Overcoming the Stigma of Intimate Partner Abuse

Christine E Murray, Allison Crowe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317308829
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología anormal

Overcoming the Stigma of Intimate Partner Abuse addresses the impact of the shame surrounding intimate partner violence and the importance of actively challenging this stigma. Through examples of survivors who have triumphed over past abuse, the book presents a new way to understand the dynamics of abusive relationships as well as demonstrates the strength, resourcefulness, and resilience of victims and survivors. Overcoming the Stigma of Intimate Partner Abuse offers professionals, survivors, and communities an action plan to end stigma, support survivors, advocate for better response systems, raise awareness about abuse, and prevent violence.

Part 1

Introduction

1 Understanding Abusive Relationships

Alana is a bright, professional, educated woman who has a successful career that allows her to make the most of her many talents and interests. She is currently married to a man she describes as “lovely” and “in no way abusive at all.” However, several years before we met Alana as a participant in our research, she faced horrific abuse at the hands of an ex-boyfriend. Her story is both unique—as every survivor of past abuse has a unique story to tell—and all too common, as it reflects many of the typical dynamics that are involved in abusive intimate relationships.

Alana was in college when she met her ex-boyfriend, Jay, who was several years older and already established in his professional career. They met at a forum on women’s issues, so naturally she placed a lot of trust in him from the first time they met. Alana thought it was a good sign. He was professional, stable, sensitive, and supported women’s rights. In the beginning of their relationship, Jay could be very, very nice in lots of ways. In fact, during their early days of dating, Jay was nothing but safe, healthy, and respectful. But things began to change after about a year of dating. He began to become jealous and upset. Alana had grown up witnessing physically violent altercations between her parents, so when the violent incidents first began in her relationship with Jay, they didn’t seem strange or a cause for alarm. Jay would sometimes push or slap her, but to Alana that didn’t seem bad. Having witnessed this behavior in her home growing up had normalized it for Alana. Coupled with the fact that the incidents were not frequent, she passed it off as not ideal, but not the worst scenario either.

The physical violence escalated soon after the couple moved in together. Alana explained how moving in with him actually was the catalyst for the abuse.

“When I moved into his place, it felt very much like I was invading his space. I guess nobody likes to have their routine messed with, and it was hard for him. Maybe a month into living together was when he first got really much angrier and abusive than he had before. Afterward, he suddenly got so upset, said it’s really hard for him to kind of keep himself together, but that he’s trying really hard and that it really is hard for him, and, you know, that it was a one-time thing, and he only had done it once before and … he just kept saying that it was really hard for him.”

Over time, the violence became more frequent, with incidents occurring every couple days. Most of the time, it was hitting and slapping, but Alana also described some extremely severe incidents of violence. For example, one time when Jay had been drinking, he violently raped her. After the rape (and in the days leading up to Alana leaving him), Jay kept Alana locked in the bedroom and didn’t allow her to leave the house. He even went so far as to tie her up so she wouldn’t escape. During this time, there was one day when Jay didn’t lock Alana in the house, and she escaped while he was at work. For Alana, this was a quick decision, and not one she had been planning for a long time. She left with only a few belongings and went to stay with a friend before staying with a family member. Although Jay tried to contact Alana a few times after she left, overall, she had minimal contact with him, and he moved on and accepted that the relationship was over relatively quickly.

Another level of complexity that added to the challenges that Alana faced was the stigma she experienced as a result of the abuse. We’ll delve deeply into understanding stigma in the next chapter, but Alana’s story is useful for beginning to explore stigma and its impact on victims and survivors of abuse. Some of the main aspects of stigma that impacted Alana were blame, isolation, and fear of being judged. Blame played out in Alana’s efforts to seek help from others in her life. When we asked her about how isolation impacted her she said,

“I felt like I had gotten myself into it, and so I needed to get myself out of it. It felt like I couldn’t figure out a way to get myself out of it after my really dumb attempts hadn’t worked, and so then it just seemed like there had to be some external something would have to happen. But I couldn’t think of anyone who I could explain it to right or in that way. That could make it okay, because I hadn’t done the right things all along. To ask for help seemed like I didn’t deserve it at that point, because it had been happening for so long.”

