Domestic Abuse, Homicide and Gender

Strategies for Policy and Practice

J. Monckton-Smith, A. Williams, F. Mullane

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137307415
• eBook ISBN: 9781137307439
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

Based on research with frontline professionals and domestic abuse and homicide victims, this book argues for a re-conceptualisation of the female victim to enhance safety management and encourage a deeper understanding of the emotional dynamics and social structures which perpetuate violence.

1

An Introduction

In March 2014 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) published a report into the police response to domestic abuse in England and Wales. They inspected all 43 Home Office funded police services, and concluded that only eight gave a good service to victims. They claimed that domestic abuse was a priority on paper, but not in practice, despite the fact that most police forces and most Police and Crime Commissioners stated it as a priority. HMIC (2014) state that from the evidence collected, domestic abuse is treated as a poor relation to other types of crime. One of the key criticisms was that officers did not have the skills or knowledge necessary to respond to domestic abuse. This was a severe criticism and, given that domestic homicide of women by their intimate partners remains the biggest single female category of homicide, there are serious repercussions for victims.

Sweetnam’s (2013) personal account of where domestic abuse hurts is a sobering article and illustrates how abuse and control take over every aspect of the victim. This leaves them with few choices and less room for action. This kind of abuse and control has been variously described as everyday or intimate terrorism (Pain 2013) or compared to hostage taking (Stark 2007). These terms capture how fear is used to maintain control more efficiently than terms like domestic abuse or violence that have very strong associations with overt violence and anger, which seem to be intractable. Victims of everyday terrorism, or IPA, or domestic abuse, whichever terminology is used, are frequently misunderstood by all the agencies they come into contact with. It should be remembered, and HMIC acknowledge this, that it is more than the police response that needs improving. Very often the police take the majority of the criticism for the official response, while other professionals do not have the same expectation placed upon them to deal with domestic abuse effectively, or even appropriately. Health services, for example, may practice what is called Routine Enquiry (RE), and some of them, notably paramedics, may also deal with emergency situations, often with the police. But there is not the same high profile scrutiny of their effectiveness in dealing with domestic abuse. No one is really dealing well with domestic abuse, and much of the blame for this is put on the shoulders of the victims themselves.

Domestic abuse is quite a broad category, but we wish to focus on the biggest type, and one which seems to cause the most frustration among professionals and public, which results in most deaths and life-altering control, and is not only a local problem, but is significant nationally and globally. A second reason for focusing on one category is that different categories of abuse and homicide have different dynamics, motivations and outcomes, so to discuss the problems at a detailed enough level there is a need to focus. Our focus for this research is on women as victims of Intimate Partner Abuse, where the perpetrators were men. Some of the issues are relevant across many categories of abuse, but we just want to make it clear that our suggestions may be more relevant to female victims with male abusers, although this is not necessarily always the case. Some problems are the same across different categories. After a session we delivered to police officers and PCSOs on domestic homicide a male officer disclosed to us that he had been the victim of abuse and control by his former wife. This officer was clearly distressed by the memory, and told a story of terrible psychological suffering and hateful bullying. It was a solemn reminder that abuse is widespread, and can be suffered by a diverse number of victim groups. Whilst the motivations of the perpetrators may vary across different types of abuse, the damage to the health and wellbeing of the victim, and to society, is the same. Throughout the book we will refer to domestic abuse, and sometimes more specifically to Intimate Partner Abuse (IPA), domestic homicide and Intimate Partner Femicide (IPF). We will refer to men who abuse as either perpetrators or abusers. We refer to women who are abused, as victims. We cannot, for obvious reasons, use the term survivor, which is often preferred by those victims who did survive. We refer to men and women specifically because we are discussing coercive control and male motivation. However, our recommendations should be a good basic framework for responding to any victim of any kind of abuse.

