Battered Women

Recent estimates indicate that as many as 8.7 million women are beaten in their homes each year. This is an alarming national statistic, but there is hope. This book examines both social work and criminal justice professional's methods of intervention on behalf of battered women escaping from violent relationships. Helping Battered Women fills a major gap in the literature on the subject. The author provides the reader with the most current, comprehensive, empirically-based, and realistic overview of policy and intervention methods of women escaping from violent relationships. This interdisciplinary volume integrates a rich diversity of perspectives by internationally recognized professors and scholars in the fields of social work, clinical psychology, and criminal justice. The authors of each of the individual chapters tackle one of the major social problems of our times--violence against women--in a systematic and sensitive manner. The authors provide a clear and cogent argument for advocacy and social change in battered women's shelters, police precincts, state legislatures, and the nation's criminal courts.

Employs an information science perspective to analyze social service program delivery to abused women. Ordinary citizens face a frustrating and increasingly complex maze of human service agencies when they seek help for everyday problems, even though "one stop" information and referral centers have been established to facilitate information seeking in many communities. This book explores the effectiveness of information and referral agenices in meeting the needs of battered women, and concludes that most available services are inadequate.

Psychological abuse can be as damaging to the psyche as physical abuse can be to the body, yet little is written about this common problem. This book confronts the issue of psychological abuse of women in marriage. Psychological abuse consists of an on-going pattern of domination, oppression, unrealistic expectations, verbal attacking or silent withdrawal within a relationship typically devoid of emotional connection. The author addresses the questions of how and why these women are abused, how the abuse starts and progresses, and in what ways does the process differ from that of physical abuse? Using quotes from survivors of these relationships, Dr. Chang describes life inside one of these relationships and gives treatment recommendations.

Battering relationships often escalate to a point where the battered woman commits homicide. When such homicides occur, attention usually is focused on the final violent encounter; however, Ogle and Jacobs argue, while that act is the last homicidal encounter, it is not the only one. This important study argues that the battering relationship is properly understood as a long-term homicidal process that, if played out to the point that contrition dissipates, is very likely to result in the death of one of the parties. In that context, Ogle and Jacobs posit a social interaction perspective for understanding the situational, cultural, social, and structural forces that work toward maintaining the battering relationship and escalating it to a homicidal end. This book details this theory and explains how to apply it in a trial setting.

In this groundbreaking book, outspoken feminist Ann Russo calls the feminist movement to account for their silence on such 'embarrassing' topics as lesbian battering, lesbian pornography, and racism in the feminist movement. Russo provides a multi-oppression approach to understanding the violence that is done to women, incorporating issues of gender, race, class and sexuality in her analysis.

Each year, more than 2.5 million cases of battering are reported in the Unites States, and as many as 2,000 incidents of abuse turn into murder cases. Every month, more than 50,000 women in the United States seek restraining or protection orders. While many books detail distinguishing characteristics of the abusive relationship, few accounts reveal how some women eventually gather the resources and courage to leave. In a chronicle by turns harrowing and inspiring, Ann Goetting tells how sixteen women finally got away for good. Getting Out recounts not only the stories of their abuse but also the women's life histories leading up to the battering -- and the resources they drew upon to escape. Some of the women here received assistance from compassionate family members -- Lee, for instance, secured support from her parents, who scheduled a holiday trip home for her to get her away from her husband, Tony, whose battering had reached life-threatening dimensions as he became progressively more involved with an outlaw motorcycle gang. Others were saved by a network of friends -- Israeli-born Netiva married an American and escaped after a group of fellow graduate students helped break down the isolation that held her captive. As Goetting explains, leaving is a process rather than an event, often marked along the way by reconciliations and resumption of abuse. But as she and her informants suggest, the process invariably extends back to a critical moment when a decision to leave is made. The life-affirming moment may follow a particularly appalling episode of abuse or arrive in a long-repressed recognition of self-worth garnered from a positive experience at work or in the rearing of a child. Getting Out is a book that some women may read to discover solutions to problems within their own lives and those of people they know. It is also a work that social workers and psychologists who deal with battered women will find singularly informative, and one that will find an audience of readers seeking to understand the lives of women involved with abusive men.

This book provides a comprehensive look at the causes and effects of wife assault and its relationship to criminal justice policy.