Arab Women at the Police Station in Israel: Cultural Crisis and Empowerment

The aim of the present article was to describe and analyze the perceptions and meanings that women survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) from the Arab society in Israel attribute to seeking help at police stations deploying a model of collaborative work between police officers and social workers. Arab women who seek police help experience a disparity between the actions of the police and their own position. The Israel Police acts out of an individualist perception of the rights of IPV survivors and of women as victims of male violence. By contrast, the women's perception derives from a traditional, collectivist culture.

IPV in Traditional Societies

In many traditional collectivist societies with patriarchal cultural norms, IPV is considered a private issue, and women are socialized to believe that they have a duty to protect the unity and reputation of the nuclear and extended family (Estrellado & Loh, 2014; Haj-Yahia, 2000; Rodriguez et al., 2009). In these social dynamics, women experience guilt, shame, and self-blame, which makes them refrain from disclosing the abuse for fear of shameful consequences in the community for themselves and their extended families (Antai & Antai, 2008; Douki et al., 2003; Jayasundara et al., 2014; Pinnewala, 2009). As a result, they cope with abuse through denial, avoidance, passiveness, and helplessness as means of survival).

Because of the above cultural norms, women resolve IPV within the nuclear and extended family, and reject help from formal services (Btoush & Haj-Yahia, 2008; Boy, 2008; Haddad et al., 2011; Haj-Yahia, 2011; Nikparvar et al., 2018; Rizo & Macy, 2011). Acts of rebellion, such as reporting to the police or going to a women's shelter to end the violence tend to stigmatize women, leading to deeper isolation and exclusion from their families and communities (Wilkinson & Hamerschlag, 2005).

Collaboration Between the Police and Social Welfare in Cases of IPV

Research points to the police force and social welfare as effective services for providing formal assistance to survivors of IPV (e.g., Augustyn & Willyard, 2020). The work of police officers and social workers is different, yet complementary: police officers are expected to provide immediate safety and protection for women survivors of IPV, whereas social workers provide a psychosocial service in the long term (Droubie, 2020). Studies indicate awareness within the two systems of the need and the importance of cooperation when coping with IPV, notwithstanding the professional “language barrier” between them (Husso et al., 2020). Patterson and Swan (2019) found IPV to be the social problem that involves the greatest collaboration between the police and social workers because of the daily dynamics of working together in this field.

Police–Social Work Model in the Arab Society in Israel

Understanding the uniqueness of the Arab society in Israel led the Israel Police to place social workers at police stations that serve high concentrations of the Arab population. The social workers assist law-enforcement professionals in coping with emergencies from a socially sensitive perspective. The model has three aims: (a) to provide a holistic, culturally sensitive response for adults who file a complaint with the police about IPV; (b) to strengthen the relationship between police stations and community welfare services under the auspices of the Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs that provide a response to IPV victims; and (c) to increase the range of female and male clients receiving specialized treatment for IPV. Social workers at police stations can use their skills and professional tools to intervene in cases brought to the police and improve the trust relationships between IPV survivors and the police. These social workers are required to adhere to police procedures and must be especially careful not to hinder the investigation. Apart from the challenges involved, the act of filing a complaint can be highly effective in stopping the violence. Because any reference by the social worker to psychological and social complexities might cause the woman to change her mind, social workers at the police station are introduced to the woman only after she has filed the complaint. The social worker can then influence the subsequent interactions of the police with the woman and can refer her for treatment by female Arab social workers who are experts in IPV. In general, the body of research on police social work is relatively scarce. The present study aimed to expand understanding of the experience of Arab women who file a complaint at a police station, in light of the cultural dynamics mentioned above, and of the meaning they ascribe to their encounter there with social workers.

Method

The general question guiding this qualitative study was: What were the experiences and attributed meanings of Arab women survivors of IPV who sought help for the first time at a police station and were referred to a social worker for treatment? The study was conducted following the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach (Smith et al., 2010), based on several principles:

Understanding the individual's world and the participants’ experience as a construct of subjective realities; broadening and deepening, in interviews, the understanding of the women's experiences regarding IPV, seeking police help, and in the aftermath.

IPA researchers attempt an in-depth understanding of the study participants’ subjective reports as expressing socio-cultural meanings. In the present study, developing reflective ability of female Arab IPV survivors.

Using an idiographic approach for an in-depth investigation of each interviewee, together with understanding intersubjective processes.

The researchers reflect on their experiences and assumptions.

The authors’ ethnic background is noteworthy. The first author is an Israeli-Jewish academic with experience as a social worker working with IPV. The second author is an Israeli-Arab social worker and lawyer who works with IPV survivors and shares a common cultural background with the interviewees. This combination enhanced the validity of the interpretations.

