Domestic violence is a widespread concern in our society worldwide. Therapists and other mental health workers often come across clients who have experienced or are experiencing domestic violence. There is significant research, predominantly quantitative, on the phenomenon of vicarious traumatisation/secondary trauma on social workers, domestic violence advocates and sexual abuse therapists. In contrast, research into the impact of domestic violence work on domestic violence therapists is sparse and fails to address how working with this client group might affect therapists’ intimate relationships. This study addresses this gap by exploring the lived experience of therapists who are or have been working with survivors of domestic abuse. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and the data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Participants were eight female domestic violence therapists, aged between 31 and 55 years of age, working in the field of domestic violence for over 5 years. Three superordinate themes emerged from the interview data: The journey of listening to the clients’ story; When work hits home; and The dawn of a new self. This study’s findings have been discussed in relation to existing literature in order to understand the mechanisms and processes involved in the experiences reported by participants. Therefore, suggestions can be made for training and clinical supervision for therapists who are working or who contemplate working with this client group. The therapist as “wounded healer” and the potential for vicarious traumatisation in therapists who work with survivors of domestic abuse are also explored. Limitations of the study and recommendations for future research are discussed.

This thesis investigated the proposition by Johnson (1995; 1999) that there are distinct patterns of physical aggression within relationships, characterised as common couple violence and intimate terrorism. To investigate Johnson's theory, a stratified sample containing students (n=1 13), women from a domestic violence refuge (n=43), and male prisoners (n=108). Participants completed measures of physical aggression, escalation of physical aggression, controlling behaviour, fear of injuries, and actual injuries. Results of chapters 3 and 5 provided broad support for the view that there are distinct patterns of aggressive relationships corresponding to those identified by Johnson (1995; 1999). Chapter 4 found however, that the use of physical aggression was predicted by instrumental beliefs for both intimate terrorism and common couple violence, and analysis at the individual level (chapter 6) did not support the distinction between controlling and non-controlling partner aggression, but instead indicated that the use of physical aggression was associated with controlling behaviours in all relationship categories. To investigate Johnson's (1999) classification procedure in a non-stratified sample, a second sample was collected which consisted of 399 men and 951 women. In chapters 8 and 9 analysis was conducted separately for victim and perpetrator reports. Results were broadly supportive of Johnson's categories (though not the earlier findings regarding sex composition of the categories), but not the controlling noncontrolling dichotomy. Chapter 11 sought to investigate the ultimate aim of such behaviour and found that both men and women use more control when the woman was fecund, and more control and physical aggression when an individual had lower mate-value. The findings of this thesis are discussed in relation to sampling strategies, the control and physical aggression relationship and the effect of reporting2 bias. The conclusions from this thesis are that Johnson's dichotomy may not represent a qualitative difference, but instead may be one of quantity.

The primary objective of this research was to understand what role women thought alcohol played in their partners' violence to them, from the perspective of women who experienced violence from men partners. It aimed to: 1) question whether women blamed alcohol for their partners' violence, as anecdotal claims suggest, 2) establish whether the women made allowances for their partners' violence because of their partners' drinking, 3) determine the extent to which the women believed alcohol played a key role in such violence, 4) explore any differences in the women's beliefs about alcohol's role in violence when it was directed at others, and when it was directed at them, 5) develop theory, grounded in the women's views, that offers an explanation for alcohol's role in the violence they experienced. In order to meet these aims, in-depth, semi-structured, interviews were conducted with 20 women who suffered violence or abuse from their partners. Due to the subject of this research and the absence of women's views in research on this subject, a grounded theory approach was used, located within a feminist research framework. In addition, the women completed a supplementary checklist relating to their alcohol use and their violent and abusive experiences. The key findings include the women's beliefs that: 1) alcohol has an impact on behaviour, often seen in extremes of behaviour, 2) alcohol's role in violence depends on many factors, 3) alcohol is not responsible for their partners' violence and, 4) they would not forgive their partners more easily if they were violent after drinking. The quantitative data demonstrated a significant increase in physical violence after their partners had been drinking. The main conclusion of this study is that while the women accept that alcohol has disinhibiting effects, they do not blame alcohol for their partners' violence and abuse. They hold their partners responsible for their behaviour regardless of the alcohol consumed.

