During and beyond the frequent lockdowns: Addressing the pandemic (COVID-19)–related family violence through informal social control

Growing literature on COVID-19 shows an increase in family violence and child maltreatment cases as a result of the public health preventive measures including lockdowns and movement restrictions. These restrictions negatively affect victims’ ability to seek social services or leave the violent relationship. There are some indications of hope, however, as countries have begun easing restrictions which may enable victims to seek social services. Yet, the fluidity of COVID-19, emergence of complex variants of COVID-19 virus, continues restrictions on face-to-face engagements and evidence of re-entry into lockdown suggest that social services would not be fully available for victims of family violence. We offer a practical community intervention approach through informal social control for victims of family violence during and even after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trauma Recovery of Greek Women Who Have Experienced Gender-Based Violence: A Narrative Research

In a society where women still suffer from oppression and injustice, research on gender-based violence (GBV) and trauma recovery path is considered a priority. Specifically, it was to be researched how the social and cultural obstacles can affect the help-seeking behavior of Greek women who experienced GBV. The data of this qualitative research were collected through narrative interviews and the analysis was carried out with the thematic analysis. The significant findings of the research were that the feelings of the women changed through the violent relationship, with the feelings of betrayal, guilt, and shame dominating. Moreover, the relative network was not notably utilized, while it seems that the women who utilized their social network were helped to evolve. Additionally, the feelings of guilt and shame stood out as an obstacle to help-seeking behavior and the functionality of the women was reduced on multiple levels during the period in which they experienced gender-based violence. Finally, the physical symptoms of the women during that period, such as musculoskeletal pain, numbing, and gastrointestinal problems, evoke great interest.

The Lived Experience of Older Women Who Are Sexually Abused in the Context of Lifelong IPV

The present study explores the lived experience of older women who are sexually abused in the context of lifelong intimate partner violence (IPV). An interpretive phenomenological analysis was used, and semi-structured interviews were performed with 19 older women survivors of lifelong IPV and sexual violence. Three themes emerged: sexual violence shaping lifelong IPV, the occurrence of sexual violence in old age in the context of lifelong IPV, and cumulative insights and reflections on being a survivor of lifelong IPV and sexual violence. The transition to aging has a profound impact on the violent relationship dynamics and this should be considered in practical interventions.

Attitudes About Forgiveness and Leaving a Relationship: The Context of Relationship Aggression

The present study examines participant attitudes regarding whether a victim of IPV should forgive an offending partner and whether they should stay or leave a violent relationship. A total of 562 participants completed the study, which entailed responding to factorial vignettes online. Participants were primarily heterosexual, female, non-Latino, and White, with an average age of 21.75. Using logistic regressions, participants were significantly more likely to think the victim should forgive the perpetrator if the perpetrator was female and for less severe acts of aggression. Multinomial logistic regressions found that respondents were significantly less likely to state “yes” or “it depends,” compared to “no,” as to whether the victim should leave the relationship when the aggression was more severe and were more likely to say a male victim should stay in a violent relationship than a female victim. Qualitative analyses found three main themes regarding whether a victim should forgive: (1) context matters; (2) forgiveness is best … with caveats; and (3) questioning how often violence had occurred. With regard to whether a victim should leave an aggressive relationship, two main themes emerged: (1) situation matters … especially the relationship context and (2) questioning whether the violence had occurred before. This study provides insight into attitudes, by those external to a couple, regarding forgiveness and leaving a relationship after an instance of relationship aggression and has implications for both practitioners and policymakers. The constructed views about leaving a relationship may spill over into decisions regarding whether to implement policy surrounding IPV. Practitioners should also be cognizant of the varying definitions of forgiveness when working with clients who have experienced IPV as a practitioner’s definition of forgiveness may not necessarily align with a client’s definition.

empirical interrogation of the Christian/Muslim inter-religious challenges in Northern Nigeria