Sample

We used purposive criterion sampling (Patton, 2002). Inclusion criteria were: Muslim Arab women who sought police help for the first time and continued treatment with social workers for at least 6 months. Interviews were conducted with 12 Muslim Arab women whose ages ranged 25–42. The participants self-defined as either traditional or religious. Five of the interviewees were employed outside the home and the rest were homemakers. After receiving approval from the university ethics committee, we approached directors of family violence treatment centers in the Arab community asking to locate, through social workers, Muslim Arab women who had filed a complaint of physical violence to the police and had been referred to the centers by social workers at the police station. We contacted all the women who consented to participate and arranged a time for an interview with each one. As noted, as an experienced social worker, the interviewer was aware of the sensitivity of IPV exposure to formal authorities and arranged to conduct the interviews at venues where the women felt safe. At the time of the interviews, five of the women were married, five were divorced, and two were separated. All except two women were mothers. They all reported physical, verbal, and psychological violence. Some had also experienced sexual and financial violence. All the women reported that this was the first time they sought police help, and none of them had previous dealings with social services.

Research Tools

We used a semi-structured interview guide that allows flexibility for developing the interviewees’ descriptions and meanings as they organize their perceptions of behaviors, emotions, thoughts, and worldviews (Roulston, 2010). It also leaves room for flexibility and freedom in developing a rapport and a dialogue between interviewer and interviewee (Kvale & Brinkman, 2009). The second author conducted the interviews in Arabic, the participants’ native language. The content areas of the interview guide included help-seeking history (before the decision to seek police help); describing the event of turning to the police; expectations from the police; the influence of the police intervention on the husband; satisfaction with the police action; referral for treatment by the police; and the experience of treatment by the social workers. Each interview began with the following question: “If a Muslim Arab woman tells you that she's a victim of violence and that she wants to seek police help, what will you say to her?” The interviews lasted between 1.5 and 2 hours, were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and translated into Hebrew and translated from Hebrew into English.

Data Analysis

We performed a thematic analysis in four stages. In the first stage, we separately read all the interviews several times until we gained a sense of familiarity, depth, and empathic involvement with the texts. In the second stage, we identified and isolated the parts that corresponded with the study aims, which became the “units of meaning” of each individual interview and across all the texts (McLeod, 2001; Schreier, 2013). For example, one of the units of meaning was the women's perception of seeking police help as a last resort. They described the experience of arriving at the police station with expressions such as: “helpless,” “no choice,” and “last stop.” In the third stage, we divided all the cases studied into matching categories to integrate them by creating connections between them. This integration enabled us to link units of meaning with the themes (Rubin & Rubin, 2005). For example, we classified the interviewees’ statements regarding the narrative of arriving at the police station, filing the complaint, coping after going to the police, and receiving treatment as conceptualization of dilemmas and of the personal, family, and social difficulties in which Arab female IPV survivors were caught. In the fourth stage, we interpreted the findings and brought them to a higher level of synthesis in an attempt to construct a unifying, coherent schema around a central theme (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Four central themes emerged, reflecting the women's perceptions and meanings that they attributed to their experiences at the personal, interpersonal, family, and social levels. For example, one theme was the women's experience of the encounter with the police as reflecting the antithesis and duality between crisis and empowerment.

Rigor

Qualitative researchers aim to achieve trustworthiness by developing a reflexive, deep coherence of the varied realities of the interviewees’ experiences and meanings (Lieblich et al., 1998; Wells, 2011). Credibility is achieved by grounding providing quotations alongside the analyses, to enable readers to judge the authors’ interpretations (Maxwell, 2005). To ensure inter-coder reliability, we (the two authors) conducted the thematic content analysis separately and subsequently compared our individual analyses. We resolved discrepancies in coding through a joint review and reflection on the original statements.

Ethics

The study was approved by the University of Haifa Committee for Research with Human Participants. The ethical mission of the study was to elicit and empower the women's authentic voices as a source of primary knowledge (Peled & Leichtentritt, 2002). At the beginning of the interview, the interviewer explained to each participant that no clear social statement has been made regarding violence against women in the Arab society that filing a complaint with the police requires choice and courage and stressing the researchers’ desire to hear the woman's voice in relation to her overall experience of turning the police.

To protect the participants’ rights to informed consent, all participants were given a clear description of the study goals and interviewing procedures, emphasizing their right to refuse to answer any question and to withdraw from the study at any time. Participants signed informed consent forms. Exposing intimate violence is taboo in the Arab community, therefore the authors ascribed special weight to protecting their anonymity. All names used in this manuscript are pseudonyms, and any detail that might identify any interviewee was omitted.

Results

The Arab women turned to the police after repeatedly failing to receive protection within the family and the community, which had driven them to take this action that was against the rules of their society. They expected the complaint to the police to deter their male partners from continuing the violence. Some of the women judged the police intervention and its outcome as empowering, others experienced it as offensive, and some were ambivalent. This range of perceptions reflects the intensity of the women's conflict between experiencing the complaint as a no-choice option for coping with IPV and as a violation of social norms. The interviewees described their encounter with the social workers at the police station as allowing them to express their feelings and overcome the restricting social pressures, as opposed to the police procedure which is characterized by rules that disregarded their feelings.

