University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of Sociology

M.A. / Domestic violence is widespread in South Africa, with one in four women being the victims of it. Victims of domestic violence try to change their conditions in the hope that things will get better. Domestic violence takes many forms. Some of the victims experience only one form of violence while others experience different forms. Domestic violence has physical, emotional, sexual, and economic dimensions (Goosen and Shaik, 1998: 1). The Domestic Violence Act 116 of 1998 was passed in the South African Parliament and became operational on 15 December 1999. Unlike the old Act (i.e. the Prevention of the Family Violence Act of 1993), the new Act addresses a number of problems specific to domestic violence. It also recognizes the range of relationships within which domestic violence occurs as broader than only the relationship between a man and a woman. (Fedler in Reclaiming Women’s Spaces, 2000: 132). Gangaloo (in Naidoo, 1999: 17) mentioned that the preamble of the Domestic Violence Act aims to provide protection to the victims of domestic violence. The Protection Order under the Domestic Violence Act orders that perpetrators of domestic violence stop their violent behaviour against the victims and also that they be of good behaviour towards them. The research problem of the study can be formulated as follows: After the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act 116 of 1998, on 15 December 1998, a number of victims of domestic violence applied for and were granted the Protection Order in Alexandra Township. However, no follow-up studies have been done in Alexandra on the perspectives of the affected marital couples on the Protection Order. The main goal of the study is to explore the perspectives of marital couples in Alexandra Township on the Protection Order under the Domestic Violence Act 116 of 1998 with the intention of finding out whether the Act is achieving its primary purpose, i.e. to protect victims of domestic violence. The objectives of the research study are: * To explore perceptions on the impact of the Protection Order on family stability * To investigate the attitude of affected marital couples towards the Protection Order * To investigate the understanding of the Protection Order by affected marital couples * To investigate, using the results of the study, whether the Protection Order is achieving its primary purpose – i.e to protect victims of domestic violence. The researcher will be using qualitative research method to conduct the study. The goal of the study is exploratory as it will add new information and knowledge to the field of domestic violence. The research will focus on marital couples, married either in a civil or customary marriage, who applied for and were granted the Protection Order between January 2000 to January 2001. The age group of the respondents varies from 30 to 55 years. The research results of the study show that legal remedies alone will not eradicate domestic violence. The study demonstrates that physical violence may have stopped but victims are still abused emotionally. / MS. H.F. Ellis

No description available.

The judicial response to family violence in Montreal during the period 1825 to 1850 was marked by paradox. The criminal justice system, driven by private prosecutors, limited the ability of some victims to seek the law's protection, but it allowed others to exercise considerable discretion and influence over the pursuit of justice. The legal response to the crimes of infanticide, child abuse, domestic violence, and spousal murder was equally contradictory. Infanticide may have been depicted as a horrific crime, but the call for justice was never strong. Society became increasingly sensitive to the notion that parents should be held accountable for causing injury to children, but a belief in the sanctity of the family was still paramount. When child abuse cases did come before courts, children were often accorded the same legal remedies by courts as were adult victims. Similarly, while the issue of family violence was not then a widespread societal concern, and while the notion that a wife was subordinate to her husband remained a prominent part of early-Victorian life, hundreds of abused wives prosecuted their husbands for assault. Those cases reflect not only that abused wives were contesting their partner's use of violence, but also that courts were willing to intervene. Spousal murder cases were further evidence of contradiction: women were subject to heightened legal penalties for killing their partners, but their gender also insulated them from the full severity of the law. / In a period before the sweeping public movements that developed in the last several decades of the nineteenth century, courts were forced to grapple with family violence because private prosecutors brought those issues before them. In their willingness to hear cases involving infanticide, child abuse, domestic violence, and spousal murder, courts made public some of Victorian Montreal's darkest secrets. While the privately-driven system of justice was slowly to erode over the intervening decades, that erosion was to coincide with the rise of public crusades against child-cruelty, domestic violence, and other social issues. The visibility of family violence likely fueled, and in turn was fueled by, those social movements.