The most important outcome of this research was to align the victim’s perspective as told to us, with the professional perspective, as told to us. We interviewed widely with victims of abuse, and the families of homicide victims, as well as interviewing police officers, paramedics and police support staff. This was achieved through convenience sampling, and was a particularly effective method for us because we come into contact with professionals and victims on a daily basis. For example, we spoke with victims as they presented to us in our professional roles, or they were students of ours, or friends, or patients. Women were keen to talk to us, even those who were currently suffering abuse. Not all our conversations were formal, some were snatched in corridors or ladies toilets, some were more structured and conventional. Similarly, when we spoke with professionals we talked when we could, rather than having a particular formal schedule all the time, though in some cases there were formal focus groups. We found ourselves talking about domestic abuse to a lot of people, because a lot of people come across abuse in their work and their lives. When people know you work in this area they will sometimes disclose their past or present troubles, and it saddens us to say that it is more widespread than we thought. We came across many women abused by their intimate partners, but we also heard stories of men and women abused by their mothers or fathers, and sometimes sons or daughters. Elder abuse is a growing problem (Muller 2014) and many women, as well as men, are involved in this type of abuse. Domestic abuse is about power relationships. It can only be practised when one person has power over another, not only physical power, but possibly financial, emotional, political or structural. This may be a partial explanation for why women are not as well represented as men as intimate partner abusers, they don’t have the necessary physical, political or structural power. But we do see domestic abuse perpetrated by women where they do have power over others, as in elder abuse or abuse of children, or other vulnerable family members. Women often have a role in perpetuating and assisting in, so-called, honour violence.

We want to differentiate between domestic arguing, which may or may not include violence, and domestic abuse, which is achieved through control through fear. Domestic arguing is commonplace, and many men and women assault each other without there being ongoing coercive control and abuse. This is the area in which we find most bilateral violence (BV), which is sometimes confused with domestic abuse. It is when the violence is used as a means of control, that it is domestic abuse. We really must differentiate. Domestic arguing and domestic abuse seem to come under the umbrella term of ‘domestics’ and this is lowering the status of domestic abuse and its seriousness (Pence and Sadusky 2009). We do not suggest that domestic arguing should not be taken seriously, we do suggest the motivations and dynamics are different from abuse through coercive control. Abuse of power happens all the time, but domestic abuse in this context occurs when that abuse becomes controlling and is maintained by fear. This is why the language of everyday terrorism is pertinent (Pain 2014, Sloan-Lynch 2012). We focus on women as victims of intimate partner abuse because it is so widespread; because it reflects the relative inequality in power between male and female roles in a family or relationship; and because of the way certain men use fear either to keep women from leaving them or retaining them as their exclusive sexual or domestic commodity.

In initial interviews with professionals, and to get a feel for the problems and perceptions of domestic abuse and, more specifically for our purposes, of Intimate Partner Abuse (IPA), we asked them to tell us what frustrated them most about responding to domestic abuse. We kept coming across two key complaints: ‘Why doesn’t she just leave?’ and ‘Why won’t she support a prosecution?’ Such was the ubiquity of these complaints that we felt we wanted to address them. In our initial interviews with victims and their families, we asked them how they managed their safety on a day to day basis. Equal amounts of frustration were expressed as in the professional response to IPA. Police were seen as uncaring, as easily manipulated by abusers, and as disbelieving victims. However, the victims were also quite clear on how they managed their safety, and they all had variations of the same basic strategy, that was to demonstrate devotion. This so closely aligns with abuser anxieties about abandonment and rejection that we could see how the power relationship thrived on such an exchange. He demands devotion, she demonstrates it; but it is a dysfunctional need in him, and a dysfunctional fear-driven response by her. No one is thriving in this traumatic exchange. He will feel more and more anxious and paranoid, adding to his problems, and she will become more and more fearful and desperate to leave, though unable to achieve it (Pain 2014, Brown et al. 2010, Websdale 2010, Liem and Roberts 2009, Starzomski and Nussbaum 2000).

Gathering data was an enlightening journey, full of contradiction and complexity, and our work certainly raises many more questions for our communities, our professionals and our legislature about their perceptions of IPA than it could ever answer. It is also true that the subject is much bigger than could be discussed adequately in this text. So we decided to focus very clearly on two areas for data gathering and analysis, and on two issues for discussion in the context of IPA as a specific category of domestic abuse.

