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CFAW Making Headlines

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Times of Trenton article highlights CFAW’s important work and impact

Research Reveals Widespread Abuse of Women and Teens
By Kristen Purcell and Diane S. Linck
Published June 2, 2008

When asked by the Center for the Advancement of Women in 2006 to conduct a series of focus groups on the topic of domestic violence, we had no idea that the research would have such a profound impact on us. Talking with women and teen girls nationwide, we expected to hear one or two personal accounts of violence and abuse. Instead, as we moved from city to city, virtually every woman or teen we met had experience with domestic violence - either in their own relationships, or in those of friends and loved ones.

We met women who had been threatened with knives and guns, pushed out of cars in the middle of traffic, and raped by their husbands. We met teens who had been methodically isolated from friends and family, whose boyfriends followed them in high-speed car chases, and who have received restraining orders against old boyfriends.  The stories were so vivid and frightening, we had trouble maintaining our “distance” from the research - the entire research team was having trouble sleeping at night, plagued by nightmares and feelings of dread.

When we set out to do the research, we were concerned that women and teens wouldn’t have anything to talk about in the group discussions. Would they have personal experiences to share? Would they be willing to share their experiences with a group of strangers? Would teens even be familiar with the dynamics of abusive relationships?

Our concerns disappeared quickly. In our very first group with 15- to 17-year old girls in Northern New Jersey, we heard personal accounts from two girls whose boyfriends had threatened them with cars. One had had her personal possessions run over by her boyfriend in a fit of rage; the other’s boyfriend had stopped the car in the middle of the freeway “just to scare me.”

Later that same night, we met a Latina woman in her 20s who was in an abusive relationship with an older man. She asked early in the discussion if it was abuse when a man expects you to have sex when you don’t want to, later confirming that her boyfriend forces her to have sex. She described volatile arguments about the clothes she wears and the time she spends with friends. Her story emerged bit by bit over the course of the evening. Like most other women we talked with, it took the full length of the group discussion (two hours) for her to develop complete trust in the other women in her group - trust they would not judge her harshly or “blame the victim.”

The group discussions were designed to proceed slowly and cautiously. We began by asking what happens when their is conflict in a relationship. This allowed women to bring up abuse and violence on their own, which they inevitably did. Asked what constitutes abuse in a relationship, they described an escalating pattern of behavior, beginning with psychological manipulation and control (including financial control), verbal abuse and humiliation, and culminating in physical violence. Most said emotional and verbal abuse is just as damaging as physical violence, leaving permanent scars and undermining a women’s self-esteem.

The one behavior women usually did not bring up was sexual abuse. When the moderator raised the topic, response was mixed. Some of the women questioned whether sexual abuse can happen within the context of marriage - just by being in the relationship, didn’t the women consent to sex? To others, being pressured or forced into sex was a form of rape. A middle-aged Asian woman in a group in Sacramento recounted how, when she wanted to learn English and further her education, her husband would only let her take classes in exchange for sex. In her words, “You can be the judge of whether that is abusive or not.”

Right from the beginning, we were surprised at the frequency and intensity of participants’ experiences. We shouldn’t have been. In planning the groups, we had met with counselors from Womanspace for advice about how to approach the topic of domestic violence in a group of strangers. They assured us their would be women and teens in our groups with personal experience, and they wisely advised us to have local hotline information available following each discussion - for those whose wounds were reopened, for those who were inspired to confront an abuser, and to those who wanted to help a friend or family member.

Still, we were surprised at how forthcoming our participants were. For many, the group seemed to provide a release from a painful memory or experience, and participants were generally supportive of one another. There were occasionally women in the groups who said, “I would never let it happen to me.” Yet as a women in Memphis put it, “You can always say it won’t happen to you, but until it comes to your door you don’t know what you’ll do.”

A copy of the full qualitative research report can be found at AdvanceWomen.org. The research consisted of 15 focus groups with women and teenaged girls across the United States. Participants were selected to include a range of demographic groups, but were not screened for having had experience with domestic violence. The Center for the Advancement of Women is planning to do a national quantitative study on these issues.