Violence against Women

Criminological perspectives on men's violences

Nicole Westmarland

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317667629
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Violence against women is an enduring problem around the globe, yet very few books look at the full range of men's violences against women – perpetrated in relationships, in the family, in public spaces, and in institutions. While books that look at different types of violence, such as domestic violence, 'honour' based violence and rape in isolation are useful for depth, it is only by looking across these different spheres that the true extent of men's violences against women becomes clear. This book usefully covers all of the main forms of violence against women, looking at it from a research, policy, and practice perspective.

Including discussion of fifteen different types of violence against women, this book is original in offering an introduction to such a broad range of topics, and for including chapters on violences that have rarely been written about, as well as those that are more commonly discussed and those that have been sidelined in recent years. By bringing together work on violence against women committed by partners, family members, strangers, acquaintances, institutions and businesses, this book widens the lens through which we view men's violences against women.

Violence against Women is essential reading for criminologists and sociologists who want to be up to date with cutting-edge knowledge on this topic. It is also an invaluable text for those training to enter or become qualified in the specialist domestic and sexual violence sector.

PART 1 Men's violences in relationships

This Part is about violence that is perpetrated against women by their partners – sometimes called intimate partner violence (IPV), domestic violence, domestic abuse or, in the USA, wife battering. For clarity, I prefer the term partner violence here rather than the more commonly used British terms ‘domestic violence’ and ‘domestic abuse’. This is because over the years what the term ‘domestic violence’ covers has significantly widened, to include for example violence by other family members (this is described later), whereas this Part is specifically about violence and abuse within intimate partner relationships. On some occasions however, for example when referring to the work of others, the term ‘partner violence’ will be used interchangeably with ‘domestic violence/abuse’. As in the other Parts, the focus here is on men's violence against women, though this is not to deny or excuse the existence of women's violence against men or other women, or male violence against other men as intimate partners.

The chapters in this Part look at different types of partner violence, starting with partner homicide in Chapter 1. While partner homicide is clearly the most serious, as it results in loss of life for the woman and has devastating life-long consequences for other family members, the other chapters are not ordered by seriousness, in acknowledgement that different forms of violence in different contexts can have different impacts on individual women. In other words, while on the face of it physical violence might appear to be more serious than some forms of psychological abuse such as name-calling and general ‘putting down’, this is not necessarily the way all women experience it and the context of violence is important. For example, a single incident of physical violence from a dating partner might not have as much an impact on a woman's life as 30 years of emotional abuse and bullying in a marriage.

Physical violence, sexual violence and psychological and financial abuse are considered in the chapters that follow (Chapters 2, 3 and 4). The nature and extent of the forms of violence are discussed, along with key policies, laws, cases and research, followed by a selection of policy and practice responses. Most of the responses described are applicable to different forms of partner violence, so are presented in the chapter they seem to fit best.

Defining domestic violence and partner violence

The term ‘domestic violence’ started to be used in the mid-1970s (Kelly, 1988) to describe violence and abuse within intimate relationships. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, having a definition of domestic violence that organizations were working from had become important. At first most domestic violence definitions (including the Home Office's) tended to refer only to violence within intimate partner relationships (Hester and Westmarland, 2005). However, from the mid-2000s onwards there was a move towards the inclusion of violence against other family members (e.g. child-to-parent violence), including so-called ‘honour’ violence, forced marriage, and occasionally female genital mutilation as well. Later, definitions started to include a more explicit recognition that violence and abuse also occur within same-sex relationships. There has also been a move by some (predominantly local authorities) to use the term ‘domestic abuse’ instead of ‘domestic violence’ in recognition that many of the behaviours listed within the definitions do not involve physical violence. For others, however, it remains important to name the physical and non-physical ways in which men threaten, abuse and restrict women as ‘violence’ rather than ‘abuse’.

Until recently,Women's Aid defined domestic violence as:

... physical, sexual, psychological or financial violence that takes place within an intimate or family-type relationship and that forms a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour. This can include forced marriage and so-called ‘honour crimes’. Domestic violence may include a range of abusive behaviours, not all of which are in themselves inherently ‘violent’.

(Women's Aid website, accessed January 2014)

The HM Government ‘cross-government definition’ (which all departments have agreed on) developed over time and ended up in a place similar to the Women's Aid one for a time. The cross-government definition between 2005 and 2013 was:

[a]ny incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between adults who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality.This includes issues of concern to black and minority ethnic (BME) communities such as so called ‘honour based violence’, female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriage.

(Home Office, 2012)

In March 2013, the government expanded this definition, to include more information about the tactics that underpin partner violence:

[a]ny incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. This can encompass, but is not limited to, the following types of abuse:

• psychological
• physical
• sexual
• financial
• emotional.
• Controlling behaviour is: a range of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour.
• Coercive behaviour is: an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim. ...
  • [This] definition, which is not a legal definition, includes so called ‘honour’ based violence, female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriage, and is clear that victims are not confined to one gender or ethnic group.