This research focuses on an awareness raising programme for primary school children in relation to domestic abuse. This area of research was considered to be of value due to the prevalence of DA and the impact that witnessing domestic abuse has been shown to have on children. Findings from the 2008/2009 British Crime Survey (Coleman, Osborne, Kaiza & Roe, 2010) show that more than one in four women (28%) and around one in six men (16%) have experienced domestic abuse since they were 16. Considerable research exists which suggests that witnessing domestic abuse can have a profound impact on a child’s life, development and psychological well being (Dodd, 2009). This research evaluates a pilot of a six week programme aimed at increasing awareness of domestic abuse in primary schools. There currently exists a gap in knowledge about the effectiveness of small-scale classroom based domestic abuse awareness raising programmes delivered in primary schools. Previous research has focused on larger scale projects often involving external agencies (Home Office, 2005) and work in secondary schools (Bell and Stanley, 2006).The programme was co-delivered by the TEP and school staff to Year Five pupils in three primary schools within a local authority. Staff and pupil views were obtained through focus groups with pupils and semi-structured interviews with teaching staff. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data in order to answer questions about the programmes strengths and weaknesses; views about the involvement of a Trainee Educational Psychologist (TEP); and pupils' understanding of domestic abuse. The findings suggest that staff and pupils thought the programme was valuable and improved children's knowledge of aspects of domestic abuse. The findings are discussed with reference to best practice and issues to consider in relation to the wider implementation and evaluation of the programme.

Police officer responses to incidents of domestic violence have received widespread criticism in recent years, but the focus of most studies on this topic has been on the experiences of victims and the work of police units established specifically to deal with domestic violence. As a consequence, the responses of front-line officers have received less attention. In particular, the ways in which they perceive and respond to domestic violence as they develop their careers within the police service are almost entirely unresearched. With this in mind, the aim of this research was precisely to map the shifts and changes (if any) in police officers' reactions and responses to domestic violence incidents during their first three years in service. Where previous researchers have examined officers' response to domestic violence in one temporal dimension and others have considered issues of acculturation and socialisation, the uniqueness of this research is in the way in which it has synthesised both these elements in the production of a more complex longitudinal study. Thus the research is informed by the experiences and perceptions of seven officers from their first day as a member of a Constabulary, through to their completion of three years' service. Observation of their probationer training and of the officers on duty, the design and completion of semi-structured interviews and the use of hypothetical scenarios comprise the primary research tools, with additional insights being gained through semi-structured interviews with the officers' tutor constables. The rich and deep insights that emerged from the fieldwork were made possible because of the development and maintenance of a relationship with a small number of officers over the period of three years. My status as a full-time employee of the Constabulary benefited me enormously in this regard. Through the development of this work, I have drawn from a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches but have been mostly persuaded by theories focused on aspects of feminism and symbolic interactionism. Using theories of power and gender in the context of domestic violence and applying these to observations made of the masculine organisational sub-culture of the police service, enables a picture to emerge of officers' explicit and implicit absorption of sub-cultural values, how they learn from their own experiences, how they learn to deal with domestic violence incidents from peers and colleagues, and influences of the training orientation and content. More specifically, I argue that as an organisation, the police service (through its staff) does little to extend officers' understanding of domestic violence either theoretically or actually. There was (and continued to be) a clear lack of recognition by the study's participants of the gendered power relations inherent in most incidents of domestic violence. The study considered the content and form of probationer domestic violence training in this regard and concludes by drawing attention to the importance of officers' tacit knowledge, or in other words, their understanding of domestic violence as a result of their societal socialisation. Crucially, the primary manifestation of this 'lack' of understanding was in officers' confusion over their precise (police) role when confronted with what they perceived to be domestic 'disputes' as opposed to domestic 'violence', where the latter were more easily recognised as requiring a law-and-order response, but where the former were considered as much less straightforward to deal with. Consequently, in most circumstances, officers tended to rely on their personal experiences and understandings as human beings rather than police officers, to guide their response. A contributory factor to the lack of clarity were the many parallels between the gendered power dynamic to be found in situations of domestic violence and the form and content of banter and behaviour in the workplace. The research is not simply an end in itself in terms of answering a particular set of research questions relating to police responses to domestic violence, but could also act as a vehicle for change.