Seeking Police Help: Between the Absence of Choice and Overcoming Helplessness

The narrative of seeking police help was characterized by a sense of necessity following years of captivity in violence and suffering, and the interviewees’ adherence to cultural and family rules that prohibited approaching the police. The women justified perceiving themselves as entitled to violate the social norms and seek police help by referring to the ongoing failure of the community to rescue them from the violence. Jasmin described this as follows:

For years I asked the family for help, and they silenced me … I begged my father a hundred times to let me leave him. He would not permit it. He just said that divorce is not something that happens to us. It reached a life-or-death stage. Although I know that going to the police would be like burning myself alive, I had no other option. I decided to rebel against the customs, to tell the whole world about my suffering and to choose life. (Jasmin, age 34, married for 8 years)

Jasmin repeatedly turned to her family for support and protection but experienced silencing and oppression, and a demand to obey the cultural norms and return to her violent husband. She described her family's stubborn expectations and denial of her suffering. She perceived herself as condemned to continuous affliction, especially after the dismissal of the possibility of a divorce. Jasmin told of her internal dialogue concerning her dilemma. On one hand, she was aware of the family and social cost of seeking police help. On the other hand, her remark about being burned alive reflects the thoroughly destructive effect that the act would have on her life. Her definition of her situation as between “life or death” indicates the state of emergency she was in and the fact that turning to the police was an essential step for her survival. The experience of being trapped in a personal and at the same time a family-cultural conflict was reflected also in Lyla's words:

The police are a critical red line in our society, especially when a woman complains about her husband. That is the end of the relationship. There's no room for making peace because the woman offended her husband in front of the whole world and did not respect him or have consideration for her parents. There are things that women are not allowed to do. There are rules and customs that a woman must have nothing to do with. I deviated from the social norm. I rebelled and complained about my husband. That is very unusual and out of the ordinary. They used to silence me every time and they would take me back to him. My parents would say to me: “That's enough, you got married. That's that. Come to terms with what you got in life and keep quiet.” They gave me no other solution than going back to him. (Lyla, age 27, married for 6 years)

Lyla's excerpt reflects the strength of the patriarchal values and the sense of captivity, the demand to adhere to family expectations and patriarchal socialization, and the fear of losing her marriage and being labeled as deviant. Lyla knew that seeking police help was a metaphorical “red line,” a road of no return, loss of social identity, stigmatization, and its broad implications. Like other interviewees, Lyla described losing hope of receiving support from her family of origin, their disregard of her suffering, rejection, and the demand to accept her fate and conceal her affliction. External rupture intensified her internal conflict and the wish to change her situation, which defied adherence to values. Like other women in this study, she operated within the framework of Arab societal norms of seeking help within the family, but the conventions coercively drove her back to her intimate relationship. The statement “there's no room for making peace” reflects the totality of the implications of going to the police, stifling the possibility of repairing her marital and family relationships. Thus, seeking police help amounted to a new self-definition at the family and social levels.

Women's Expectations: Stopping the Violence

As noted above, the women sought police help when experiencing a sense of distress and hopelessness because of their families’ unwillingness to help them. They perceived the police as having the power to restrain and deter the abusive man. The interviewees expressed expectations that the men would be punished, warned, educated, and frightened, and some of the women sought revenge.

The next interviewee's remarks about law enforcement were made in response to the question of what she expected from the police:

They need to catch him. There's a law. If I get a beating, it's against the law, even if I’m his wife. He's not allowed. The law must be enforced. It's disgusting for a man to beat his wife. Just because you are married to her doesn’t give you the authority to beat her. (Heer, age 26, married for 4 years)

Heer's excerpt reflects the clash between two main legal-ethical systems that Arab women survivors of IPV must negotiate: state legislation that prohibits violence versus the social norm of subordination to the husband's aggression. Heer adhered to the culture until the moment that her obedience to family and society became meaningless to her. This undermining experience empowered her to resist and to position state law as the priority in her life, using police power to stop her husband's violence.

Tahrir expressed her expectations to have her husband deterred:

I wanted to scare him, and I wanted to feel that if something happens to me in the future, I’m safe and the police will protect me. And I also thought if, heaven forbid, something happens to me, I wanted to keep the children safe. What I really wanted was to frighten him. (Tahrir, age 42, married for 20 years)

Tahrir sought police help after accepting the fact that the family would not protect her and that she must use the protective power of the police to be able to provide her children with maternal protection. Turning to the police was aimed to create a deterrent through fear. She hoped that the power of the police would have a long-term effect that would cause her husband to reconsider his actions.

