Theses (M.A.)--Marshall University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Includes abstract. Document formatted into pages: contains vi, 70 pages. Bibliography: p. 55-59.

Theses (M.A.)--Marshall University, 2004. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-59). Also available through the Internet.

The purpose of this research is to produce a deeper understanding of the role of the police authorities in their adherence to the new constitution and laws that are supposed to protect women, especially those affected by domestic violence. In order to do that, this research focuses on the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act of 1998 (DVA) by the police authorities in South Africa. I look into what factors influence their attitudes towards and reactions to victims of domestic violence. I use a triangulation of resources including case reports of domestic violence from court, online media articles, research reports on domestic violence, police performance reports and other governmental documents, as well as NGO reports of victims and police implementation including an interview with someone who worked with women in South Africa.   I analyze my results using the three pillars of new institutionalism: regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive. This theory is useful in breaking down the issue to get a deeper understanding on different levels. Each pillar explains the rules and legally sanctioned acts, norms and values, and cultural assumptions behind the attitudes and actions of the police when involved in domestic violence cases. This helps to see the problem in different perspectives and explain how the police may play a role in perpetuating domestic violence in South Africa.   Through my study on media articles, case reports, and NGO reports on the actions of police, I found that the police do play a role in perpetuating domestic violence in South Africa, though there are many factors that are involved. The norms of society itself show that domestic violence is a private matter and should be kept within the home. The gender power inequalities and social problems in South Africa are also actors in keeping domestic violence such a problem. The government itself has not provided adequate resources and training to properly implement the Domestic Violence Act. So, while the police definitely plays a role in this problem and need to be better trained and more compliant with the DVA and its provisions, there are many factors to consider that also add to this epidemic.

The current study uses a structured survey with a sample of 97 Haitian women who are or have been involved in violent domestic relationships, to examine the impact of the daughters’ levels of differentiation from their mothers, cultural expectations, religious beliefs, and other potential intervening variables that may mediate the decision to stay or leave the abuser. Analyses were conducted to ascertain whether characteristics of the mother-daughter relationship, level of individuation/fusion, culture, and/or religion plays a significant role in the women’s decision making process. It was hypothesized that daughter’s decisions regarding the relationship would be highly influenced by the type of relationship that they have with their mothers, hence, influencing them to remain or leave the perpetrator. Findings from the current study supported the second hypothesis that there would be a significant negative correlation between the degree of differentiation of a daughter from her mother and the likelihood of leaving an abusive relationship. Correlations were performed with the Personal Authority in the Family Systems Questionnaire and the Differentiation of Self Inventory and the findings from the tests revealed that women who obtained higher scores on the DSI were less likely to remain with their abusers. Furthermore, when the PAFS and the DSI were combined, they were a significant predictor of the outcome. Additionally, the hypothesis that women who are highly influenced by cultural factors will be more likely to stay in an abusive relationship than women who are not highly influenced by such factors, was not conclusive. There was no relationship between adhering to cultural beliefs and the decision regarding an abusive relationship. Findings regarding the influence of the women’s religious on their decision regarding the abusive relationship were also inconclusive. The discussion and conclusions focus on the clinical significance of the study’s findings. Implications for treatment with this population, limitations of the study, and suggestions for future research are also addressed.

