Understanding the help seeking behaviour of teenagers who experience relationship abuse (dating violence) from a feminist intersectional approach.

This presentation aims to raise issues related to teenage relationship abuse (TRA-dating violence) and help seeking behaviour from an intersectional approach. Even though teenage relationship abuse has been raised as an issue since the 80’s there is still an absence of an intersectional theoretical conceptualization of TRA. Existing conceptualizations are based on incorrect assumptions of sameness of teenagers experiences of TRA which ignore the unique developmental stages of teenagers as well as youth’s diverse lived experiences due to their sexual orientation, ethnicity, class, disability as well as other structural divisions. TRA exists in a social context of inequalities. For the individual survivor, this social context is created not only through romantic relationships, but also through relationships with families, peers, friends, classmates and others. Their experiences are constructed through these relationships which form part of the social context into which TRA needs to be analysed. The analytical framework of intersectionality can provide a framework of understanding how these lived experiences are enacted and negotiated contextually. Emphasis will be given to the help seeking behaviour of diverse youths. This presentation will explore the diverse lived experiences contextually. Methods and Findings: This presentation is based on a research project in Northern Ireland currently underway, thus, it will offer a preliminary conceptualisation of TRA from an intersectional approach. The findings will be contextualized taking into account the high rate of homophobia that exists in Northern Ireland amongst other things. Conclusion/Recommendation: Intersectionality needs to be the analytical framework through which teenagers’ relationship’s experience are analysed since the lived experiences of LGTB, BME and disabled youth cannot be analysed apart from the structural divisions, social location and the context they are experienced. This presentation argues that the intersectional approach of theorizing is congruent and contributes to anti-oppressive social work practice.

Domestic Violence as a Human Rights Issue: Rumor v. Italy

The article focuses on the recent developments as regards domestic violence within the context of the Council of Europe. Since 2007 the European Court of Human Rights has issued a series of important judgments in cases involving domestic violence. The most recent of these is Rumor v. Italy, in which the Court issued its judgment on 27 May 2014. The article analyses this case in the context of the Court’s previous jurisprudence on domestic violence. In addition, on 1 August 2014 the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence entered into force, and the article will include a number of reflections on the potential held by this Convention. No violation of the European Convention on Human Rights was found in Rumor, however the question of whether Italy would have been in breach of the provisions of the new Convention, to which it is a party, had this Convention been in force at the time of the relevant events, will be examined.

Psychological interventions for children and young people affected by armed conflict or political violence: a systematic literature review.

Youths exposed to armed conflict have a higher prevalence of mental health and psychosocial difficulties. Diverse interventions exist that aim to ameliorate the effect of armed conflict on the psychological and psychosocial wellbeing of conflict affected youths. However, the evidence base for the effectiveness of these interventions is limited. Using standard review methodology, this review aims to address the effectiveness of psychological interventions employed among this population. The search was performed across four databases and grey literature. Article quality was assessed using the Downs and Black Quality Checklist (1998). Where possible, studies were subjected to meta-analyses. The remaining studies were included in a narrative synthesis. Eight studies concerned non clinical populations, while nine concerned clinical populations. Review findings conclude that Group Trauma Focused-Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is effective for reducing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and improving prosocial behaviour among clinical cohorts. The evidence does not suggest that interventions aimed at non clinical groups within this population are effective. Despite high quality studies, further robust trials are required to strengthen the evidence base, as a lack of replication has resulted in a limited evidence base to inform practice.

Victims, Violence and Voice: Transitional Justice, Oral History and Dealing with the Past

Transitional justice is concerned with the legal and social processes established to deal with the legacy of violence in post-conflict and post-authoritarian contexts. These processes are essentially “creatures of law” – they are established by statute, their work is molded and shaped by lawyers, and their outcomes are benchmarked against what is or is not acceptable in domestic and international law. Concerns have mounted in recent years about the dominance of legalism within the field and the instrumentalization of those most directly affected by past violence. A commonly prescribed – but as yet largely empirically untested – corrective is that transitional justice theory and practice must become more open to interdisciplinary insights and perspectives. The interview – in different guises, contexts and settings – is at the heart of most transitional justice processes. As a historian now working in a School of Law I reflect in this article on the theoretical and practical intersections between law, history, and the interview. Drawing on more than 200 interviews concerning the Northern Ireland conflict and six other international case studies I concentrate in particular on interview-based initiatives that purport to be “victim-centered”. Having identified three interrelated risks - the manipulation of victim voice by vested interests, the affording of authority to particular voices, and the reification or “freezing” of identity - and having related these to the constraints of legal mechanisms and a wider failure to manage victims’ expectations, I argue that a greater familiarity with oral history theory and praxis can usefully illuminate the tensions between legal and historical approaches to engaging voice, and ultimately offer guidance to the shared challenge of victim-centered transitional justice.