Nur expanded on the combined personal and cultural emotional meaning of her expectations from the police:

I wanted revenge. I wanted my husband to feel how I felt. I have reached a point where I felt as though my husband and his family were my enemies and it's as if we were at war… I wanted to pay my husband back for his violence toward me. For Arabs, going to the police is much more painful than a beating. When a woman goes to the police and complains about her husband, it's like a betrayal… It hurts the husband even more because it's like stabbing him in the back, and all his family. Revenge against his whole family … I know there's a chance that this might end my marriage, but it has given me back my self-respect. (Nur, age 28, married for 8 years)

For Nur, seeking police help meant gaining strength as compensation for her feelings of humiliation, helplessness, injustice, anger, and the desire for balance and vengeance. Her perception of her situation as metaphorically being “at war,” on a battlefield, defined her relationship as completely negative, and her husband's family as her “enemies.” Nur was aware that the power she would gain by seeking police help would be interpreted as offensive by her husband and his family (a “stab in the back”), resulting in a complete breakdown of the relationship. She was also aware that seeking police help was symbolically equivalent to a “betrayal,” part of a cultural script with the potential of ending her marriage. Her sense of an impasse and the absence of hope converged with a sense of humiliation, and turning to the police helped her regain her self-respect.

Encounter With the Police: Between Crisis and Empowerment

The evaluation of the encounter with the police, as positive and empowering or negative and offensive, reflected the women's personal and cultural distress and meaning.

The Encounter With the Police as an Offensive Experience

As noted above, the women were conflicted between the desire to stop the violence and violating cultural norms. This conflict is apparent in Abeer's excerpt:

I felt lonely. As low as could be. You know, everyone has a day they will never forget because it was so painful. For me, that was the day. I went to a strange place, to ask strangers to protect me from the people who are closest to me. I just felt ashamed. I could scarcely make my voice heard I was so ashamed. To this day, I remember that and feel the shame. First, telling others that you have been beaten is shameful. Sitting in the police station is shameful. Filing a complaint against your husband is shameful. That day destroyed me. (Abeer, age 31, married for 2 years)

The cultural context and the social prohibition against exposing violence shaped an experience of shame and self-blame. The meaning of the application to “strangers” for “protection” as the “lowest point” stems from the cultural dictate that protection must be given only by the family. It is thus possible to understand the experience of crisis as a collapse of loyalty and withdrawal from the society to which Abeer belongs, reflected in the statement “That day destroyed me.”

The meaning of filing a complaint with the police as offensive is exacerbated in Samira's description of the intercultural encounter:

That day made me feel terrible. It's as if you’re an embarrassment to yourself, exposing your family's secrets to strangers. The people there were very dry, very serious, and most of them were Jewish. I found it hard to communicate with them. I felt as though everyone was looking at me with suspicion, as if I had committed a crime and had been arrested. I hope I never go back there. People are cold and don’t care about you. They showed no consideration for me, especially as a woman. It was all just questions and answers. There was no soothing conversation. They didn’t even offer me a glass of water. (Samira, age 35, married for 11 years)

Samira was distressed merely by the act of going to the police and disclosing the violence, which was breaking a social taboo. Her negative experience was reinforced by the lack of understanding of her distress, by the police officers’ attitude and manner of investigation. This distress was expressed in experiencing the gap between the meaning and the implications of her Arab identity in relation to complaining to the police and the encounter with Jewish investigators. The police investigators’ model of “questions and answers” was experienced as “suspicion,” as lacking in empathy, alienating, and cold, therefore, as offensive and hostile. The experience of a chasm and alienation arose also from the intercultural encounter with the sense of strangeness in the police investigation and with investigators from a different culture, who were oblivious to the complexity of emotions involved in the woman's encounter with the police.

The Political Predicament

Some of the interviewees mentioned the complex political relationship between the Jewish and Arab societies in Israel. Jasmin expressed this as follows: “The police and the Arabs are enemies. I went to them myself to complain about my husband.” Perceiving the police as “enemies” of the Arabs reflects a common attitude in the Arab society toward its relationship with the Israeli-Jewish establishment as mutually hostile and negative, in which each side regards the other with suspicion. Perceiving this relationship in a metaphorical warlike framework creates a barrier, making it difficult to cooperate with the official institutions. Jasmin expresses astonishment that she turned to the police, despite her awareness of this relationship.

The emotional-political experience was similarly expressed by another interviewee:

I think that is the hardest thing I have ever done. Despite all the suffering over the years, I never felt as bad as I did at the police station. It's like going to complain against yourself. I felt as though I was ending it for myself. The police and the Arabs, it's complicated. The State is against Arabs. I sensed the racism and the hatred and was embarrassed that I had gone to them. I not only betrayed my husband; I betrayed myself as well. (Iman age 33, married for 6 years(

Like Jasmin, Iman was conscious of her intense predicament. In her sense of distress, she was aware of the deep conflict between the State and the Arab society to which she belongs. Turning to the police as an act that was designed to help her confronted her with a sense of betrayal, violation of an obligation of trust, and aiding the enemy of her society. This feeling was directed not only toward others but toward herself as well, confronting her with “shame” through hostile self-criticism. This was the source of the negative experience at the police station and its framing as an attitude of hatred and racism.