Thesis (M.A.) --University of Limpopo, 2013 / As the topic states, the research is about the abuse of men in the society (Northern Sotho society in particular). Men, like women and children, are also abused, but unlike in the case of women and children, this abuse is not taken seriously. In most of the cases, this abuse is not reported. It is the aim of this study to scrutinize man abuse as depicted in the following Northern Sotho novels: Nonyana ya tokologo (Kekana, 1985), Ke nako ya ka (Molefe, 2001) and Ngwana Magana go botšwa (Motloutsi, 2004).

Orientadora: Profª Drª Maria de Fátima Mantovani / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências da Saúde, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Enfermagem. Defesa: Curitiba, 16/12/2016 / Inclui referências : f. 91-100 / Área de concentração: Prática profissional de enfermagem / Resumo: A violência é um evento que transpõe toda a ordem das relações pessoais, sociais e institucionais e apresenta um grande impacto para a vida dos sujeitos envolvidos. Assume contornos importantes em nossa sociedade na medida em que não se restringe a determinados locais, classes sociais, gênero ou faixas etárias, gerando representações sociais. Este estudo teve como objetivo apreender as representações sociais da violência contra as mulheres na perspectiva de homens autores. Trata-se de estudo descritivo qualitativo, à luz da abordagem das representações sociais, desenvolvido em uma Delegacia da Mulher de município do interior do Estado do Paraná. A coleta ocorreu no período de fevereiro de 2015 a abril de 2016, mediante aplicação de dois métodos de coleta de dados: a evocação livre de palavras e a entrevista focalizada. A evocação livre de palavras foi aplicada a 71 homens acusados pela prática de violência contra as mulheres; e a entrevista focalizada a 12, selecionados entre os primeiros. Utilizou-se, tanto na coleta quanto na análise dos dados, a triangulação, que possibilitou a verificação dos resultados de diferentes aspectos. A análise lexical dos dados foi realizada com auxílio do programa IRAMUTEQ (Interface de R pourles Analyses Multidimensionnelles de Textes et de Questionnaires) e a estrutural com o Ensemble de Programmes Permettant l'Analyse de Évoctioons empregado para a análise da evocação das palavras. Os participantes eram adultos jovens, que conviviam/conviveram com as denunciantes pelo período de 1 a 5 anos, e tinham filhos com elas. Praticaram violência moral ou física e não tinham registros anteriores de violência. A análise estrutural trouxe os vocábulos agressão, covardia e errado como elementos centrais, sendo complementados por desrespeito, respeito, ciúme, conversa, medo, mentira, não cometer e traição. Já a análise lexical deu origem a quatro classes que foram denominadas como: De geração a geração: o propagar da violência na resolução de conflitos familiares"; Sentimentos e comportamentos diante da violência; Repercussões da violência para o agressor; O agressor e a sua vitimização. Considera-se que as situações de violência vivenciadas pelos participantes ao logo da vida, colocam-na na condição de um agravo crônico, o que gera sentimentos e comportamentos dúbios, pois, mesmo esforçando-se para ter o diálogo como meio para a resolução dos conflitos e a igualdade nas relações, o poder sobre o outro e a violência estavam arraigados em suas concepções de mundo sendo retratada nos depoimentos. A naturalização da violência, levou-os a constituir a imagem das situações de violência como algo injusto para os homens e a buscarem justificativas para sua prática e vitimizarem-se diante dos acontecimentos. Palavras Chave: Violência. Violência de gênero. Violência por parceiro íntimo. Homens. Representações Sociais. / Abstract: Violence is an event, which transposes every order of personal, social and institutional relations, and shows a huge impact to the lives of the subjects involved, it assumes important contours in our society as long as do not restrict specific places, social classes, gender or age range, resulting in social representations. This study has as objective: To learn the social representations of violence against women in the male authors' perspective. It is a descriptive qualitative study according to social representation approach, developed at a Police Office for Women of interior city in the state of Paraná, in a period of February 2015 to April 2016 under application of two data collection methods the free evocation of words and the focussed interview. The free evocation of words was applied to 71 denounced men by practicing of violence against women, and the focussed interview to 12, selected among the first ones. Were used in the collection as well as in the analyse of data the triangulation, which made the verification of results in different aspects possible. The lexical data analyses was realized with support of the program IRAMUTEQ (Interface de R pourles Analyses Multidimensionnelles de Textes et de Questionnaires) and the structural with Ensemble de Programmes Permettant l'Analyse de Évoctioons used to the evocation of words analyses. The Profile of the participants disclose that were mainly young adults who live/lived together with the complainants by the period of 1 to 5 years, and had children with them. Committed moral or physics violence and did not have precedent registers of violence. The structure analyses brought the words aggression, cowardice, and wrong like central elements, being completed with disrespect, jealous, conversation, fear, lie, do not commit and betrayal. The lexical analyses gave rise to four classes that were denominated as: From generation to generation: spread violence to solve familiar conflicts; Feeling or behaviour before violence; Repercussions of violence to the aggressor; The aggressor and your victimization. Is considerate that violence situations lived lifelong by the participants, put it in the condition of a chronic injury. Creating dubious behaviour, because, even (trying hard, struggling, effort) to have a conversation to resolve the conflicts and the equality in the relationship, power on the other and the violence were rooted in yours conceptions of world and was mentioned in the interviews. Naturalize the violence, brought them to create an image of situations of violence as something unfair to men and search excuses to practice it and victimize themselves before the events. Keywords: Violence. Gender violence. Intimate partner violence. Men. Social representations.

