Abstract
Several of the articles in this issue of Violence Against Women focus on intimate partner violence among Hispanic populations. Rosa Gonzalez-Guarda, Amber Vermeesch, Aubrey Florom-Smith, Brian McCabe, and Nilda Peragalla open the issue by demonstrating through their study the importance of distinguishing among different groups of Hispanics when considering risk and protective factors for IPV as well as when developing interventions for Hispanic women who have been victimized by IPV. Specifically, Gonzalez-Guarda and her colleagues report that their path analyses of data collected from Latinas in the United States show differences in IPV between Columbian women and women from other countries in Central and South America. Gonzalez-Guarda et al. examined a variety of factors that might account for these differences, but the only significant factor they identified was self-esteem. They encourage researchers and practitioners to pay greater attention to differences across Hispanic groups with unique backgrounds and cultures that could affect their experiences of IPV as well as the efficacy of programs to address this problem—a point to which we will return shortly.
Sonia Frías focuses on the help-seeking behavior of IPV victims in Mexico. Through surveys of women who had experienced physical and/or sexual violence, and interviews with professionals from various fields, Frías discusses why some women choose to seek help from the police and law enforcement agencies and how they rate the quality of the help they received. Frías reports that women who experienced sexual violence and women who were cohabiting with their partners had the least satisfactory interactions with the police and other law enforcement agencies. Nevertheless, the majority of the women surveyed who sought help from these sources gave them relatively positive evaluations. Frías explains these findings, drawing on the data from the professionals she interviewed as well as the data from IPV victims who chose not to go to the police or other law enforcement agencies for help. Her discussion indicates that despite legislative reforms in Mexico, a good deal of work still must be done to ensure that Mexican women who experience IPV are treated justly by the police and law enforcement agencies.
Jenniffer Miranda, Nuriade de la Osa, Roser Granero, and Lourdes Ezpeleta conducted research in Spain with mothers and their children, aged 8 to 17, who were receiving treatment for various psychosocial difficulties. Miranda and her colleagues examined the relationships between mothers’ experiences of child abuse and IPV and their children’s psychosocial difficulties, including whether the mothers’ mental health mediated these relationships. They report that the mothers’ depressive symptoms mediated the relationships, regardless of the child’s sex. Their findings have important implications for practitioners, who may be treating women who have experienced IPV or children exhibiting psychosocial difficulties, indicating the need for treatment programs that simultaneously address both mothers and their children.
Ingrid Semaan, Jana Jasinski, and Anne Bubriski-McKenzie also discuss mothering by women who have experienced IPV, but for whom the abusive relationship has ended. Their qualitative study examines how mothering may be a source of empowerment for battered women in terms of giving the women a positive sense of self despite their abusers’ denigration of them and also by motivating them to leave the abuser. A number of studies have shown that the abusive partner’s potential or actual harm to the woman’s children is frequently cited by women who have been abused as the primary motivator for ending the relationship. Semaan and her colleagues confirm this finding, but the women in their study also reported other reasons for leaving the abuser. Semaan et al. note that for all the women, motherhood was clearly significant, but it was not the sole and, in some cases, not even the main reason the women ended the abusive relationship. Their research provides a more comprehensive picture of the role of mothering in sustaining women through abuse and motivating them to leave abusive partners.
Patrizia Romito, Lucia Beltramini, and Vicenta Escribà-Agüir studied the health impact of teen dating violence among an adolescent sample in northern Italy. Their research makes several significant contributions to the teen dating violence literature. First, they note that a number of studies of teen dating violence indicate that girls are at least as abusive—in some cases, more abusive—than boys. Romito et al., however, make the important point that many of these studies provide very narrow definitions of “abuse” and use limited measures. Their study includes measures of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse and coercion. Second, many studies have documented the negative effects of experiencing teen dating violence on both girls and boys, but most indicate that girls’ experiences of IPV are more deleterious than that of boys. Romito et al. add two significant dimensions to this research: (a) they test for multiple types of negative impacts, including depression, panic attacks, eating problems, and suicidal ideation; and (b) they consider whether other traumas in the girls’ and boys’ lives could be contributing to any observed gender differences in health outcomes. Romito et al. also test the “female vulnerability hypothesis”—that is, the idea that females are simply more vulnerable to abuse—versus the “contextual vulnerability hypothesis,” which argues that females experience more negative consequences from abuse because they are subjected to more abuse and to more severe abuse.
Romito et al.’s findings lend support to previous studies that have documented the alarmingly high incidence of teen dating violence for both girls and boys, but their findings also show that girls experience more psychological and sexual dating violence. Moreover, Romito et al.’s findings indicate that, after controlling for other traumas and potentially confounding factors, girls experienced significantly more negative health effects from teen dating violence. It may be that boys did not feel comfortable disclosing the negative impact IPV had on them; most indicated that they were not bothered or frightened by it. But Romito et al.’s results offer considerable support for the contextual vulnerability hypothesis in that they show that girls not only experience more violence but they also experience more types of violence and more severe violence than boys.
In the final article in this issue, José Rubén Parra-Cardona and his colleagues discuss the results of their evaluation of a culturally competent and feminist-informed intervention for Latino men who batter. Parra-Cardona et al. take pains to explain that we should be cautious in interpreting their findings because they are based solely on the batterers’ assessments of the program and are not confirmed by the batterers’ partners. Consequently, we should not assume that the men’s responses are indicative of the cessation of their abusive behavior. Nonetheless, I found the men’s statements very encouraging. Particularly interesting to me was the finding that, unlike what some other researchers have reported, the men in Parra-Cardone et al.’s study were not put off by the curriculum that supported egalitarian gender relations. Just as Gonzalez-Guarda and her colleagues emphasized the need for culturally competent programming for Latina victims of IPV, Parra-Cardone et al.’s evaluation shows the tremendous promise of culturally competent and feminist-grounded programming for Latino perpetrators of IPV.
This issue of VAW concludes with a survivor essay by Stephanie Sweetnam. Sweetnam raises the question, “Where do you think domestic abuse hurts the most?” and her answers refute many popular stereotypes about the harm inflicted by abusive intimate partners. As Sweetnam so compellingly points out, the visible, physical injuries from IPV—the injuries that most people think of when they think of partner abuse—heal fairly quickly. It is the psychological harm that is more long lasting. Yet Sweetnam’s essay also resonates with the strength and resilience of many women who have experienced intimate partner violence. I plan to assign this essay to the students in my Family Violence seminar since it summarizes both the pain of IPV and the irrepressibility of survivors.