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Literature on the prosecution of domestic violence cases tends to focus on prosecution strategies or policies, and prosecutorial discretion. There is a dearth of studies concerning factors that are associated with verdicts in domestic violence trials. This study of 140 domestic violence cases appearing before the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court in Chesterfield County, Virginia, examines the demographic and court process variables that are associated with particular verdicts in domestic violence offenses. A discriminant function analysis determined that five variables can predict verdicts: race of perpetrator, gender of perpetrator, relationship between victim and perpetrator, previous criminal history, and availability of Polaroid pictures of the crime for use as evidence. The typical guilty case was a White male, married to or living with the victim, with a previous criminal history, and whose case file included Polaroid pictures of the crime.

Since the requirement of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) to integrate theoretical and practice content about the oppression of gay and lesbian persons into the curriculum, few studies have assessed the effectiveness of various methods of incorporating the content. This paper reports the results of a study examining the effects of a panel presentation on social work students' attitudes, their anticipated professional practice, and the relationship between their attitudes and anticipated professional behavior. It also compares the results from the panel presentation with the results from other intervention methods. Results indicated that the panel presentation had little influence on the attitudes or anticipated professional behavior of students. Intervention methods integrated into the classroom setting influenced the attitudes and anticipated professional behavior of students significantly more than the panel presentation. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678.

Women with disabilities are abused at rates similar to or greater than their nondisabled counterparts. Compared with nonabused women, women abused by an intimate partner have a greater risk of being disabled or having an illness that affects their activities of daily living. Although disabled women experience similar forms of abuse to those of nondisabled women, some forms of abuse are unique to disabled women due to the limitations that the disability itself presents. This article presents a conceptual analysis of abuse of disabled women and discusses assessment procedures that can assist in identifying abuse and informing service delivery. We propose a model of abuse assessment for women with disabilities composed of three elements: traditional assessment anchored on the Power and Control Wheel that encompasses the unique forms of abuse that disabled women experience; comprehensive functional assessment through self-reporting and self-rating; and attention to heterogeneity with regard to cultural sensitivity, structure of reporting, and nature of disability.

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