Search results

This paper aims to examine the use of coproduction to create a film “Do You See Me?”, to amplify the voices of a “hard to reach” group: older lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) victim-survivors of domestic abuse (DA).

Qualitative methods were used as part of the co-production, which included two practitioner focus groups and 14 narrative interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning persons or the community (LGBTQ+) victim-survivors.

Despite differences in gender, sexualities, roles and “lived experiences” across stakeholders, there was a shared aim to ensure victim-survivors had a sense of ownership in this endeavour. Consequently, a positive reciprocity existed that helped to foster effective communication, allow for capacity building and subsequent knowledge exchange. The collaboration produced a nuanced meta-narrative making visible the “lived experiences” of LGB victim-survivors’ perceptions of perpetrator behaviours.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is original in two ways, firstly, providing insights into the “lived experiences” of an invisible group; older LGBTQ+ victim-survivors, and secondly, in involving them in the co-production of a film. The paper aims to reveal how interdependencies that developed between stakeholders helped to disrupt understandings, develop new ways of knowing and build levels of trust. Group interactions helped to dismantle hierarchies, so those with experiential knowledge: the survivors, had greater control throughout the research process. The paper is significant in providing a critical reflection on the ethical, methodological and resource challenges involved in co-production. It also makes recommendations for researchers and funders about the value of using co-production as a method to engage with hard-to-reach groups.

This paper aims to offer a profile of domestic abuse of older women and its impact on their health and well-being; explore some of the conceptual tensions that exist in this field; and discuss current policy and practice responses to this group of victim-survivors.

It is a review paper drawing on material from a range of sources; it has policy, practice and research implications.

Although there is growing recognition that older women are victims of domestic abuse, it tends to be regarded as a “younger women’s issue” and to be subsumed under the umbrella of elder abuse. This not only removes the gendered element, but it also uncouples it from the lifecourse where, for many, its roots lie. It also tends to foreground “old age” as the primary dimension of risk. There is a tension between the justice-oriented approach of the domestic abuse system and the welfarist approach that imbues the safeguarding system. There is a need for integration between the two systems. Also, for the health and care system to be more alert to the needs of older women at risk, we need to achieve a more effective balance between protection and justice, accord a greater level of agency to older victim-survivors and ensure they have access to domestic abuse law, policy and appropriate support services.

More research is needed with older victim-survivors: listening to their lived experiences, coping strategies and pathways out of abuse. The issue also needs to be more visible.

Developing appropriate domestic abuse services for older women is critical. Practice lessons can be learnt too: especially greater integration of the safeguarding system with the domestic abuse system. Training is needed too for frontline health and social care staff about the distinctive nature of domestic abuse of older women.

Domestic abuse of older women needs to be spoken about and made more visible in society and inside services, including older people’s third sector services.

This paper adopts a critical lens and makes a number of new arguments.

Following victimisation of many types, knowing one is not alone in their experience, or the reactions to that experience, has been identified as comforting and supportive of recovery in survivors of violence and abuse. Information is often provided by support groups, professionals, or victim/survivor organisations, which still fill a significant gap in the criminal justice system, which offers insufficient support to victims of crime. However, as many victims do not engage with support services or the criminal justice system, they may be at risk of not receiving such crucial support. The rising popularity of so called ‘hashtag activism’ has however provided victims and survivors with a worldwide platform to share experiences, reactions, information, support, and solidarity. This chapter explores the impact of key hashtags, such as #metoo and #BlackLivesMatter, via a critical evaluation of outcomes, including policy, cultural, and legislative impact, to unpick their successes and failures, with a focus on support and community-building, marginalisation and performative allyship.

Many women report experiences of street harassment during their lifetime. Previous quantitative survey research has shown the variety of ways in which this type of harassment can impact upon a victim’s life, including restricting their freedom of movement and fear of further victimisation. The purpose of this study is understand the immediate and enduring psychological impact of street harassment on female victim-survivors.

The present study aims to explore, qualitatively, women’s experiences of street harassment through thematic analysis of on 35 online blog posts. Data were collected from the “Stop Street Harassment” website, where women are invited to share their experiences anonymously.

Three main themes were generated from the data. First was the age at which women began to experience street harassment, with recurring early incidents during formative childhood years. Second was the impact that experiences had on their mental health and psychological well-being with feelings of shame, fear, self-loathing, as well as decreased self-esteem and confidence experienced in the immediate aftermath – though the longer-term negative emotions reported were enduring feelings of anger alongside a constant state of anxiety from feelings of vulnerability to further victimisation. The final theme was the modification of behaviour after experiencing street harassment where women choose to avoid walking alone on the streets or consciously changed their clothing choices, to avoid being harassed.

This study offers a further qualitative insight into the real-life experience and psychological consequences of street harassment upon survivors’ mental health.

This study explores responses by domestic violence perpetrator programme (DVPP) providers of three Western countries (UK, USA and Australia) to the COVID-19 pandemic and population movement control measures on their practice. The purpose of this paper was to offer an evidence base for changes to programme and intervention delivery around domestic violence to sustain integrity of safe, effective working practices with perpetrators, survivors and staff.