The perception of the hostile attitude of the police in the political context is apparent also in the following excerpt:

I will tell other women not to go to the police. They are racist. They don’t help Arabs. I went and complained about my husband, and nothing came of it. He was released on bail; he wasn’t detained even for a day. Why go to the police?! Everyone hears about how Arab women are murdered and the police do nothing. If a Jewish woman is murdered, her killer is caught within 24 hours. That's why so many women don’t file a complaint with the police because it creates bigger problems for them. (Marwa age 42, married for 18 years)

This interviewee criticized the gap between the perceived discriminatory and “racist” treatment by the police of Arab society and their treatment of Jewish society. This perceived hostile attitude was an obstacle to women's empowerment and resulted in increasing the risk for Arab women.

Encounter With the Police as an Ambivalent Experience

Some of the interviewees were ambivalent about the interaction with the police: seeking police help as a last resort for coping with the violence versus long-term hopeless adherence to cultural dictates. They experienced a clash between actively releasing themselves from violence and the personal and social cost that it incurred.

Lyla described a mixture of emotions, cognitive duality, and paradoxes in the encounter with the police resulting from the conflict between the demands of society and the personal desire to be freed from the violence:

That was a significant day in my life. I was in a bad state, emotionally, and I had bruises and was in pain, and my daughter was at the police station with me. It was very, very hard but while I was with the police, I had mixed feelings. I was very sad about my situation and where I had ended up. But at the same time, I had a strange feeling that I am in a safe place and that no one can hurt me. I’m sitting at the police station. Who will come near me? I didn’t know there were solutions. All I thought about was going to tell my parents or going to tell his parents, but every time, they silenced me and took me back to him. They tried talking to him several times and to intervene, but he would always hit me again. My parents used to say to me, enough now, we can’t do anything about it; come to terms with your fate and keep quiet. They offered me no other solution than going back to him. (Lyla, age 27, married for 6 years)

Lyla described the cognitive and emotional experience of opposites at the police station. She framed seeking police help as a “significant day” in her life, a turning point in her coping with the violence. Her apparent transformation was one from a weakened and helpless self to a positive and strengthened one. She had a dual experience at the police station: loss, sadness, and pain, a broken woman in the abyss, asking herself, “What has become of me?!” Simultaneously, she experienced the same act as the right one and as empowering. Her question, “Who will come near me?” reflects the possibility of reorganizing the internal meaning of her life into a release from fear and frustration, which had dominated her life, and changing the narrative of her relationship with society. It derived from her recognition that she was acting against cultural dictates, and therefore, alongside the self-transformation, she would be forced to confront her parents after violating the accepted norms.

Conflict and duality in filing a complaint with the police were expressed also by Nur:

I got to the police. I was in turmoil, I was hysterical. I lost control of myself. I was full of anger and hatred and the wish to take revenge on my husband and all his family. It is hard. I want my husband, but at the same time I am filing a complaint against him. Despite all the problems that I brought upon myself by complaining to the police, inside, I feel at one with myself. I feel good, as if this is the right thing to do and I should have done it after the first beating. (Nur, age 28, married for 8 years)

Nur reconstructed her psychological state on the day she went to the police as an experience of being entrapped in a loss of control, which, paradoxically, led to her empowerment and acquisition of control. In this manner, the experience can be understood as her having acted out of “negative” emotions—anger, hatred, and loss of control, which appeared to have compelled her to choose the extreme solution of seeking police help. Nur's encounter with the police is a traumatic experience, “I was in turmoil, I was hysterical. I lost control of myself,” acknowledging that the complaint “brought problems” on herself, harming her intimate relationship and family of origin. Her remark “I was hysterical” contradicts her statement that it was the right thing to do and that she should have acted in this way with the first instance of violence. The duality apparent in these statements represents her recognition of the ability to become stronger and to bring about change, as well as of the turbulent feelings resulting from her inner conflict regarding the violation of norms. The interviewee framed the solution to the conflict of individualism vs. collectivism by prioritizing her benefit over the barriers and costs imposed by society. Seeking police help in the confrontation with her family and society gave her a choice and control over her life, alongside the distress.