Three men who assaulted their wives participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews in an attempt to understand the experience that accompanied each man's "assaultive" decision. The study assumes that spouse abuse can be best understood from an ecological point of view which, it has been argued, warrants a hermeneutical approach to research (Young & Collin, 1988). The study focuses on the description and understanding of specific life experiences of the participants through the application and development of interpretive categories or themes. Three themes that are common to all the participants are identified and discussed. It was found that: all the participants experienced misunderstanding between themselves and their partner before the assaultive situation; all the participants experienced a sense of emotional distress prior to and at moments during the assault; all the participants experienced a sense of justification in the abuse which they were displaying. The results of this research highlight the centrality of empathic understanding in the study and treatment of domestic violence. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree Educational Psychology at the University of Zululand, 2006. / This study explored the experiences of five children who witnessed domestic violence and the resultant psychological distress experiences by these children. The study was conducted within a phenomenological framework and used in-depth interviews with the children and caregivers. The data gleaned from the interviews with the children was substantiated by projective drawing tasks. Analysis of the interviews and drawings showed that children who witnessed domestic violence experienced significant psychological distress. The significant findings of the study were as follows: • Child witnesses exhibited behavioural, affective and cognitive responses to the traumatic event. • Themes of guilt, shame and role confusion emerged from the interview data as a result of having witnessed the abusive episodes • Fear was a result of having witnessed the abusive episodes, and was pervasive in all relationships - with significant others, peers and the researcher. • Social support from peers and family members acted as a buffer by providing an escape to dealing with witnessing the trauma. • There was a significant difference in the coping styles in relation to developmental status - the older children exhibited a multitude of coping styles as compared to the younger children. • Gender pattern differences emerged — boys were more likely to exhibit externalising behaviour in response to witnessing the abusive episodes, whilst the girls exhibited more internalising behaviour patterns. The results of this study were discussed within the ecological-transactional framework. Further research in the area of domestic violence is recommended.

Globally, the WHO (2014: 10) estimates that one in three women experiences sexual and physical violence at the hands of their intimate partner over their lifetime. According to a Violence Against Women (VAW) Baseline study (2013: 11) in Zimbabwe- two in every three (68%) women who were interviewed reported having experienced some type of gendered violence during their lifetime. Although legislation on the prevention of domestic violence has become, globally, part of many countries' legal frameworks, Zimbabwe instantiated its Domestic Violence Act only in 2007. This came as a result of decades of feminist advocacy at state, legal, and NGO levels which theorized the rights of survivors of domestic violence, usually women as essential to Zimbabwean citizenship. These rights included criminalization of domestic violence and full access to legal processes. As in many other contexts, the weak implementation of this legislation has been widely researched, suggesting that Zimbabwean domestic abuse survivors remain vulnerable (Burton, 2008). Alongside the need for more research lies the question at the heart of this dissertation. Feminist theory has established that the vulnerability of domestic abuse survivors comprises both the legal and the social. Theorists of social justice focus on questions of recognition and redistribution (Fraser, 2008), empowerment (Kabeer, 2016) and the notion of capabilities as intrinsic to fair and equitable social systems and processes (Nussbaum, 2011). This study asks whether and how the provision of shelter space to the survivors (for which provision is made in the Domestic Violence Act) can be theorized as a form of social justice, despite the weakness of the system of courts. In carrying out the study, I worked with one particular shelter, Musasa, in Gweru, Zimbabwe, and explored the experiences of those who had worked with the shelter in multiple ways. This built what I called an “exploded view” of the representations of living and working at a specific place. The concept of “exploded view” comes from architecture and connotes a perspective able to understand different parts of a system or process separately to revise the whole. Data gathering was through in-depth interviews and involved listening to the voices of those who imagined and created the shelter and also those running it. At the centre of the study were twenty women who experienced the shelter as a space in which they lived and their voices were critical in theorising sheltering. Data were analysed using both thematic and content analysis and aimed to tease out the multiple threads of meaning through which people associated with the shelter in different ways made sense of its location and importance for tackling domestic violence in Zimbabwe. While the study is aware of its limitations as a case study, the dissertation's theorization of shelter work as social justice contributes to a feminist theorization of redress for survivors of domestic abuse in Zimbabwe.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The modem problem of domestic violence has a historical reach into antiquity and is a part of every known culture. Domestic violence relates to the origins of aggression in men including areas as diverse as violence, gender roles, relationships, and even cultural and religious ritual. The radical feminist movement ofthe 1950's pushed child physical and sexual abuse, and later domestic violence, out from the shadows of being regarded as a family's "dirty laundry" into the spotlight of public opinion. With public awareness came outrage at the plight of the women and their children who suffered at the hands of the batterer and an exponential increase in efforts by researchers to understand and describe the problem, by legislators, police and courts to create laws, arrest procedures to and contain the batterer and finally by clinicians to devise programs and methods to treat the man once he had been arrested, separated from his family and sent to a batterers' program in lieu of jail. In spite of the recognition of the importance of the problem, progress in working to change batterers has been hampered by a fundamental split between two factions as to the cause of the problem. One side claims that all men raised in a patriarchy are "batterers" to some degree due to masculine privilege. The others claim that there is an essential difference between men who batter and those that do not. This study addresses that question. This study was conducted in two phases. In phase I, the author administered an MMPI-2 protocol to thirty men who had been arrested for domestic violence and sent to batterers' intervention classes. In phase II, ten of these were selected for videotaped interviews, structured with questions based on Loevinger' s ego development work. Themes that emerged from the data suggested that these men, as a group, had difficulties in their ability to identify and communicate their feeling states, to effectively understand and manage relational conflict, and further that as a group these men showed evidence of internally experienced shame which they did not experience consciously. The author found support for the Shame A voidance Model of domestic violence, which asserts that batterers have several conditions which comprise the "essential difference" sought by the field. It states that cognitive, emotional and gender deficits, when combined with the presence of unacknowledged shame, will result in a man who will batter or abusively control his intimate partner in order to avoid experiencing his own shame during the course of natural relational conflicts. This is held to be counter to the feminist faction that holds that he batters to maintain masculine privileges over his partner. / 2999-01-01

