NCJ Number
123379
Date Published
1989
Length
261 pages
Annotation
This study of domestic assault victims and rape victims' attitudes focuses on their perceptions of injustice and how they cope with it.
Abstract
After a chapter that outlines the stages in the emergence of intimate violence as a social problem, a chapter provides a general framework for explanations of injustice as perceived by those who witness others suffering. This is followed by a literature review on the self-perceptions of battered women, abused children, and rape survivors. Another chapter discusses the impact of perceptions of alternatives to the experience of injustice on the sense of injustice. This discussion includes an examination of the paradoxes inherent in any person-based analysis of social injustice. The author's study of victims of intimate violence, which covers six chapters, involved interviews with over 600 people. Nonvictims provided a comparison group for victims of single and multiple experiences of spousal abuse, child abuse, and sexual violence perpetrated by someone known intimately to the victim. The survey focused on victim demographics and victim perceptions of violent victimization. A major theme in the discussion of the findings is inconsistency in victims' thinking. The concluding chapter examines the issue of expert testimony in cases of battered women who kill their abusers. 240 references, subject index, questionnaire.