Encounter With the Police as Empowering

Some of the participants framed going to the police and their experience at the police station as personally empowering. Rahma related:

Throughout my life with my husband, I felt weak and helpless. I never felt I had the strength or the ability for self-defense. It's like being in prison. I would just receive instructions and if I behaved badly, he would hit me. When I went to the police, for the first time I felt that I was the strong side in the story, as though now I make decisions for myself and I’m the one punishing him. (Rahma, age 25, married for 6 years)

In her interview, Rahma consistently rated seeking police help as a game changer in her life. It altered her attitude toward herself, restored her self-respect, and for the first time empowered her vis-à-vis her husband. In this excerpt, a central meaning that she ascribed to the encounter with the police was the emotional transformation from a sense of captivity, as the helpless side in their power relations, to self-efficacy in controlling her life. The metaphor she used for the contribution of the police to the turning point in her life narrative was of release from “prison” and a transition to the ability to deter, to stop the violence, and to run her life freely and independently.

Another aspect of evaluating the experience with the police as empowering was reflected in the positive attitude of the police investigators, as illustrated by the two interviewees:

They were nice to me. The investigator was very attentive. She believed me, especially after she saw the blue marks. Today, I am safe. I also know that if he comes near me, I’ll go to the police. But he wouldn’t dare. Today, I’m a different woman, strong and without feelings. If I had not made the decision to go to the police that day, I don’t know if I would have gotten rid of the violence. That was a critical day in my life. There is a limit to a person's ability to suffer; otherwise, he explodes. (Aya, age 36, married for 12 years)

The police officer who questioned me, besides being an investigator, seemed very considerate and caring about women. I felt that she wanted to help me. I felt that the process was very quick, the investigator was very nice to me, and considerate. She helped me with the language. I felt good while I was there. I felt that the issue of the police was a kind of deterrent for him. He started to get scared because if I take the complaint any further, he’ll end up in prison. I felt that he's learned a lesson. (Tahrir, age 42, married for 20 years)

The police investigators’ positive attitude was prominent in the interviews of women who were satisfied and felt empowered. The investigators’ attunement to the women, even across the language barrier (as noted by Tahrir), showing concern for their plight, giving them space, respect, and empathy, gave the women a sense of personal safety and strength. A positive attitude also inspired trust in the good intentions and capabilities of the police. Aya noted that the positive attitude she experienced was crucial to shaping her belief in the continuing power of the police to protect her. This trust in the protective power of the police was central to the change in her self-perception and the reversal of her position as a captive of violence to that of a woman coping self-confidently with it.

Like Aya, Tahrir experienced empathy and empowerment in the police investigator's attentiveness, understanding, sensitivity, patience, and professionalism. This was despite the Hebrew-speaking investigator's difficulty in expressing herself in Arabic and her efforts to help Tahrir communicate. Tahrir made the connection between the positive attitude toward her and the fact that the investigator was a woman and wanted to help her, reflected in gender empathy of the investigator toward women in general. The police intervention and the supportive attitude translated into a perception of power, enabling her to appreciate the deterrence it exercised on her husband. The change was a transition from a position of weakness, passiveness, and captivity to the ability to act and struggle against the violence and to influence her own life.

The Social Worker at the Police Station: Emotional Release and Empowerment

The interviewees described the encounter with the social workers at the police station as facilitating emotional expression and overcoming their social stress, which was due also to the police investigation procedure that left no room for the expression of emotions. Arab women survivors of IPV filing a complaint against their husbands for the first time described experiencing stress, fear of future implications, and a cultural and language barrier. They also became aware of their rights and of the possibility of treatment. The interviewees described the encounter with the social worker as having a positive influence on their ongoing coping. This is how Abeer described the encounter with the social worker at the police station, who arranged for her to go to a shelter:

She said she would take care of me. She explained that, while I was in the shelter, she would try to talk to my parents to calm things down. She stayed with me until I left the police station. I remember when she came into the investigation room, she smiled at me, and I smiled back. As if she was my family and had come to help me. The truth is, she helped me a lot. First, she explained what I must do at the shelter and what was not allowed. She also said she would inform my parents that I was in a safe place run by the welfare services. She spoke to me in Arabic and stayed with me all the time. She came to visit me at the shelter, and we sat and had a long conversation. She also called me on the phone. She explained to my parents where I was and why. She persuaded them to take me back home. (Abeer, age 31, married for 2 years)

Abeer described the encounter with the social worker at the police station as orienting her in a crisis, finding her a safe place, and creating a structure for the future in the midst of the present stress and chaos. The smile that she remembered gave her a sense of “family,” closeness, and the confidence that she was not being neglected. Her sense of support and the escort continued after Abeer left the police station for the shelter and during her stay there. Another central meaning attributed to the social worker was that of a bridge between Abeer and her family. As described above, filing a complaint with the police causes a crisis in the family of origin, damage to cultural identity. The social worker's willingness to speak with the interviewee's parents helped break down the stigma and made it easier for them to cope with their feelings of helplessness and blame, blunting their anger toward Abeer for having sought police help. The result was positive, as her parents were persuaded to accept her back into the family. Another positive aspect was the ability to converse in Arabic, instilling trust and opening the possibility of cultural mutuality. This contrasts with investigations conducted in Hebrew, which diminish the woman's sense of confidence of being understood.

