NCJ Number
81548
Journal
BRA Apropa Issue: 1 Dated: special issue (1980) Pages: 3-26
Date Published
1980
Length
24 pages
Annotation
Academicians, lawyers, court personnel, psychologists, and shelter staff present their ideas regarding dynamics of wife abuse, its causes, and legal responses in Sweden.
Abstract
Prepared remarks of seven seminar participants cover many common issues, including the persistence of sex role stereotypes in Swedish society and its link to wife abuse, and the reluctance to perceive abuse as a crime, the incidence of abuse, and the growing trend toward use of shelters, hotlines, therapy, women's apartments, and special medical services to aid abuse victims. The new police policy of pressing charges against the abusing husband, thereby relieving the wife of this burden, is discussed as a benefit and a possible problem (The wife loses control over the decision to prosecute and can incur the husband's wrath for the prosecution in any case.) One participant blames the marriage contract for building special legal powers for husbands into the marriage relationship and suggests changes in the contract. Another details the particular problems of immigrant women who, when abused by their mates, must struggle with cultural and language difficulties in their efforts to seek help and have no parents or relatives to return to for refuge. The characteristic circumstances of wife abuse (time of day and week, use of alcohol, etc.) are reviewed.