nuanced findings may help abuse and alienation professionals find some common ground.     

Beyond poverty fixation: interrogating the experiences of internally displaced persons in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper draws on fieldwork at three camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Northeast Nigeria. It interrogates the pre-displacement experiences of participants, their transition to and experiences of internal displacement, vignettes of life at IDP camps, their relationship with host communities, the non-universality of experiences of sexual and gender-based violence among female IDPs (despite the particularities of experiences of women and young girls) and the resilience and agency of IDPs. The paper argues that scholarly engagement with IDPs and their social conditions should go beyond fixation on or fetishisation of poverty. Overall, the paper contributes to the empirical literature on conditions of internal displacement in sub-Saharan Africa.     

Experiencing the war “of” terror: a call to the critical terrorism studies community

ABSTRACT

The Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) community has produced an important volume of work assessing and critiquing epistemological understandings of the War on (of) Terror. Largely missing from this body of work, however, is the experience of those who are directly impacted by the policies of this global phenomenon. By rethinking the War on Terror as an experience of war, I posit a wider understanding, by reassessing its temporal and spatial boundaries, but more significantly, the ways in which it is experienced. By providing a wider understanding of war and expanding our knowledge of its boundaries, I am able to show that those impacted by the policies of the War on Terror can claim to have been subject to an experience of war, even when that experience takes place outside of the war zone. This reflection, however, serves a larger purpose, which is to act as a call to the CTS community to centre the lived experiences of those impacted by the War on Terror in their work and decision-making when engaging with policy and policymakers. This represents a call for an ethical re-centring of CTS scholars to the violence of the War “of” Terror, by reminding us of the many ways in which harm can occur.     

Victim-warriors and iconic heroines: photographs of female combatants in Aceh,Indonesia

Analyzing photos and narratives of the “widows’ battalion” in Aceh, Indonesia that appeared in international and local print media between 2000 and 2002, this article traces how images of female combatants initially provided evidence of a uniformed, armed ethno-nationalist movement motivated by past state violence and linked to historical legends of women involved in armed resistance to colonialism. Subsequently, the heroines were recast as immoral young women pursuing inappropriate sexual relationships with the occupying military. The problems of intelligence gathering, double agents, and the indeterminate zone of overlap in which male soldiers collaborated in the past were rewritten as a problem of sexual or intimate relations that violated religious and cultural norms. In Aceh, the affective power and complexity of women’s positioning as both victim and combatant is fueled by the invocation of the iconic heroines of the anticolonial resistance and ideas about international human rights. Images and narration of the widows’ battalion appear to champion female combatants past and present, but in fact, contribute to the consolidation of the power of male commanders and combatants in the resistance movement. Analyses of human rights photography must consider the affective power of images beyond engaging the empathy of distant spectators to consider their role in conflict dynamics.     

Frequency of Parental Violence Against Children in Chinese Families: Impact of Age and Gender

The present study examines the impact of child and parent gender on parental violence across age span of children and their parents in Hong Kong Chinese families. A randomly selected community sample of 1,019 households was surveyed. Results indicate that, in general, boys experience more frequent parental violence than girls and mothers engage in more violent behaviors against their children than fathers. Parental violence shows a curvilinear pattern with age of children, peaking at age 8 for boys and age 3 for girls. There is a pattern of declining frequency of parental violence as parental age increases across child gender. Fathers exhibit an inverted U pattern of violent behavior against their children, with a peak around age 31–40, while mothers have a steadily declining trend until age 46. Separate parental violence indices are constructed for boys and girls.     

There’s an app for that: Modernizing domestic violence support through the creation of new technologies,tools, and services

With domestic violence (DV) at an all-time high, police departments are drastically underutilizing technology to combat DV. Currently, New York police departments complete a “Domestic Incident Report” at the scene of domestic incidents but fail to adequately facilitate support services. New York State should mandate a services component into police DV protocols, specifically by commissioning: (1) an application linked to DV organizations presented at the scene of domestic incidents; and (2) a gateway application to refer victims to the correct services. Such tools would allow for the rendering of more efficient support to DV victims in times of immediate crisis.     

Violence and Statebuilding in a Borders Conflict Context: A Study of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Violence, while conceived of and defined as objective, is in reality a subjective phenomenon that takes on myriad forms (political, physical, and psychological). From a constructivist perspective, the identification of violence is contingent on conflicts to signify actions as legitimate; in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the experience of different forms of violence has meant that violence has come to acquire multiple meanings. This violence is legitimate from both Israeli and Palestinian points of view, and it creates and fulfils a cycle that perpetuates intractable conflict. This article aims to demonstrate how strongly this culture of violence has affected the state-formation process in this area, and it calls attention particularly to ongoing statebuilding processes in Palestine. The paper will also explore the intricacies related to violence and border definition in terms of ‘mapping practices’ and territoriality, and examine how, in the wake of the Oslo agreement, the Palestinian statebuilding process is created under the ruling power of the Israeli military force, restraining Palestinian capacity to create state bodies capable of establishing and retaining the monopoly of violence.