No abstract available. / Thesis (LL.M.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2000.

Despite growing awareness of the severity of domestic violence, the lives of battered women are too often misconstrued by the Canadian public and the judicial system. The author argues that stereotypes of victimized battered women emanating from the courts and feminist theory may both prevent women who kill their partner from making valid claims of self-defence and generally undermine women's fight against oppression. The author reviews the doctrine of the battered woman syndrome and its application in the context of self-defence to illustrate how the courts' treatment of the doctrine conveys a narrow and incomplete depiction of battered women. An alternative theoretical framework based on battered women's partial agency is proposed as a means to address feminist theory's simplified representation of battered women. Various law and policy reform initiatives in the criminal justice system are explored to assess how the law may validate and promote battered women's partial agency.

This thesis explores how the battered woman attachment to her abusive partner impacts on her interactions with the legal system and non-legal resources. This qualitative research project is based on in-depth interviews conducted with seven abused women who procured interdicts in terms of the Prevention of Family Violence Act 133 of 1993 to restrain their husbands from assaulting them. The research reviews the nature of abuse suffered by the participants, their psychological attachments to their husbands, and their patterns of help-seeking in relation to the law and non-legal resources. Two main theoretical frameworks, psychoanalysis and feminism inform this study. The study found that the participants retained unrealistic hopes that their husbands would reform and become loving, caring partners, and that they treated their husbands with care and sympathy despite their husbands’ often brutal behaviour towards them. The findings suggest that the women’s behaviour towards their husbands was the product of two reality distorting psychological defences, splitting and the moral defence which they used to preserve their attachments to their abusive partners. These defences intersected with rigid patriarchal prescriptions of femininity which dictate that women should be stoically caring towards their husbands, and should hold relationships together no matter what the cost to themselves. The participants interactions with the legal system and with non-legal sources of help were structured by their reliance on splitting and the moral defence, and by the dictates of patriarchal ideology. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that at one level the participants sought help to get protection from abuse, the study shows that their help-seeking was motivated by their conflicting desires to punish and reform their husbands. The participants sought help in ways which enabled them to strike a compromise between expressing their anger at their husbands, whilst simultaneously preserving their psychological attachments to them. The study concludes that the women’s interactions with the law and with other helping resource reflect their attempts to preserve their paradoxical attachments to their husbands, and to stabilise their own fragile sense of self and gender identity.

No description available.

Bibliography: leaves 259-382. / xvii, 382 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Examines the capacity of Australian states, even those committed to upholding and extending the right to physical safety into different cultural contexts, to do so in the case of Aboriginal populations. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Depts. of Geography and Politics, 1998?

Intimate Partner Violence continues to be a significant social problem in South Africa, requiring a systematised and effective response at multiple levels. The organisation at the centre of this research offers crisis intervention to victims of intimate partner violence, providing basic psychological support, legal information and referrals. The volunteer crisis interventionists are exposed to numerous in-depth accounts of violent and distressing victimisation, making them more vulnerable to vicarious traumatisation. Through this work, their prior assumptions about personal safety, the trustworthiness of other people, and basic justice in the world, are challenged. The challenge to these assumptions increases the likelihood of countertransference victim blaming responses, as it is often easier to hold the client responsible for the tragic event than for the support worker to transform their own assumptions about safety and justice. This victim blaming response is supported by the dominant patriarchal ideology which frequently seeks to maintain the systems of oppression, excusing the perpetrator and placing responsibility on the victim. It was therefore clear that in order to do this work effectively, volunteers needed to be trained to identify their countertransference reactions and emotional responses, as well as undergo a critical re-assessment of their ideas relating to intimate partner violence and victimisation. Using an Intervention Research paradigm, this research designed and developed a training programme based on transformative learning theory, moving away from traditional information models of training to a focus on emotional skills and critical self-insight. The phases of the intervention refined the intervention in order to ensure that the research objectives were met and that the programme could be easily replicated. The evaluation of each phase showed an increased capacity for critical insight, and evidence for a transformative shift in the trainees understanding and approach to intimate partner violence.