NCJ Number
239410
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 29 Issue: 3 Dated: June 2012 Pages: 309-346
Date Published
June 2012
Length
38 pages
Annotation
This study examined battered women's help-seeking.
Abstract
Although intimate partner abuse has been extensively researched over the last 30 years, battered women's help-seeking remains perplexingly undertheorized, particularly within criminology. This analysis aims to offer a corrective by applying the feminist pathways theoretical modelwhich examines women's and girls' offending behaviors in the context of their past victimization experiencesto battered women's help-seeking. Data from in-depth life history interviews with 22 battered women in 2 States indicate that the women's childhood victimization experiences informed their adult help-seeking decisions in meaningful ways. The primary theoretical contribution of this analysis is the identification of specific mechanismsfive help-seeking inhibitors and three help-seeking promotersthrough which childhood victimization influenced participants' help-seeking. Results of this analysis demonstrate the benefit of a feminist pathways theoretical model of battered women's help-seeking in order to better understand how pathways of victimization and resistance develop over the course of women's lives. (Published Abstract)