The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of how district courts reason in cases where visitation is granted between children and a parent accused of violence either towards the child or the other parent. Our research question revolves around how the district court reasons regarding information about violence and to what extent the children’s opinions is taken into account in the decisions. We have examined 11 cases from 2022, collected from district courts in Skåne and Blekinge, Sweden. Discourse analysis has been employed as a suitable method to study the construction of meaning through language in the court decisions. The results show that the district court tends to focus on the parents’ difficulties in cooperation or conflicts rather than on the reports of violence within the family. In several of the judgments, violence has been reformulated through language use, where violence is described, for example, as a conflict. This results in the minimization or invisibility of the violence. The significance and severity of the violence are also diminished as the district court questions the credibility of the reports of violence. When granting visitation between a child and a potentially violent parent, the risk of violence has been minimized, and instead, the child’s need for close and good contact with both parents has been given significant weight in these decisions. The children’s opinions have been briefly described and weighed very little in the district court’s assessment in all of the judgments. When the child’s opinions have been taken into account, the district court has reasoned about how children are influenced by the parents. Often, the oldest child’s opinions have represented the views of the siblings as well.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-60328 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Påve, Ina, Ubilla Falzon, Adeline |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för socialt arbete (SA) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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