Various researches indicate that Christians and Muslims in Northern Nigeria experience a tense and violent relationship that arises from a dysfunctional relationship embedded in a superiority/inferiority complex, discrimination, exclusion, and marginalization. The crisis has created deep-rooted trauma that has caused the two religious groups to co-exist in fear and suspicion. The dysfunctional relationship continues to propagate exclusive and discriminative lifestyle, and triggers tension and violence among Christians and Muslims in the region. This article uses an empirical study approach to engage in an investigation of the experience of Christian/Muslim co-existence in Northern Nigeria. The data collection method of interview was used in drawing the in-depth contextual experience of the people. Findings reveal challenges of Christian/Muslim co-existence, with alarming violence that continues to threaten inter-religious co-existence. Healing and reconciliation were recommended for creating inter-religious functional relationships among the Christians and Muslims in Northern Nigeria.

Mothering – a mode of protecting rather than parenting in the aftermath of post separation family violence in Australia

The focus of this qualitative study was on separated mother’s (N = 36) lived experiences of mothering in the context of post separation family violence and the Australian family law system. Thematic analysis of interviews was guided by a theoretical framework, this being the Three Planets Model. Analysis of the data resulted in two themes relating to mothering being identified. Firstly, that women demonstrated a mode of protecting rather than parenting indicating that mothering was often undertaken in isolation and fear, within an adversarial family law system, and in the presence of a perpetrator of family violence. The second theme related to the aftermath of separation and the long dark shadow cast by family violence. After having left a controlling and violent relationship, separated mothers reported that there was no opportunity to recover, nor to healthily extricate themselves from family violence, which resulted in cumulative harm not only for their wellbeing but also for their children.

Traumatic bonding in intimate partner violence: A Relational Family Therapy approach

Intimate partner violence is defined as a form of violence where, in an intimate relationship, physical or psychological acts of violence are committed by a partner or spouse against the other partner or spouse. All of these actions are accompanied by extremely emotional dynamics, which is paradoxical, as we would expect that with the gravity of abusive and violent acts the victims will understand the need for self-protection and appropriate measures. There is a strong emotional bond between the victim and the abuser, which authors call traumatic bonding. It is an emotional dependence between two people in a relationship that is characterized by the feelings of intense attachment, cognitive distortion and behavioural strategies of both individuals that paradoxically strengthen and maintain the bond, which is reflected in a vicious cycle of violence. The termination of such a relationship or the departure from it, from the point of view of attachment which is activated in this situation, seems risky, since the victim seeks refuge in the state of perceived danger, but experiences that - after the outbreak of violence calms down - the refuge is paradoxically offered by the bully. Here we can recognize a pattern of dysfunctional affect regulation that falsely calms difficult (basic) affects and maintains a violent relationship. From the viewpoint of Relational Family Therapy, it is therefore necessary for victims that after breaking off a violent relationship or leaving it they face their painful basic affects and develop proper regulation of these, otherwise they will remain committed to this kind of relationship. Using the case study method, the paper describes the case of a client after she left a violent intimate relationship, with an emphasis on the demonstration of traumatic bonding dynamics and the resolution of their consequences in Relational Family Therapy. [1] The authors acknowledges partial financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (project No. J5-9349).

“Fraud, Fun, and Feeling”: Slavery, Industrialism, and the Mother-Machine in Frances Trollope's Fiction

For Frances Trollope, the nineteenth century was defined by what she perceives to be a pervasive mechanization of emotional life, a phenomenon similar to what Tamara Ketabgian has recently described as the “industrialization of affect” in this period. At the center of this phenomenon, for Trollope, is the disquieting specter of the mother-machine, a figure in whom the processes of mechanical production and maternal reproduction collide. The figure originates, in Trollope's fiction, in the character Juno, an enslaved woman whose alienation from her children under slavery serves as a major plot point in her groundbreaking 1836 antislavery novel The Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw; or Scenes on the Mississippi. That figure is then reworked in the violent relationship between children and machines Trollope would go on to depict in her 1839–40 novel, The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy, one of the first industrial novels published in Victorian England. In these early fictions, Trollope documents what she perceives to be the mechanization of the maternal body under, alternately, slavery and industrialism, and its consequences for both the work and experience of care under nineteenth-century capitalism in its varied forms.