No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The aim of this study was to gain an increased knowledge of what it is that makes a woman who is or has been subjected to violence, by a man with whom she had a close relationship, leaves. With the study, we wanted to get an insight into what made the break-up possible and examine the importance of the people around her, to understand how we better can provide the support she needs both before, during and after the break-up. The empiric material consisted of eight semi-structured qualitative interviews based on an interview guide with eight women who had been subjected to violence by a male partner. The material has been analysed through the exit theory and the normalization process of violence, and related to previous research on the subject. The results and the conclusions shows that the man after some time began to show new sides, and a period of mental degradation through isolation and psychological violence followed, which made many of the women start thinking about leaving. Breaking up proved to be difficult and often consisted of several attempts before the final leave. A specific event with particularly severe violence or that he became a danger for her or the children’s lives proved to be common reasons for her to leave, because it gave her the strength she needed or because she simply had to. We found that the women often were exposed to the man's violence even after the break-up and that violence could be perceived as worse than the relationship itself. After leaving, the understanding comes, and a long period of depression, therapy and sick leave follows. The need for support and help from the woman's network turned out to be the greatest after the break-up. Several women withdrew to report to the police due to fear of not being believed. We found that police reporting, interrogations and the legal process that followed could have a healing effect if the woman felt believed and confirmed, but an opposite effect if she was met with incomprehension. The women seemed to find it easier to absorb information about intimate partner violence from social media than from information leaflets from authorities and organizations. Sharing their own story on social media contributed to both healing and processing. It was also easier to talk to strangers on social media about what you have been exposed to, because of the anonymity.

Although intimate partner violence is an established societal problem, psychological violence often falls in the shadow of physical violence. Studies have shown that both men and women are exposed to psychological violence to an equal extent, but despite this, men's exposure is not noticed to the same extent as women's. This study investigates the expression of psychological violence, which characteristics of individuals that are exploited by perpetrators and why individuals choose to remain in relationships where they are exposed to psychological violence, and whether the reasons differ between men and women. The results of this qualitative study are based on semi-structured interviews with six individuals, three men and three women who had previously been in a relationship characterized by psychological violence. The study's theoretical framework consists of Hearns view of intimate partner violence and concept of a distant intimacy, Connell and Pearse’s gender theory, Beauvoir's concepts of the other, immanence and transcendence, and Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity. The results of the study indicate that the expression of psychological violence in heterosexual relationships was quiet the same for both our male and females respondents. The difference was that the female respondents felt criticized and derided by their partner. The male and female respondents also attributed themselves with similar characteristics, such as caring, accommodating and emotional. Yet it was only the female respondents who felt like their characteristics were exploited. The reason why the female respondents chose to remain in the destructive relationship was because they got broken down by the violence and formed a position of dependence on the their partners. The male respondents, on the other hand, remained in the relationship due to its difficulties in identifying their partner's destructive behavior as problematic. / Trots att våld i nära relationer är ett etablerat samhällsproblem hamnar psykiskt våld ofta i skuggan av fysiskt. Mätningar tyder på att kvinnor och män utsätts för psykiskt våld i en lika stor omfattning, men trots det så uppmärksammas inte männens utsatthet i samma utsträckning som kvinnornas. I detta självständiga arbete undersöks det psykiska våldets uttryck, vilka egenskaper som utnyttjas och varför individer väljer att stanna kvar i parrelationer där de utsätts för psykiskt våld, samt om anledningarna skiljer sig mellan män och kvinnor. Datainsamlingen utgjordes av semistrukturerade intervjuer med sex respondenter, tre kvinnor och tre män, som tidigare varit i en relation präglad av psykiskt våld. Studiens teoretiska referensram består av Hearns (2012) teoretisering av våld i nära relationer och begrepp avlägsen intimitet, Isdal (2001) sju undergrupper av psykiskt våld, Connell och Pearse genusteori, Beauvoirs begrepp den andre, immanens och transcendens, samt Connells begrepp hegemonisk maskulinitet. Studiens resultat tyder på att det psykiska våldets uttryck i heterosexuella relationer var nästintill detsamma för våra manliga och kvinnliga respondenter. Det som skildes var det kvinnliga respondenterna upplevelse av degradering och förlöjligande av sin manliga partner. De kvinnliga och manliga respondenterna tillskrev sig även med liknande egenskaper, som omhändertagande, tillmötesgående och känslosamma. Men det var endast det kvinnliga respondenterna som upplevde att dessa egenskaper utnyttjades. Det som gjorde att de kvinnliga respondenterna valde att stanna kvar i den destruktiva relationen var att de hade blivit nedbruten av våldet och bildat sig en beroendeställning till deras manliga partner. De manliga respondenterna stannade däremot kvar i relationen på grund av dess svårigheter att identifiera problematiken med deras partners destruktiva beteende.