First, in respect of talking about frustrations when responding to domestic abuse, we decided to keep this focused on the point of first contact. This largely meant we contained our discussions within the context of a 999 call for help from police or paramedics. We felt that, whilst there are other dimensions and different responses further along the line, discussions with professionals of the two questions in this initial response context, were relevant at all stages of the criminal justice process. We have also included a summary of some research, with kind permission of Ali Morris in Chapter 5, which mirrors our own in some respects and had similar findings. So in this respect we sought peer validation. Our second point for data gathering was to speak widely with victims, and the families of deceased victims, to explore safety strategy and how or why they don’t always leave abusers immediately, or won’t always support prosecutions. We did not simply ask women to answer these two questions, we took the position that the women were more than likely to be using strategies to keep themselves safe which impacted on their decision whether to leave or whether to support a prosecution. So we talked to victims about their strategies to stay safe in order to try and understand what managing a dangerous man is like on a day to day basis. The findings were edifying. They address the two key complaints made by professionals and reveal a disconnection between the victim’s perspective and the professional’s perspective. We include validating findings for this part of our research in Chapter 8, kindly written and provided by Frank Mullane.

We found that many of the problems and frustrations can be framed within a discussion of status and strategy. So this is how we frame our analysis. This book does not set itself up to provide all the answers for responding to domestic abuse, but it does begin to suggest an alternative model for understanding victims and perpetrators, and makes some tentative recommendations for future practice, which we hope will, at the very least, provoke more research and discussion. More than anything we want to align professional and victim perspectives since the disconnect is dangerous and debilitating for victims. It may exacerbate the problems they experience, and it is certainly not helping to reduce the number of homicides.

This book has been a long journey, bringing together many agendas and perspectives. It is written by a criminologist (with some police experience), and a paramedic (with training experience) and Frank Mullane, who is a professional in the area of domestic homicide and a victim’s advocate, as well as being an indirect victim of domestic homicide himself. We were able to have conversations with experts in the area from around the world and are grateful for comments provided by Evan Stark, Neil Websdale and Jacquelyn Campbell. The perspectives in this book are quite wide. It was a dynamic process and the learning was ongoing, and because of this the publishers were presented with quite a different book from that first proposed. We always knew that we wanted the book to be read by professionals, victims, their families, students, academics and any other interested party; quite a broad remit, and we think we have managed to present our findings in a way that is accessible and relevant to all.

Because we have focused clearly on status and strategy, there are many issues we have not discussed. When we talk about a victim’s reluctance to disclose abuse we frame our arguments in the language of chronic fear, though we acknowledge there are often more complex barriers in play, including shame, loyalty, gender identity and family unity (Othman et al. 2014). We also acknowledge that we have not openly discussed the differing experiences of women from minority ethnic groups, disabled women, lesbian women, middle class or privileged women, transgender women, older or younger women, and the multitude of quite different groups which may each have a unique perspective. We have tried to talk about gender and the general differences in power and identity between men and women, and the discursive norms that polarise men and women. However, we believe that many of the issues we discuss will be relevant across groups, but are mindful that development of our recommendations may need bespoke tailoring in the future. We have talked about a general and quite universal strategy that women said they used to stay safe and manage their abuse. We have also talked about more status for women as victims in the way they are treated, and the way they are perceived and assessed.

We use Foucault’s ideas of discourse as a medium for creating meaning to structure our analysis, whilst at the same time taking a woman-centred view, which draws from the second and third waves of feminism, and celebrates the developing successes of fourth and fifth wave feminism. This book, however, is not heavy with theoretical dialogue, and this is purposeful too. We are bordering on polemicism in places, engaged with organisational agendas in others, deeply concerned with victim experience and strategy in large part, and use a decisively practical focus throughout. We wanted to write the book we had been asked to write by victims and professionals as we completed this journey, a book for victims and professionals to read and draw understanding from. We are clear in our aims: we want to align the victim and professional perspectives to build a better response to domestic abuse calls for help, and to resist the dominant discursive constructions of the abuse, the abused and the abuser.