Fear of being judged also impacted how Alana anticipated others would respond to her. She said, “It felt so fundamental, like okay, I’m bad at math or I’m good at my work, and it just seems like that was me fundamentally, like that was who, what I was, or what I believe in.” This led her to keep the abuse secret from many people. She was afraid that, if others found out, “people would think that I was really just gross and kind of stupid for all of that.”

Even years after the relationship ended, Alana continued to feel the impacts of the abuse. First, she noted, “I’m not great at trusting people.” She also panics when she is around someone who is expressing anger. In those moments, she says, “I feel like I’m looking through a tunnel, I feel like I can’t see straight.” Alana also continued to struggle with blaming herself for the abuse she experienced. For example, she said,

“I could think, well he’s not acting right. I felt very much like, not necessarily that I caused him to act that way, but the fact that I didn’t leave the first time it happened seemed like, God, well then, I can’t leave now. It felt very much like because I hadn’t gotten out of it right at the start, then I was somehow complicit or something, in that way, in it. And that I was kind of like choosing that, and if I was the kind of person who would choose that, then I didn’t deserve to not be in it.”

One of the most striking aspects of Alana’s story is that she didn’t view her abuse as serious enough to warrant the support of agencies that are designed to support people who have experienced domestic violence. When asked if she had sought services from a domestic violence agency, Alana said,

“When I was in college, we had done women’s rallies, and so there were programs and shelters and that kind of thing that I knew about, but it didn’t seem like I was the right person. Like, the people who would go there would be so hurt, that it seems like it’d be like wasting their time. You know, because there were people who were really in terrible, terrible situations who would have nowhere else to go than there. And it also felt like it would be so greedy to go there. It just seemed like it’d be wasting their time, or taking up space that somebody else needed.”

* * * * * * *

Alana, whose name, along with Jay’s, has been changed,¹ is one of the hundreds of survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) who have participated in our research over the past several years. In fact, she was one of the first participants in our very first studies—and even today, after we’ve been doing this research for several years, her story stands out as one that has had a major impact on our understanding of abusive relationships and the toll they take on victims and survivors. In this book, we aim to delve deeply into the complexity of intimate partner violence (also commonly referred to as domestic violence) and how this form of abuse is complicated even further by the stigma that surrounds it.

It is a common, and harmful, stereotype that victims of intimate partner violence move from one abusive relationship to another, never getting out of the cycle of victimization and abuse. While this pattern may hold true for some people, for many other survivors, it does not. In this book, we turn to the lived experiences of survivors in order to present a new view of survival during, and triumph following, intimate partner violence victimization. This first chapter addresses the dynamics of abusive relationships, and then we delve deeply into exploring how stigma complicates these dynamics and impacts victims and survivors. The second half of the book will offer key insights into ending this stigma and provide empowering future directions for overcoming stigma—for survivors themselves, for friends, for family, and for professionals who want to support them, as well as for communities and society.

The Research Basis for This Book

Before we delve into discussing the dynamics of abusive relationships, we want to provide some background information about the research behind this book, which is the source of the stories and quotes from survivors of past abuse that you’ll find throughout this book. This book is grounded firmly in our ongoing research program through which we focus on understanding the stigma surrounding intimate partner violence. At the time of writing this book, hundreds of survivors of past abuse have shared their stories with us through interviews and surveys. We won’t go too in depth into the research methodologies we’ve used in those studies, and interested readers can turn to the articles where we’ve reported the findings for more information about the technical details of the research.² In addition to our research with survivors, you’ll also read insights from another study we conducted that involved a national panel of experts from advocacy organizations that work to address domestic and sexual violence. For all of our studies with survivors of abuse, the participants were adults over the age of 18 or 21 (the specific age requirements varied across different studies) who were previously in at least one relationship in which a partner abused them. All participants in these studies were required to have been out of any abusive relationships for at least one or two years and report that they hadn’t experienced any abusive victimization for at least one or two years (again, the length requirements varied across studies).

Our research has evolved over the years as our understanding of the stigma surrounding intimate partner violence has expanded. When we began our research in 2010, we were unable to locate any previous research that had applied the concept of stigma to experiences of intimate partner violence. We’ve since learned of a few other researchers studying this phenomenon, but at the time, we were interested in learning whether the concept of stigma—which had been studied extensively in social psychological research on other populations—applied to intimate partner violence. To gain an initial perspective on this topic, our first study involved individual interviews with 12 female survivors of domestic violence. These in-depth interviews lasted between one to two hours each. We asked participants to discuss in detail their experiences of abuse, how they experienced stigma related to their abuse, and how they overcame the stigma associated with their abuse. From these original interview participants, we heard a resounding “yes” that the concept of stigma applied to their experiences of intimate partner violence, and so we wanted to see if and how a larger and more diverse sample of survivors would similarly resonate with the application of the concept of stigma to their experiences.