Like Abeer, Jasmin described her encounter with the social worker as empowering:

When I sat with the social worker at the police station, everything changed. It was as if—now—I was sitting with myself. I felt that I could be honest and tell her everything, without fear. I spoke to her from the heart and told her things that I didn’t say in my testimony to the police because they wouldn’t understand me, and I was scared they would judge me or wouldn’t believe me. Even though I didn’t know the social worker beforehand, it was very easy to talk to her, and the conversation flowed. First, she's an Arab woman, and I didn’t have to explain the problems of Arab society, and second, she had a very empathic and supportive way of speaking. Not like the investigation. The investigator was rough. He wasn’t interested; just asked questions without relating to me at all. (Jasmin, age 34, married for 8 years)

Following the harsh, cold attitude of the police investigator, Jasmin described her encounter with the social worker as a restorative experience, an encounter full of honest, emotional expression. Jasmin emphasized two important elements: the fact that the social worker was a woman and that they shared a common culture. The encounter with the police officers was intercultural, and the investigation was rigid, managed by the rules. Moreover, the investigator was from the dominant, Jewish, individualist culture. All these elements created a gap and an experience of not being understood. The social worker made it possible for her to feel secure by bridging the gap and understanding the obstacles in Arab society. In the interaction with the social worker at the police station, the absence of cultural and gender alienation enabled Jasmin to be authentic and overcome the censorship she had imposed on herself in the course of the police investigation. In this encounter, Jasmin was able to examine her individual-cultural self without being judgmental and accept her choice to seek police help as an appropriate way to act in response to her husband's violence.

Maryam described her contact with the social worker at the police station as empowering her in her helplessness:

At the police station, I felt like zero. The social worker was a kind of window of hope, as if she was my older sister telling me what to do, or more accurately, the right thing to do, or how to behave and where we go from here. When I was sitting with the social worker, I understood that I needed treatment. I don’t think I would have gone to the social services of my own accord. (Maryam, age 37, married for 10 years)

Maryam described the experience of being in a police investigation and the encounter with the social worker at the police station as extreme opposites. Metaphorically, her self-experience in the police investigation was of being “zero,” reflecting a negative self, frustration, and helplessness. The social worker at the police station was described, metaphorically, as a “window of hope,” bringing about a transition from a desperate situation of captivity to a sense of hope and empowerment. The social worker was accepting and containing, building a meaningful trusting relationship and closeness, reflected in Maryam's perception of her as an “older sister.” The social worker informed her of her rights and of how the government institutions could help her, creating for her a mental framework for “what is the right thing to do or not to do.” Thus, the positive outcome of the encounter was the social worker's encouragement and serving as a bridge to an ongoing professional relationship.

Discussion

The present study reflects the importance of understanding the practicalities of collaboration between the police and the welfare services when intervening with socio-cultural groups with a patriarchal and collectivist orientation in a society with a dominant individualist orientation.

In the collectivist Arab society, the self is primarily an appendage of one's family and cultural identity, which leads to a denial of women's individual needs and interests (Fahoum & AlKrenawi, 2021). A prominent expression of this is the justification of husbands’ violence toward their wives and the absence of family and social support, which intensifies the sense of isolation experienced by women survivors of IPV. Additionally, norms against formal actions are prominent, especially turning to criminal-legal frameworks such as the police force. The result is that Arab women are captives in abusive relationships, seeking to avoid stigmatization and rejection by family and society if they either leave the batterer or act against him outside the family (Ben-Porat et al., 2021).

In this situation, the women interviewees exposed a conspicuous internal struggle between the self that obeys the culture and is submissive to the patriarchal ideology that strongly opposes formal (police) procedures and a self that resists cultural oppression and strives for a life of freedom and respect, without violence (Haj-Yahia & Zaatut, 2018). The findings of the present study suggest that Muslim Arab women comply with cultural and social pressures amid increasing distress because of the tension between their cultural identity in a patriarchal society and their pain and sense of entrapment in being forced to submit to cultural norms. Participants in the study sensed a deterioration in their sense of cultural self, following the failure of normative means to stop the violence. The turning point came when the women decided to act in a way that contradicted the cultural norms they had obeyed until then. They sought police help as a result of the failure and fear that accompanied their traumatic events, including the need to protect their lives, together with the fear of the price they may have to pay for turning to the police. The literature emphasizes the meaning and implications of a woman IPV survivor seeking police help and entering a shelter for the families and for society, including stigmatization, escalation of the violence, ostracism, and pressure on the husband to divorce her (Haj-Yahia, 2000; Haj-Yahia & Sadan, 2008).

