Nicole Westmarland

Ethics in Violence and Abuse Research - a Positive Empowerment Approach:

Research governance, including research ethics committees and data protection legislation, is invested in protecting the individual rights of participants in social care and health research. Increasingly funders expect evidence of outcomes that engage with ‘service users’, making research critical in supporting social interventions to compete for scant resources in an economic climate marked by ‘austerity’ (Sullivan 2011). This article focuses on the tensions that can arise from the research governance of violence and abuse research. We argue that increased scrutiny of violence and abuse as a ‘sensitive’ topic that involves ‘vulnerable’ groups has made ethical clearance more challenging, which in turn can lead to a dangerous lack of evidence. This can have a harmful impact upon women and children and leave specialised violence and abuse services facing a precarious future. Drawing on recent debates we describe the ‘positive empowerment’ approach used to engage victim-survivors and perpetrators of domestic violence in Project Mirabal. We conclude with recommendations for ethical decision-making in violence and abuse research: (i) to reconsider participants as active agents and stakeholders; (ii) to prioritise the development of skilled researchers; (iii) to develop situated processes of informed consent and confidentiality; and (iv) to continue to discuss and share practical experiences of feminist research practice that seeks to deliver justice and social change.

Domestic violence perpetrators.

Marianne Hester and Nicole Westmarland argue that the pattern of repeat offending in domestic violence requires a systematic response from the criminal justice system.

naming and defining ‘domestic violence’: lessons from research with violent men

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.

The Health, Mental Health, and Well-Being Benefits of Rape Crisis Counseling

There is very little research on interventions to alleviate the distress experienced following rape. This action research project developed and piloted the “Taking Back Control” tool that measured the impact of rape crisis counseling over time. Five rape crisis centers in the North of England agreed to pilot the tool, which was administered by the client’s counselor, either on Week 1 or 2, and then repeated every 6 weeks until the end of counseling. Eighty-seven clients completed at least two questionnaires. This allowed us to measure change from their first compared with their last data collection point. The most change was made in relation to the statement “I feel empowered and in control of my life,” where 61% strongly/disagreed at the first data collection point compared with 31% at the last data collection point. Large shifts were also seen in relation to “I have ‘flashbacks’ about what happened” and “I have panic attacks.” Overall, some degree of positive change was seen for all measures. This research, despite some limitations, begins to develop an evidence base for rape crisis centers to demonstrate their benefits and to assess and develop their own practice.

Older sex offenders – managing risk in the community from a policing perspective

ABSTRACT Although there has been an increase in research and policy attention examining sex offenders, their motivations and how ‘risk’ should be managed in relation to registered sex offenders in the community, the majority of these efforts have concentrated on young offenders. This paper presents the findings from a qualitative study involving interviews with offender managers working in six forces across England and Wales. The study produced a number of key findings: (1) there is an increasing number of older sex offenders subject to offender management and these offenders have particular needs; (2) there are a number of specific challenges in managing older offenders and (3) these create a number of a specific issues when managing older offenders with care or support needs. Implications for those involved in the management of sex offenders are discussed and best practice highlighted.

Kaleidoscopic Justice: Sexual Violence and Victim-Survivors’ Perceptions of Justice

This article proposes a more multifaceted way of thinking about victim-survivors’ perceptions of justice; what we have termed ‘kaleidoscopic justice’. Developed from an empirical investigation with 20 victim-survivors of sexual violence, kaleidoscopic justice understands justice as a constantly shifting pattern; justice constantly refracted through new experiences or understandings; justice as an ever-evolving, nuanced and lived experience. Within this framework, a number of justice themes emerged, namely justice as consequences, recognition, dignity, voice, prevention and connectedness. This approach develops current understandings, in particular by emphasizing the fluidity of justice, as well as the centrality of prevention and connectedness in sexual violence survivors’ understandings of justice. We suggest that it is only by better understanding victim-survivor perspectives on justice, and embedding the concept of kaleidoscopic justice, that we can begin to address the sexual violence ‘justice gap’.

Time out: a strategy for reducing men's violence against women in relationships?

This article critically explores accounts of how men attending domestic violence perpetrator programs (DVPP) used the “time out” strategy. Findings are drawn from 71 semi-structured interviews with 44 men attending DVPPs and 27 female partners or ex-partners of men in DVPPs. We describe three ways in which the technique was used: first, as intended, to interrupt potential physical violence; second, through the effective adaption of the time-out rules by victim-survivors; and finally, misappropriation by some men to continue and extend their controlling behaviors. Policy and practice lessons are drawn from the findings through connecting broader and deeper measurements of what success means when working with domestic violence perpetrators to the ways in which the time-out technique was used.

Domestic Violence: The Increasing Tensions Between Experience, Theory, Research, Policy and Practice

For most of the twentieth century domestic violence was dismissed as a private, personal issue; it is now recognised globally as a significant social issue faced by up to one in three women in their lifetimes (WHO 2013). It acts as a barrier to women realising their rights and achieving their full potential and it intersects with other forms of inequality, including ethnicity, class and (dis)ability (Westmarland 2015). Feminists have located it within the wider concept of violence against women and girls, identifying commonalities and connections between the many forms, including: low reporting rates; low conviction rates; a range of myths and stereotypes that serve to justify abuse; and a historic failure of the state to prevent, prosecute and protect (Coy et al. 2008). In 2012/13 in England and Wales, 91 people were recorded as being killed by their partner or ex-partner, of these, 76 were female and 15 were male (Office for National Statistics 2014). These figures should be considered a starting point since an unknown number of women die because of partner violence in other ways, for example through suicide, drug or alcohol misuse, or the effects that long term physical violence has on their bodies (Westmarland 2015).