Reasons for Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration Among Arrested Women

Abstract

There are limited empirical data regarding the reasons or motives for the perpetration of intimate partner violence among women arrested for domestic violence and court referred to violence intervention programs. The present study examined arrested women's self-report reasons for partner violence perpetration and investigated whether women who were victims of severe intimate partner violence were more likely than were women who were victims of minor partner violence to report self-defense as a reason for their behavior. In all, 87 women in violence intervention programs completed a measure of violence perpetration and victimization and a questionnaire assessing 29 reasons for violence perpetration. Self-defense, poor emotion regulation, provocation by the partner, and retaliation for past abuse were the most common reasons for violence perpetration. Victims of severe partner violence were significantly more likely than were victims of minor partner violence to report self-defense as a reason for their violence perpetration. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Beyond Typologies: Foregrounding Meaning and Motive in Domestic Violence Perpetration

“…Consistent with the work of Johnson (2006) and Kelly and Johnson (2008), Holtzworth-Munroe and Meehan (2004) show that the violence of "Family Only" batterers tends to be less intentionally controlling and more contextually driven than that of domestic violence perpetrators with antisocial or borderline personality disorders; a finding UK researchers have also replicated (Dixon and Browne 2003). Meanwhile, Stuart et al (2006) provide some support for Kelly and Johnson's claims about the way in which Violent Resistance emerges as a response to Coercive Control. Levels of physical and sexual victimization among women arrested for assaulting their partners tend to be comparable to those found among women in the refuge population.…”

Twenty-one lessons: preventing domestic violence in the Caribbean

“…Perpetrators have been found to hold hostile and negative beliefs about the opposite gender and to attribute blame for their own violence and other negative events to their partner's personality or behaviour (Henning et al, 2005). This is supported by Stuart et al (2006), who state that perpetrators tend to externalise blame and often attribute the cause of their violence to poor self-control or emotional control, or other factors beyond their control, such as stress, anger, or their partner's characteristics.…”

Domestic Violence Perpetrator Programs: A Proposal for Evidence-Based Standards in the United States

“…For instance, progress toward reducing frequency of physical and nonphysical abuse behaviors can be assisted with administration of either the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2) or the original Conflict Tactics Scales in combination with a validated measure of emotional abuse and control, such as the Controlling and Abusive Tactics (CAT) Questionnaire (Hamel, Jones, Dutton, & Graham-Kevan, 2015), the Multidimensional Measure of Emotional Abuse (MMEA; Murphy & Hoover, 2001), or the Measure of Psychologically Abusive Behaviors (MPAB; Follingstad, 2011). Other useful instruments include the Safe at Home questionnaires based on the transtheoretical stages of change theory, which gauges a client's willingness to change and take responsibility for his or her behavior (Sielski, Begun, & Hamel, 2015); the Experiences in Close Relationships Questionnaire-Revised (ECR-R; Fraley, Waller, & Brennan, 2000), useful for identifying insecure romantic attachment (fear of abandonment or avoidance of intimacy); and the Reasons for Violence Scale, which identifies both expressive and instrumental motives among offenders (G. L. Stuart, Moore, Gordon, Hellmuth, et al, 2006).…”