Structure of the book

We begin this book by discussing status and quite clearly identifying exactly where and how domestic abuse and its victims lose status. We also consider the idea that if the definition for abuse is re-written then of necessity we must re-write the abused and the abuser. Professor Evan Stark’s (2013) assertion that we must raise the status of domestic abuse in order to end it, will frame the arguments presented. We seek to try and rebuild our collective idea of both abusers and victims, drawing largely from those women who have been abused, but also from practitioners and professionals involved in delivering services to victims of abuse. Research has suggested that it is the victim who knows the abuser and his practices the best, but who is the least listened to (Monckton Smith 2012). This book, this research, does not seek to build a psychological profile of the abuser, but it will suggest that he is not ‘any man’ and that there are many psychological and psycho-social models to draw from. Neither does this research seek to build a psychological profile of the victim, but we do talk about chronic fear and the practicalities of living with abuse, how it is managed, and why it is so difficult to leave. We argue that a shift in perceptions of abused and abuser could be the catalyst for forming more effective methods to deal with domestic abuse and raising the status of the abuse and the victim.

We have just presented the framework for the arguments explored in this book. In the following chapters we will develop those ideas drawing on interviews with victims, families and friends of victims (of victims both alive and deceased), professionals, practitioners, and researchers: Chapter 1, this chapter, introduces the context in which this book explores the issue of domestic abuse and defines what we mean by the terms; Chapter 2 is a discussion of status and introduces the idea of Foucauldian discourse, and how the dominant discourse of domestic abuse, or IPA, reduces the status of the abuse and its victims. We describe in detail how status is lost. In Chapter 3 we begin to resist the dominant discourses and contemplate a different discursive approach, framing our discussion around the new definition for domestic abuse; with a consideration of status; Chapter 4 gives an overview of the scale and nature of domestic homicide, who the abusers are, and how victims are responded to; Chapter 5 looks at some current domestic abuse policy and practice, with a particular focus on paramedics in Wales and on police officers more generally; Chapter 6 considers the things said to us by professionals who respond to domestic abuse, specifically police officers, paramedics and support staff. We present a discussion of their frustrations and experiences drawn from interviews and focus groups. In Chapter 7 we present comments made to us by victims of abuse, and by the families of deceased victims. The focus in this chapter is the victim’s day to day experiences and how they manage their safety. Chapter 8 is written by Frank Mullane, who talks about the status of the friends and families of domestic homicide victims, that is women who are dead as a result of abuse. Comments about experience, and recommendations for future practice, structure this chapter. Chapter 9 considers everything said to us by many different professionals, victims and victim’s families about the frontline response of professionals to domestic abuse. We align the different perspectives and, with a consideration of the extant research, we make some tentative recommendations for future practice. These recommendations construct the victim as rational and justified in the decisions she makes. We resist the idea that she is a problem, and put together suggestions for a Domestic Abuse Toolkit for first responders. This toolkit is now available for use by multiple agencies.

In summary, we argue that we need to raise the status of the abuse and of the victim. This position is the catalyst for the arguments which focus on reconstructing our collective understanding of domestic abuse and IPA, in line with the new definition for domestic abuse. It is still the case that many, if not most, social care and criminal justice professionals do not recognise abuse or its victims and perpetrators. There are a huge number of misconceptions and misunderstandings about domestic abuse and its practice, largely perpetuated in dominant discourses (Peters 2008, Stark 2007). Even though the definition has changed, none of the stereotypes or prejudices have been meaningfully challenged in media, criminal justice or culture. If the abuse has been re-written we need to seriously attempt to re-write the actors, at least for our purposes, at the level of criminal justice intervention. Many debates about domestic abuse revolve around the criminal jus...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  An Introduction
• 2  Status
• 3  Status: New Definition, New Thinking
• 4  The Problem of Domestic Abuse and Homicide
• 5  Police and Paramedics: Policy and Practice
• 6  Interviews with Professionals
• 7  Interviews with Victims
• 8  The Lesser Status of Families
• 9  Recommendations and the Domestic Abuse First Responder Toolkit
• Appendix 1: Domestic Abuse First Responder Toolkit
• Notes
• References
• Index