Reaction toward the police is affected also by the Arab population's complex attitude toward various institutions and the demand to avoid contact with them, especially the Israel Police, which is perceived as representing a coercive force in a national conflict (Daoud et al., 2017; Savitsky et al., 2021). Women who experienced a negative, hostile attitude made the connection between the reaction of the police and the history of the tense relationship between the majority and minority populations in the national-political Arab–Jewish conflict. This finding is linked to the deep influence of the Arab–Palestinian identity on the negative attitude of the Arab public toward the police. Erez et al. (2015) conceptualized the meaning of police intervention with IPV as an expression of the intersection of a private and a political conflict. This was apparent in the present study as well, when the women's contact with the police captured the sense of violating the taboo against seeking formal involvement outside the family, together with a sense of breaking their loyalty to Arab society in a nationalist sense. The women framed the attitude of the police as expressing the national conflict that determines their defeated status and representing lack of understanding, prejudice, and aggression. From their perspective, the actions of the police negated the recognition that they deserved help and protection.

In general, the interviewees reported that, as a result of seeking police help, they experienced personal security and strength, as well as cultural empowerment, expressed in a change in perception and rules of action. In the interviews, there was a conspicuous tendency to accept the self-effacement norm and their rights. This finding can be associated with a similar change in Arab women in a shelter, who regarded divorce as a way out of a violent relationship (Haj-Yahia & Avidan, 2001). The women in the present study evaluated the functioning of the police in varied ways, through their personal experience intertwined with the cultural context. From a personal perspective, the women evaluated the attitude of the police investigator who met with them, the effectiveness of the means deployed by the police, and the outcome of the complaint. Some of the women's positive evaluation had to do with the violence that had stopped and the husband's deterrence. From a cultural perspective, some women evaluated the police officers’ attitude as empathic and culturally sensitive. Other women expressed disappointment with the police investigators’ insensitive attitude, lack of understanding, belittling, and even contempt of their cultural position, to the point of a sense of discrimination.

The findings of the present study are consistent with the fact that in cases where there was an encounter with social workers at the police station, the women evaluated social workers’ contribution as positive and empowering in the police space for coping with emotions derived from internal and social pressures. The social worker was perceived as positive at the time of filing the complaint, especially as a bridge between the female complainants and the male police officers. The social worker was instrumental in building trust relationships between the women and the police, and for the women, created an experience of change concerning the method of police investigation. Another prominent contribution of the social worker was to serve as a guide and a bridge between the women and therapeutic services in the community for women IPV survivors.

It is noteworthy that the role definitions of the police and the social workers are different and even contradictory. The police have rules and guidelines that dictate their role in the criminal sphere, and they are less aware of the Arab women's vulnerability. The social workers, however, are conscious of the women's personal–social encounter. The aim of the cooperation between the police and the social workers is to bridge these gaps as much as possible. Women victims of violence, in general, who turn to the police, and particularly from the Arab society, as described in this article, are focused on their personal and social distress. They are not always aware of the role of the evidence and of the options available to the police, with the demands and restrictions imposed upon them, in terms of the formal actions that can be taken against abusers. The role of the police station social worker is to be attentive to the women's feelings, misunderstandings, and potentially unrealistic expectations. The study findings reflect another central aspect of the social worker's role at the police station, of listening to the women from a sociopolitical stance. The social worker acts as a mediator and advocate in individual cases, while clarifying, to both the women and the police officers, the complexity involved in filing the complaint and undergoing the investigation and to attempt to empower the women, as much as possible, in this context.

Currently, women first meet with the police and then with the social workers. We suggest that the current policy be reconsidered by reversing this order. It emerges from the interviews that it would be much more beneficial if the victims should first meet with the social workers who can explain to them the aims, goals, roles, and procedures of police work, and only following this meeting, meet with the police investigators, preferably, accompanied by a trusted social worker to help and mediate the process.

The theoretical contribution of the present study to the literature lies in demonstrating that unique, effective treatment for IPV needs to be based on collaboration between the police (the law-enforcement system) and the welfare services (the psychosocial support system) (Danis, 2003; Patterson & Swan, 2019; Saxton et al., 2020). At the macro level, research indicates that collaboration between the criminal-legal system and the welfare services improves outcomes, especially in the criminal domain (Notko et al., 2021). The present study was conducted in a specific environment of an ethnic group with a collectivist orientation within a society with a dominant individualist orientation. In this situation, particularly in light of the national-political complexity in Israel, there is a greater need for models that soften the intensity of the conflict. The present study describes how women survivors of IPV perceive the social workers’ contribution as cultural translators, and as personally and socially empowering at the police station.

Limitations

The sample of the present study was based on women who had contact with police and social workers and agreed to be interviewed. This does not allow representation and generalization of the findings to all battered Arab women in Israel. From a more general perspective, the findings may deepen the understanding of women from the collectivist Arab culture who seek help in a dominant individualist Western culture. The interviewees attest to the empowerment of women who differ from those in the dominant culture. For these women, the act of calling the police constitutes a risk because it challenges the patriarchal cultural norms. Additional studies are needed to understand the different ways in which Arab IPV survivors cope with violence.