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How Victims Suffer A 39-year-old nurse who is the mother of two boys is attacked by her estranged husband. He breaks into her house, beats her with a baseball bat, and then he squirts industrial strength lye on her from a plastic bottle. She is burned beyond recognition. What 290 CH APT ER 9 Copyright […]

Blaming Her for His Violent Outbursts The battered women’s self-help movement initially encountered resistance and opposition because of the widespread acceptance of victim-blaming argu- ments that portrayed beaten wives unsympathetically. Many people, including some counselors and family therapists, believed that a high proportion of beatings were unconsciously precipitated or even intentionally provoked. The wives who

VIOLENCE WITHIN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS AND FAMILIES Domestic violence affects every American. It harms our communities, weakens the foundation of our nation, and hurts those we love most. It is an affront to our basic decency and humanity, and it must end…we acknowledge the progress made in reducing these shameful crimes…and recognize that more work remains

Abuse of Adolescents by Parents The fact that even teenagers can be abused by their parents used to be overlooked entirely or subsumed under the heading “child abuse” and then neglected in favor of a focus on the very young and totally helpless. Attempts to define and measure abuse become confusing because of cultural ambivalence

PROACTIVE VERSUS REACTIVE STRATEGIES Strategies to prevent children from being abused take many forms. Proactive approaches attempt to prevent abuse from taking place. They range from screening potential child care workers to weed out known molesters, setting up help lines and crisis nurseries where parents can drop off their children if they feel they are

Devising Child-Friendly Practices Besides credibility, another special problem requires a special solution: Testifying in legal proceedings can add to the suffering of victimized children. To avoid further traumatizing these youngsters, the idea of developing a child-friendly courtroom setting and protocol quickly caught on (see Libai, 1969). The right to a public trial always has protected

The Credibility of Children as Witnesses A 15-year-old boy testifies that a world-renowned pop singer invited him to his mansion for sleepover parties, got him drunk, and then molested him on several occasions two years earlier while he was undergoing treatment for cancer. The boy’s younger brother takes the stand and claims he saw the

ABUSED CHILDREN AND LEGAL PROCEEDINGS Children who survive kidnappings or endure phys- ical and sexual abuse need to bring their problems to the attention of the authorities. Detectives and prosecutors must test the veracity of their accounts in a sensitive manner. If their charges seem credible and adults are arrested on the basis of their

Strange Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse During Rituals A deputy sheriff is arrested and charged with sexually abusing his two daughters, now 18 and 22. Soon the charges emanating from the devoutly religious 22-year-old (who has a history of making unsubstantiated complaints about sexual abuse) grow to alarming proportions: she claims to have attended 850

The Furor over Recalling Repressed Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse A therapist who is also a sociologist writes a memoir in which she claims that she can now remember how her father abused her when she was a little girl. She believes she has finally figured out why she suffered pain and bleeding between her