Abstract
In this paper we draw on data from in-depth interviews with men who have used violence and abuse within intimate partner relationships to provide a new lens through which to view the conceptual debates on naming, defining and understanding ‘domestic violence’, as well as the policy and practice implications that flow from them. We argue that the reduction of domestic violence to discrete ‘incidents’ supports and maintains how men themselves talk about their use of violence, and that this in turn overlaps with contentions about the appropriate interventions and responses to domestic violence perpetrators. We revisit Hearn’s 1998 work The Violences of Men, connecting it to Stark’s later concept of coercive control, in order to develop and extend understandings of violence through analysis of the words of those who use it. We conclude by exploring the implications of these findings for recent legal reform in England and Wales and for policies on how we deal with perpetrators.
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Notes
We use England and Wales, rather than the United Kingdom, since criminal law and policies on domestic violence are significantly different in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
HM Government, Guidance—Domestic violence and abuse, https://www.gov.uk/domestic-violence-and-abuse [last accessed 6 November 2015].
Project Mirabal is the name of our recent programme of research on domestic violence perpetrator programmes (DVPPs). The project is named after the three Mirabal sisters murdered in Dominican Republic, who became symbols of popular and feminist resistance to violence in South America.
See, for example, ONS, Statistical Bulletin, Focus on Violent Crime and Sexual Offences 2011–12, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/focus-on-violent-crime/stb-focus-on--violent-crime-and-sexual-offences-2011-12.html [last accessed 20 September 2014].
There is a parallel process here with family policies and child contact, where in both the violence of fathers is virtually invisible, and where it is acknowledged it is disconnected from their parenting (Hester, 2012).
See Westmarland et al. (2010) for more detailed discussion.
Respect is the UK membership organisation for work with domestic violence perpetrators, male victims and young people. The ‘Respect Standard’ sets out the requirements that good-quality domestic violence perpetrator services need to meet to become accredited.
See Phillips et al. (2013) for a Project Mirabal briefing paper on the history of perpetrator work in the United Kingdom.
All participants’ names have been changed.
Serious Crime Act 2015, Part 5, Domestic Abuse, Section 76. Available at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/9/section/76/enacted [last accessed 6 November 2015].
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Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research [grant reference ES/HO38086/1] and the Northern Rock Foundation [grant reference 20080739]. For reasons relating to anonymity and safety the data on which this paper is based is not publicly available.
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Kelly, L., Westmarland, N. naming and defining ‘domestic violence’: lessons from research with violent men. Fem Rev 112, 113–127 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2015.52
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2015.52