Based on 36 semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted from July to September 2020, the authors mapped the experiences of changes in service with frontline staff, managers and sector-wide representatives.

The findings focus on how providers of DVPPs adapted to the increase in referrals and workload that had a positive impact on service delivery innovation but an adverse impact on staff wellbeing. Digital services were reported to be adopted into mainstream approaches but introduced new barriers to service access and group dynamics. Integrated safety support for survivors, if not adequately connected to programmes pre-pandemic, risked being disconnected from DVPP that may undermine positive programme outcomes.

The paper provides a documentation of changes in DVPPs, and a cross-comparison of services across three Western countries during the first wave of COVID-19. The work offers implications of the development of digital modes of service delivery for DVPPs and highlights the need for focus on resource management and integration of safety services for survivors in DVPP services.

This chapter defines and provides examples of activist criminology methods (ACM). Although many examples of ACM studies are provided, to date, no publications use this identification. The authors begin by questioning not only the feasibility but also the desirability of the ‘neutral scientist’. The authors then summarise the predecessors and contributors to ACM: ‘activist research’, participatory action research, and public criminology. The components of ACM are (1) including the public; (2) using reflexivity; and (3) ensuring the findings are relayed to the public and ideally, used to create change. Including the public has two subsections, the victims/survivors and the activists resisting the injustice studied. The authors discuss some of the challenges in conducting ACM, including academic marginalisation of this scholarship (and thus the difficulty of pursuing it, particularly if untenured), securing collaboration with activists and/or survivors, reflexivity on the power differences when collaborating with marginalised communities, and the near impossibility of achieving all the goals of ACM in one study. Although unnamed until now, ACM, as we describe them, has been conducted for hundreds of years around the world. The growing number of scholars historically kept out of academia due to race, gender, sexuality, class, and criminal history is no doubt related to the vastly increasing frequency of studies employing ACMs, as well as discussions and advancement of these methods.

This paper presents a novel exploration of the story completion (SC) method for investigating perpetration of technology-facilitated abuse in relationships (TAR).

The authors adopted the infrequently used SC method to explore TAR perpetration. The perpetration of TAR can involve socially undesirable and potentially illegal behaviours such as online stalking, non-consensual sharing of nude images, and other coercive and controlling behaviours. These problematic behaviours present an ideal context for employing the SC method to reveal new data on TAR perpetrator perspectives, motivations and behaviours.

The SC method elicited new hypotheses regarding TAR perpetration behaviours and motivations. Post-study reflection on the multifaceted nature of perpetration raised questions about the utility of SC as a stand-alone method for investigating TAR perpetration. Challenges encountered included: striking the most effective length, detail and ambiguity in the story stems, difficulty in eliciting important contextual features in participants’ stories, and other issues scholars encounter when investigating perpetration of violence more broadly. The authors close with suggestions for more effective use of SC methodology in TAR and intimate partner violence research.

This paper expands discussion of the SC method’s application and extends scholarship on violence and perpetration research methodologies. The paper demonstrates the importance of story stem design to the attainment of research objectives and the usefulness and limitations of SC in exploring this sensitive topic and hard-to-reach population. It also advocates for the combined application of SC with other methodological approaches for the attainment of research outcomes when investigating multifaceted phenomenon.

This chapter examines the nexus between women's experiences of domestic abuse and their subsequent violent offending, as viewed through the lens of keyworkers in a women-only charity. The role of female subjectivity, stereotypes of femininity and the gendering of behaviours is discussed, alongside an exploration of the paradox of the female ‘victim-offender’. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with the keyworkers, drawing on the author's experience of working in the system, enable individual voices to be captured in detail, resulting in a rich narrative piece. This is analysed thematically and framed conceptually by the work of Judith Butler on gender performativity and precarious existence, and Jessica Benjamin on the ‘Third’ and the potential of recognition to transcend the experience of gendered violence. The discussions lead to the conclusion that the keyworkers' attention to interpellatory dynamics and intersubjectivity effects powerful individual change. However, the impact of this is limited, as the criminal justice system itself acts as Benjamin's ‘moral Third’, maintaining its status quo of inequality and gendered violence through patriarchal attitudes and a corresponding language of exclusion.

Since 1980s, institutional child sexual abuse has been ‘discovered’ as an internationally recognisable social problem. Public inquiries have become the most dominant mode of response to this, having been enacted throughout much of the western world. Driven by demands from victims/survivors for collective recognition, these have drawn on features of transitional justice as an important means of truth telling. While the role of survivors in precipitating the enactment of public inquiries has been well documented, less well understood is how social activism has been influenced in the aftermath of such inquiries. In this chapter, the authors explore a local phenomenon known as Loud Fence that arose in the Australian town of Ballarat as a case study to consider the relationship between activism and social change that can occur in the wake of official truth telling.