Abstract
Research has consistently documented that situational characteristics of a crime influence the likelihood that a victim will report the offense to the police. This is particularly true for sexual assault, a crime for which situational characteristics are also strongly correlated with rape myths. But as Nicole Heath, Shannon Lynch, April Fritch, and Maria Wong point out, there are no studies of the relationship between acceptance of rape myths on the part of rape victims and their likelihood of reporting the crime to the police. Heath and her colleagues undertook such a study with a sample of women from a population shown to have high rates of sexual assault: women in prison. In their article, which opens this issue of Violence Against Women, we find that the women in their sample—all rape survivors—did not endorse many rape myths, but among those who did, the more rape myths endorsed, the less likely the victim was to have reported the assault to the police.
David Hirschel and Eve Buzawa in their article examine police responses to the crime of intimate partner violence (IPV). Specifically, Hirschel and Buzawa studied how leaving the scene of the crime affects likelihood of arrest of IPV offenders. The researchers analyzed data from 25 police departments across four states and found that leaving the scene was the most significant factor affecting police decisions to arrest; IPV offenders who fled were 5 times less likely to be arrested than those who remained at the scene. Importantly, Hirschel and Buzawa report that those offenders who flee tend to be more violent than those who stay, yet the police do not usually seek warrants for their arrest. As they note, this finding may indicate that the police still do not take IPV as seriously as other crimes, which has significant implications for victims’ safety.
The remainder of the articles in this issue also address IPV. Carol Rivas, Moira Kelly, and Gene Feder discuss the findings of their study of how African, Caribbean, and White women in Great Britain deal with the psychological abuse of their intimate partners. Rivas et al. apply the theoretical frame of “doing gender” to the women’s narratives, showing how the women prioritized establishing and maintaining their competency in the role of “good partner” and set boundaries for their abusers’ behaviors as “normal” or “acceptable.” The latter, however, often challenged the women’s competence, leading them to seek help from various service providers.
Rob Stephenson, Amy Winter, and Michelle Hindin examine the frequency of various types of IPV (physical, verbal, and sexual) and mental health among 6,303 rural married women in four states in India, using data from the 2002-2003 National Family Health Survey-2 Follow-Up. Their analysis shows that experiences of all three types of IPV have negative effects on victims’ mental health in these resource-poor settings, and they urge health care providers to screen for IPV among women who seek mental health services.
Banu Akadlı Ergöçmen, İlknur Yüksel-Kaptanoğlu, and Henrica Jansen, in their article, turn our attention to the IPV experiences of Turkish women, using data from the National Research on Domestic Violence Against Women in Turkey study. The researchers focused on frequency and severity of physical IPV experienced by the women in the study sample and found that more than one third of the women reported experiencing IPV with nearly 50% of these women reporting severe physical abuse. But despite the high incidence of serious physical violence among the women in the sample, Ergöçmen et al. found that most of the women who had been victimized tried to informally “manage” the violence rather than utilize formal, institutionalized sources of help.
And finally, Valli Kalei Kanuha discusses her qualitative study of IPV among Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian (APINH) queer women and lesbians. Kanuha interviewed 24 APINH women and identified seven themes in the data, including how the intense emotional intimacy of the relationships affects the abuse and victims’ understanding of their abuse experiences, and how shame can prevent queer and lesbian victims from seeking help. Although research on IPV in queer and lesbian relationships has increased and grown more sophisticated over the past 20 years, Kanuha rightly calls for future studies to continue to expand the focus on how race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity intersect to affect IPV perpetration and victimization.