No description available.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is estimated to impact about one in four U.S. women in their lifetime and represents 15% of all violent crime. Total violent crime rates have steadily declined across the country, but rates of IPV victimization have fallen at far slower rates and the incidence of intimate partner homicide has been increasing in recent years. These alarming trends suggest that current strategies for IPV prevention are insufficient and may even be counterproductive. Since the 1970s, the U.S. has developed and maintained a police-centric response to IPV—a response that relies on arrest as its primary tool through practices and policies including mandatory arrest laws and other pro-arrest policing practices. This police-centric response to IPV persists despite increased recognition of the harms of mass criminalization and incarceration and growing calls for criminal legal reform, and despite a lack of empirical evidence that policing and arrest in fact prevent or reduce IPV.In addition, there are strong theoretical reasons to believe, and emerging empirical evidence to suggest, that there are negative consequences of the police-centric response to IPV that extend beyond subsequent IPV victimization, including the increased risk of all-cause mortality among survivors of IPV and the increased risk of child protective services involvement for families. However, there is very limited quantitative research estimating these negative consequences of IPV policing. There are also likely profound racialized disparities in the consequences of IPV policing because of the ways in which policing, and the criminal legal system more broadly, disproportionately harms Black communities and other communities of color. In this dissertation, I assessed the state- and county-level consequences of the police-centric response to IPV for the health and safety of IPV survivors and estimated the extent to which those consequences have differential impacts across racialized groups. The first chapter presents a systematic scoping review synthesizing the existing evidence concerning the negative and racialized consequences of the police-centric response to IPV. The review included all empirical studies (quantitative and qualitative) focused on a U.S. population that assessed consequences of IPV policing. A total of 34 articles were included in the review. I found that survivor criminalization was the most studied negative consequence of IPV policing and the existing evidence suggests that IPV policing has increased the risk of survivor arrest. I also found that there have been numerous rigorous studies on the effects of mandatory arrest laws on population-level measures of IPV victimization, including IPV homicide rates. The evidence to date generally suggests there is no association between mandatory arrest rates and population-level IPV victimization rates. The review also identified gaps in the evidence base: specifically, there is a need for research on additional potential consequences of IPV policing such as police violence against survivors, child protective services involvement, and measures of the psychosocial and physical health of survivors. The second chapter presents a difference-in-differences analysis estimating the effect of state-level changes in warrantless arrest legislation for IPV on the all-cause mortality of IPV survivors from 1980-2019 in the U.S. I analyzed panel data measured at the state-year level and included data for all U.S. states and the District of Columbia. I used women’s all-cause mortality age 20-54 as a proxy for all-cause mortality among IPV survivors. I used quasi-Poisson regression models with a population offset term with robust standard errors to model the association between state-year changes in warrantless arrest legislation and all-cause mortality. I also fit two models with race-specific rates of women’s all-cause mortality (20-54 years) to assess if there are differences by racialized group. Overall, the findings suggested that there is no detectable effect of mandatory arrest laws on women’s mortality (20-54 years) at the population level, however, there appears to be a harmful effect of preferred arrest laws. Despite no documentation of a harmful effect of mandatory arrest laws on women’s mortality (20-54 years), this null effect should be weighed against known, documented harmful effects of mandatory arrest such as its role as a driver of female arrests and arrests of IPV survivors. The third chapter presents a county-level analysis of the intersection between IPV arrest practice and family surveillance from 2000-2019 in large U.S. counties. I hypothesized that family surveillance and subsequent intervention by child protective services agencies would be a negative consequence of the police-centric response to IPV because of direct coordination between police and child welfare systems and the subsequent increased risk of child protective services involvement that may follow from the arrest of a parent. I evaluated family surveillance and child protective services involvement as a negative consequence because of the harmful and racialized ways in which the U.S. child welfare apparatus targets, punishes, and breaks apart Black families. The criminal legal system and child welfare system are both rooted in structural racism and, thus, their coordination is expected to cause generational harm for Black families. The outcome of interest was the rate of child