Therefore, our second study involved an electronic survey of survivors of intimate partner violence. To date, 312 survivors have completed this survey.³ In this survey, participants described their personal backgrounds, the nature of their abusive relationships, ways they experienced stigma related to their abuse, how they overcame that stigma, and messages they would want to send to individuals who are currently involved in abusive relationships. In a follow-up study, we conducted a second survey with survivors of abusive relationships. The focus of this study was how they overcame past abuse and the turning points that led to the end of their past abusive relationships. The sample for this second survey included 123 survivors. We’ve also done additional research involving small samples of immigrants who are survivors of past IPV and survivors of teen dating violence. Most recently, we have worked on a study of health and wellness among survivors, which included 130 participants. Thus, across our research studies with survivors of abuse, we have heard from over 500 survivors of abuse to date, and their experiences with abuse and the stories they shared with us—both through the interviews and surveys—are weaved into this book to provide readers with a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of survivors of abuse.

In addition to our research with survivors, we used a research method called a modified Delphi study, which involves working with a panel of experts. For this study, we defined experts as national leaders in the movement to end domestic and sexual violence in the United States.⁴ A total of 16 leaders participated, and the research process resulted in a total of 14 consensus statements on which the panel members agreed on the following subjects: the social context of the stigma surrounding domestic and sexual violence, the impact of the stigma on resources for victims and survivors, and strategies for eradicating the stigma surrounding domestic and sexual violence. Therefore, in addition to the insights provided by survivors, the findings of this expert panel study informed our work on this book.

The survivors who’ve participated in our research shared very detailed stories with us about their experiences of abuse, stigma, and recovery following the end of their abuse relationships. Many of these survivors specifically told us that they were sharing their stories with us because they wanted their stories to help other people learn from their experiences. Aside from the first 12 participants in our interview study, all of our other research has been conducted anonymously, meaning that participants were never asked to tell us their names or other identifying information about themselves. However, we are very sensitive to the need to respect the privacy and safety of the survivors who shared their stories with us. As such, throughout this book, we have made extensive efforts to disguise any potentially identifying details about participants in our research.

Even when survivors shared their stories anonymously, they often shared their stories in such detail that someone familiar with them (e.g., a friend or family member or a professional who worked with them in the aftermath of the abuse) might recognize their identities based on the details provided. Therefore, we have made every effort possible to disguise any potentially identifying details about the survivors whose stories and statements we share in this book. In all cases, the names used to identify survivors and other people in their lives, including their abusers, have been changed, and we removed and/or altered identifying details to protect their privacy. When statements are presented as quotes from survivors, we made every effort to preserve their original wording as they reported their experiences to us. However, in some cases, we made minor alterations to these statements in order to protect their privacy as well to enhance the readability of their statements (e.g., we removed words like “um,” “you know,” and “well”). However, we worked hard to retain the original meaning and intent of participants’ statements and stories. Now, after we’ve shared some background information about the research behind this book, let’s turn our attention back to Alana’s story to give a glimpse into what we want to highlight next—the dynamics of abusive relationships.

Understanding Abusive Relationships

Think back to Alana’s story, which you read at the start of this chapter. Were there aspects of her relationship with Jay that were similar to other stories about domestic violence that you’ve heard, experienced, or seen in the media? Were there other aspects that were surprising to you? Perhaps the types of abuse that Alana experienced—physical, sexual, and emotional—are familiar to you, including the fact that Jay was controlling and jealous. Maybe you’ve heard before that abusers often start off as charmers and that abuse starts slowly and escalates over time. These are commonly discussed dynamics of abusive relationships that are often taught in community outreach efforts to raise awareness about domestic violence. And, indeed, they are patterns that we heard from many of the survivors who participated in our research.

However, perhaps you were surprised to rea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1 Introduction
• Part 2 Understanding Stigma
• Part 3 Overcoming Stigma
• Index