This article assesses the possible association between stepfatherhood and violence against wives in Hamilton, Ontario. The sample population comprised women who sought refuge from abusive male partners at a shelter for abused women and their children during 1986-87. Comparing shelter data for 1986-87 with survey data for 1983, results showed that steprelationship was not a correlate of either ...

INTRODUCTION Women's sexuality is influenced by their perceptions of their bodies. Negative body appraisals have been implicated in the development and maintenance of sexual concerns in women with a history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). The sexuality of these women is often expressed in extremes of approach and avoidant sexual tendencies, which have been related to the sexual inhibition and ...

Prosecutors have increasingly adopted mandatory prosecution in domestic violence criminal cases. There is little empirical evidence, however, that the policy is a good match for victims' needs. Interviews with 94 battered women, whose cases were randomly selected from prosecutors' files, focused on their opinions of prosecuting. A logistic regression explores the factors that predict whether vi...

Policymakers are increasingly focusing on children exposed to domestic violence. The 1999 Minnesota legislature amended the definition of child neglect to include a child's exposure to family violence. What was initially seen as a simple change to bring more attention to children exposed to domestic violence resulted in great turmoil across Minnesota's county-run child protection system. Referr...

Mothers and domestic violence advocates have been complaining for many years about problems in the custody court system that have resulted in large numbers of children being sent to live with abusive fathers while safe, protective mothers are denied any meaningful relationship with their children. Courts have tended to dismiss the complaints by referring to the mothers as “disgruntled litigants...

This study examined how being abused by a current partner versus an ex-partner might affect psychological well-being and social support in a community sample of 398 women, half of whom had experienced abuse in the past 6 months. The impact of emotional and physical abuse was influenced by partner status, with emotional abuse being more detrimental to women abused by current partners and physica...

People are rarely passive, and battered women are no exception. This study investigated the types of coping strategies women of Japanese descent (both Japan-born and U.S.-born) chose and their perceived effectiveness in dealing with their partners' violence. Japan-born respondents were significantly less likely to use "active" strategies and perceived them to be less effective than did U.S.-bor...

Researchers have shown that mood and sense of control over one's life are significantly affected by testimony and other forms of disclosure and that learning to control breathing has positive effects on mood and anxiety. This preliminary experiment tests whether African American and European American abused women who give testimony about their experiences of intimate partner violence and learn ...

Self-concept, anxiety level, and problem behavior of 65 child residents of a battered women's shelter were assessed using self-report measures and checklists completed by mothers, staff, and teachers. Findings included a below-average self-concept score for the preschool group, more aggressive behavior in school-age shelter boys than in girls, and a pervasive tendency for mothers to rate their ...

OBJECTIVE To determine the barriers to identification and management of domestic violence from the battered women's perspective. DESIGN Qualitative research methods using semistructured focus groups. SETTING Urban and suburban community-based organizations serving women and their families in the San Francisco Bay (Calif) area. PARTICIPANTS Fifty-one women with histories of domestic violen...