(Home Office, 2013: 2)

The two key changes in this government definition are (a) reducing the age of responsibility from 18 to 16 and (b) including coercive and controlling behaviour within the definition. In a consultation about the definition of domestic violence there was clear support for making these changes (out of 506 responses 90 per cent thought the definition should change; 85 per cent thought 16–17 year olds should be included and 85 per cent thought coercive control should be included). In February 2014 Women's Aid also adopted this definition.

The origins and significance of the inclusion of the terms coercion and control are explained later in this Part (see Chapter 4). For now, suffice it to note that this is the current definition but, crucially, the behaviours within the definition are not necessarily criminal offences, as stated on page 3 of the official summary of responses to the consultation:

This definition is not a statutory or legal definition; therefore, any change to the definition would not mean a change in the law. It is used by Government departments to inform policy development and other agencies such as the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the UK Border Agency to inform the identification of domestic violence cases.

(Home Office, 2012)

Therefore, only some behaviours that fall under the definitions (both old and new) of domestic violence are actually offences under the criminal law – there is no single crime of ‘domestic violence’. Instead, perpetrators are arrested and prosecuted for criminal offences that exist regardless of who commits them. Some offences for which partner violence perpetrators are frequently arrested are criminal damage, common assault, actual bodily harm, harassment, threat to kill and theft (Hester and Westmarland, 2006). In other words, a perpetrator might be arrested, charged and convicted for criminal damage within a domestic violence context, but it would be ‘criminal damage’ and not ‘domestic violence’ for which they would be arrested, that would appear on their criminal record and for which they would be sentenced. At the time of writing, a new consultation was under way to consider whether coercive and controlling behaviours within intimate partner relationships should be made a specific criminal offence (Home Office, 2014).

In 2003, the government considered but ultimately decided against introducing a specific offence of ‘domestic violence’ or including it as an aggravating factor when sentencing, arguing that key to ensuring that violence and abuse within the home are treated as seriously as those outside the home is to treat both contexts the same within the criminal justice system_

The Government believes that a separate offence of domestic violence would not necessarily help victims.There is a full range of charging options already.To reduce that range – common assault through to grievous bodily harm, and rape – diminishes the offence.

(HM Government, 2003: 29)

While this approach does have some advantages – for example it allows for a broad range of offences of different levels of seriousness – it has a number of problems in practice.

First, several studies over the last decade have highlighted that perpetrators reported to the police for domestic violence are very unlikely to be convicted and punished for their offence. In a study in the Northumbria Police area in the early 2000s, it was found that only 4 out of 869 domestic violence incidents resulted in the suspect being convicted and given a custodial sentence (this equates to 0.4 per cent of incidents – fewer than one in two hundred) (Hester et al., 2003; Hester, 2006). In a similar study in Bristol, only 7 out of 784 domestic violence incidents resulted in the suspect being convicted and given a custodial sentence (this equates to 0.9 per cent of incidents – fewer than one in a hundred) (Westmarland and Hester, 2006). Critics of these figures point out that not all of these incidents are crimes, and therefore many could never result in a conviction regardless of the effectiveness of the investigation and prosecution. This is more the case for some forms of financial and psychological abuse than for physical and sexual violence. Behaviours such as ‘name-calling’ and ‘continuously putting the victim down’ are common forms of partner violence, covered within the definition of domestic violence, but would be difficult if not impossible to fit within the current criminal justice framework.

Second, a gap between how partner violence is defined in policy and criminal law terms is revealed by contrasting the cumulative nature of domestic violence in the definition and in experience, with the ‘single incident’ focus of the criminal law framework. As Marianne Hester and I pointed out in 2006:

Domestic violence involves patterns of violent and abusive behaviour over time rather than individual acts. However, the criminal justice system is primarily concerned with specific incidents and it can therefore be difficult to apply criminal justice approaches in relation to domestic violence.

(Hester and Westmarland, 2006: 35)

Similarly, Stark highlights that the term ‘domestic violence’ is inherently problematic as a criminal framework:

Viewing woman abuse through the prism of the incident specific and injury-based definition of violence has concealed its major components, dynamics, and effects, including the fact that it is neither ‘domestic’ nor primarily about ‘violence’.

(Stark, 2007: 10)

This is a significant limitation, which means that the criminal justice framework fails to account for the ‘pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour’ that is contained within many definitions of domestic violence. The fact that the definition now refers explicitly to the pattern is a step forward, but is highly limited in an operational sense so long as no changes are made to the criminal law. As mentioned earlier, at the time of writing the Government was considering changing this and introducing a new criminal offence of coercive and controlling behaviour within an intimate partner relationship (Home Office, 2014).

Ethnicity and partner violence

It is important to understand the role that ethnicity plays alongside gender in the perpetration of and responses to male violence against women. Often, ethnicity is only talked about in contexts of family violence and crimes that otherwise disproportionately affect Black, Asian, minority ethnic and refugee women – such as forced marriage and female genit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• PART 1 Men's violences in relationships
• PART 2 Men’s violences in the family
• PART 3 Men’s violences in public spaces
• PART 4 Men’s violences in institutions
• Afterword – on outrage
• Index