La Isla Pacifica: A haven for battered Mexican American women.

Abstract

La Isla Pacifica serves women fleeing a violent partner. The shelter is open to all women, but it differs from many of its counterparts because it is designed to be a good cultural and linguistic fit for Spanish-speaking women of Mexican descent. /. Program StructureThe program serves a large suburban and rural area and offers 24-hour, 7-days-per-week crisis response, 30-day (maximum) in-shelter residency, bilingual program services, a comprehensive intake interview, goal setting, progress evaluation, daily adult and children's activities, and menu and bed-space allocation planning. The program has multiple sources of funding, including local, state, and federal grants, the United Way, and private and public philanthropic support.

Psychology and domestic violence around the world.

“…It is interesting to look at how adapting to a new culture that has more exposure to the new socialization patterns between men and women may impact on men’s use of violence to control their partners. Valencia and Van Hoorne’s program (1999, this issue) looks at domestic violence in Mexican Americans who have migrated to the United States. In addition to highlighting the need for culture-specific intervention and prevention programs, these authors, together with the article by Fawcett, Heise, Isita-Espejel, and Pick (1999, this issue) that provides attitudinal data from Mexican nationals, support the need to understand the many different forces that impact on people’s lives, in addition to data on violence and the family.…”

“…Prostitution, often found to be highly associated with incest survivors and those girls exposed to other forms of violence in their homes, is one of the high-risk areas that Steiner’s program carefully addressed by attempting to deal with the underlying social conditions that support teenage prostitution. Valencia and Van Hoorne’s (1999) and Fawcett et al’s (1999) descriptions of programs for women from Mexico are examples of programs using psychological data to help provide early intervention for women who are at high risk of developing serious emotional problems from domestic violence. Antonopoulou’s (1999) study of attitudes toward women in Greece follows some 20 years after a dictatorship had ruled over that country.…”

Discussion of Rapadas: Transmission of Violence: Parallels to Latinos in the United States

“…However, until 1999, there existed no literature that presented a longitudinal look at violence in a large subject pool of Mexican American families (Valencia & Van Hoorn, 1999). Equally alarming, the trans-generational perpetuation of gang violence increases each year until Brown-on-Brown murder, a Mexican American killing a Mexican American, becomes routine news in our newspapers.…”