This thesis explores women’s disclosure of domestic violence, and is based on the findings of two research studies. The first study explored prevalence rates of domestic violence reported by women following childbirth. The subsequent narrative study explored women’s experiences of disclosure and their interactions with statutory agencies. The research was influenced by a feminist epistemology, recognizing the marginalisation of the women’s experiences from a subjugated relationship, addressing the power relationship between the researcher and participants and because of the significant disparity between gendered lives. The study was conducted in two parts. A survey of five hundred women in the immediate postnatal period within a large NHS Hospital participated in the first part of the study. The second study involved narrative interviews with fifteen women living within their own community who talked about their experiences of domestic violence and issues surrounding disclosure. Women’s stories about disclosure including the responses they received were influenced by cultural narratives. The theories of social power have been utilized as an explanatory framework and provide the theoretical basis of the analysis. The study found low levels of disclosure at two specific points along the pregnancy/childbirth continuum; during booking in clinic and in the immediate postnatal period. Furthermore, the findings revealed three specific tactics used by perpetrators to engage women in the early relational stage with the intentionality of exerting control and subjugation. These have been termed feeling special, feeling vulnerable and commitment. Whilst women talked of coercion and subjugation by their partners, they also talked of how their interactions with statutory agencies limited their agency. The significance of this study is that the thesis was able to challenge contemporary policies developed by statutory agencies in the provision of support to women who experience domestic violence. The thesis develops some understanding of the nature and role of cultural narratives and patterns of disclosure before suggesting new directions to further advance the findings presented. Finally, the thesis proposes recommendations to improve training for statutory agencies in providing a response to women disclosing domestic violence, suggesting a new direction in thinking about the facilitation of this training.

In the last fifteen years, the problem of domestic violence has moved from being a 'behind closed doors' phenomenon to an issue of increasing public concern. This concern has inevitably coincided with increasing research efforts. The majority of this research has focused on men who batter female partners. Attempted explanations for this problem have arisen from general theories of aggression as well as research identifying the unique characteristics of domestically violent men. This study proposed a new direction for domestic violence research, considering domestic violence as a process. The application of such a conceptualisation was intended to capture both the dynamic and complex nature of these events. A qualitative methodology based on Grounded Theory was used to delineate a descriptive model of the offence process in domestic violence from interviews with ten participants currently incarcerated at Paparua Prison, Christchurch. These men had current or prior convictions for domestic violence offences. The model that emerged from this study consists of four temporally sequential phases which are described and discussed. These consist of: background factors, buildup/ offence context phase, offence phase and post-offence phase. It is suggested that this offence process model will provide a framework for the evaluation of current causal explanations, has the potential to enhance the development ofnew hypotheses and has utility in terms of alterring current conceptualisations of effective intervention packages.