Thesis (MA. (African Languages)) --University of Limpopo, 2014 / Ṱhoḓisiso iyi yo sengulusa u tambudzwa ha vhanna nga vhafumakadzi kha ḓirama dza Mahamba (1989), Ṋetshiranḓo na Munyai (2007) na Ṋetshivhuyu (1989). U tambudzwa ha vhanna nga vhafumakadzi hu khou bvelela fhedzi a hu dzhielwi nṱha. Muvhuso na Madzangano a si a Muvhuso a simesa u amba nga ha u tambudzwa ha vhana na vhafumakadzi ngeno vha sa iti zwo linganaho kha u lwa na u tambudzwa ha vhanna nga vhafumakadzi.

The effects of having witnessed their fathers’ violent behaviour impacts on daughters for a long period afterwards, even in adulthood. This study explores this phenomenon by means of literature review and interviews. The literature indicates that the effects of paternal violence is linked to forced maturity, secrecy, pretending, self-blame, and negative impact on the daughter’s relationships with both parents. A narrative approach was used to interview three adult participants. The conversations were analysed using thematic analysis and hermeneutics. Themes that emerged include avoidance, ambivalence towards the parents, aggression, assertiveness, and over-responsibility. There is a tendency to avoid intense, emotionally-laden, ambiguous and unpredictable situations through the use of interpersonal vigilance, an emotionally strong poise, distancing, being agreeable and devoutness. Also, there is a fear of becoming just like their abusive father. The psychological impact of being witness to a father’s violent behaviours has long-lasting effects on daughters. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

The effects of having witnessed their fathers’ violent behaviour impacts on daughters for a long period afterwards, even in adulthood. This study explores this phenomenon by means of literature review and interviews. The literature indicates that the effects of paternal violence is linked to forced maturity, secrecy, pretending, self-blame, and negative impact on the daughter’s relationships with both parents. A narrative approach was used to interview three adult participants. The conversations were analysed using thematic analysis and hermeneutics. Themes that emerged include avoidance, ambivalence towards the parents, aggression, assertiveness, and over-responsibility. There is a tendency to avoid intense, emotionally-laden, ambiguous and unpredictable situations through the use of interpersonal vigilance, an emotionally strong poise, distancing, being agreeable and devoutness. Also, there is a fear of becoming just like their abusive father. The psychological impact of being witness to a father’s violent behaviours has long-lasting effects on daughters. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)