maltreatment reports that received a response from child welfare agencies and the exposure of interest was the percentage of IPV incidents that were reported to police and resulted in arrest, measured at the county-year level. I used Poisson regression and modeled between- and within-county effects using three types of models: 1) a multilevel county random intercept model, 2) a multilevel county random intercept model with state fixed effects, and 3) a county fixed effects model. I also fit two additional models with race-specific outcome data and conducted an interaction analysis by the percentage of Black residents in the county to assess if there were differences by racialized groups and within different racialized contexts. The findings presented in the third chapter demonstrated no overall association between the percentage of police-reported IPV incidents that resulted in arrest and child maltreatment report rate at the county level. In addition, there was no county-level evidence to suggest that the association differed for the Black vs. non-Hispanic white child maltreatment report rates. These county-level findings are inconsistent with existing individual-level survey research and qualitative research that provide evidence that IPV policing is associated with child protective services involvement through direct coordination between police and the child welfare system. However, the interaction analysis demonstrated that the percentage of police-reported IPV incidents that resulted in arrest was positively associated with the Black child maltreatment report rate within counties with a low percentage of Black residents. Therefore, the association between IPV policing and family surveillance may vary by individual and contextual factors. This was the first study to examine the intersection between IPV policing and family surveillance at the county level, so additional research is warranted to assess whether the findings can be replicated. Individual family-level data would be useful to further interrogate the relationship between IPV policing and family surveillance.

Annually, more than 15 million U.S. children witness intimate partner violence (IPV) in their homes between caregivers. Witnessing IPV during childhood has been associated with increased risk of adulthood IPV victimization, although this relationship has most commonly been examined among older populations of white adults (McKinney, Caetano, Ramisetty-Mikler, & Nelson, 2009; Straus, 1989; Whitfield, Anda, Dube, & Felitti, 2003), not minority women who experience a disproportionately high burden of IPV victimization (Breiding, Chen, & Black, 2014). It also is unclear whether there are specific characteristics of childhood witnessing of IPV that may aid in understanding the increased probability of IPV victimization observed among young, minority women. This study examined associations between four characteristics of childhood witnessing of IPV (direction of violence witnessed, academic disruption, fearfulness, and frequency) and adulthood physical and sexual IPV victimization. Further, psychosocial moderators of these associations were examined. Existing data collected from 315 women residing in North Philadelphia were analyzed. Overall, 28% of women witnessed IPV during childhood and nearly one in four women reported IPV victimization. Among these women there was diversity with regards to the characteristics of witnessing reported. Unadjusted associations observed that women who witnessed bidirectional IPV, experienced academic disruption, or reported fearful witnessing were significantly more likely to experience adulthood IPV victimization than women who did not witness IPV during childhood. After adjusting for covariates, these witnessing characteristics were no longer significantly associated with adulthood IPV victimization; however, the risk of adulthood IPV victimization was consistently related to current depressive symptoms and substance use. Modest support for effect modification by low self-esteem was observed. A significant difference in the predicted probability of adulthood IPV victimization was observed among women reporting bidirectional childhood witnessing of IPV and high self-esteem in adulthood compared to women reporting bidirectional witnessing and low self-esteem (difference=0.51, 95% CI: 0.06, 0.95, p=0.027). Childhood abuse was associated with greater probability of adulthood IPV victimization regardless of the frequency of childhood witnessing of IPV (aOR=5.8, 95% CI: 2.2, 13.6). Given the high prevalence of childhood witnessing of IPV observed in this study, these findings highlight the importance of screening for childhood IPV witnessing. In addition, these results suggest particular groups of urban women who may be at highest risk for adulthood IPV victimization, including those experiencing depressive symptoms, substance use, and a history of childhood abuse. Identifying adolescents and young adults with these characteristics and providing early prevention services may reduce the probability of future IPV victimization among young, sexually active urban women. Additionally, examining the role of low self-esteem during child- and adulthood may inform efforts to prevent IPV victimization. These findings highlight the need for prospective, longitudinal studies of urban children and adolescents to examine the complex causal pathways between childhood witnessing of IPV, psychosocial characteristics, and adulthood IPV victimization. / Public Health