Beyond Typologies: Foregrounding Meaning and Motive in Domestic Violence Perpetration

Within the study of domestic violence typological approaches have gained prominence in part as a response to the wider feminist canon that presumes perpetrators are all simply motivated by male power. In this article we use a single case study to query the presumption inherent in the most commonly used typological approaches that offender motivations remain largely static overtime and can be read off easily from self-reports or official records. We conclude by pointing to the need, both for academics and practitioners, to engage interpretively with the specific meanings acts of violence hold for domestic violence perpetrators - informed as they can be by sexist values, perceptions of entitlement and a specific history of conflict, suspicion or grievance – that can change who they are and the way they behave in the aftermath of assaults and breakups, as the foreground of crime is reincorporated into a background narrative.

“I just can’t, I am frightened for my safety, I don’t know how to work with her” Practitioners’ experiences of client violence and recommendations for future practice

To what extent is the therapist-client relationship damaged following client perpetuated violence and what steps can we take to diminish its impact? Much of the information we have on client violence comes from multiple mental health disciplines in the US and the UK over the last 20-30 years and has formed a useful, though sometimes dated and sporadic, quantitative baseline to delineate a range of issues. However, there is limited systematic research on how practitioner psychologists process the violence in the course of their everyday practice and how this impacts the therapist-client dynamic. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), we explored seven therapists’ experiences of client violence across a range of work sites – acute psychiatric hospital wards, forensic hospital wards and community mental health teams. Three main themes were documented: processing the moment-to-moment experience of client violence; professional vulnerabilities and needs as a result of client violence; and the ruptured therapeutic relationship. Strategies for supporting practicing psychologists and providing continuing professional care for clients include challenging self-doubt and re-energizing professional competencies as well as repairing ourselves and repairing the therapeutic relationship. Recommendations for credentialing and regulatory bodies in relation to client violence are also highlighted.

Killing animals: sociology, species relations and institutionalized violence

Influential voices have argued for a sociology which acknowledges the way we are co-constituted with a range of non-human species as part of the condition of life on this planet. Despite this, sociology has generally retained a conception of the social that is centred on the human. This paper argues for the inclusion of non-human animals in sociological agendas, focusing on the emerging field of the sociology of violence. It examines the institutions and processes through which non-human animals are subjected to different forms of violence, most notably, mass killing.The practice of killing animals is routine,normative,institutionalized and globalized.The scale of killing is historically unprecedented and the numbers killed are enormous. The paper argues that this killing of non-humans raises questions around inequal- ities and intersectionality, human relations with other species, the embedding of violence in everyday practices and links between micro and macro analyses. These are questions with which the new sociology of violence might engage.

Childrens experiences of domestic violence and abuse: Siblings accounts of relational coping

This article explores how children see their relationships, particularly their sibling relationships, in families affected by domestic violence (DV) and how relationality emerges in their accounts as a resource to build an agentic sense of self. The ‘voice’ of children is largely absent from the DV literature, which typically portrays them as passive, damaged and relationally incompetent. Children’s own understandings of their relational worlds are often overlooked, and consequently, existing models of children’s social interactions give inadequate accounts of their meaning-making-in-context. Drawn from a larger study of children’s experiences of DV and abuse, this article uses two case studies of sibling relationships to explore young people’s use of relational resources, for coping with violence in the home. The article explores how relationality and coping intertwine in young people’s accounts and disrupts the taken-for-granted assumption that children’s ‘premature caring’ or ‘parentification’ is (only) pathological in children’s responses to DV. This has implications for understanding young people’s experiences in the present and supporting their capacity for relationship building in the future.

Beyond "Witnessing": Childrens Experiences of Coercive Control in Domestic Violence and Abuse

Children’s experiences and voices are underrepresented in academic literature and professional practice around domestic violence and abuse. The project “Understanding Agency and Resistance Strategies” (UNARS) addresses this absence, through direct engagement with children. We present an analysis from interviews with 21 children in the United Kingdom (12 girls and 9 boys, aged 8-18 years), about their experiences of domestic violence and abuse, and their responses to this violence. These interviews were analyzed using interpretive interactionism. Three themes from this analysis are presented: (a) “Children’s experiences of abusive control,” which explores children’s awareness of controlling behavior by the adult perpetrator, their experience of that control, and its impact on them; (b) “Constraint,” which explores how children experience the constraint associated with coercive control in situations of domestic violence; and (c) “Children as agents,” which explores children’s strategies for managing controlling behavior in their home and in family relationships. The article argues that, in situations where violence and abuse occur between adult intimate partners, children are significantly affected, and can be reasonably described as victims of abusive control. Recognizing children as direct victims of domestic violence and abuse would produce significant changes in the way professionals respond to them, by (a) recognizing children’s experience of the impact of domestic violence and abuse; (b) recognizing children’s agency, undermining the perception of them as passive “witnesses” or “collateral damage” in adult abusive encounters; and (c) strengthening professional responses to them as direct victims, not as passive witnesses to violence.

Brand personification and symbolic consumption among ethnic minority teenage consumers: An empirical study

A plethora of evidence suggests that developed societies such as the United Kingdom are becoming increasingly multicultural by the day. Hence, the diversity of consumption in these societies becomes gradually evident in the form of residents’ age, gender, income and ethnicity. Accordingly, this article explores the brand personification and symbolic consumption in respect of London-based Black African teenage consumers. The study is rooted in the interpretive research paradigm with 36 in-depth interviews conducted with the target respondents. The study shows the interactions of personal, social, cultural, psychological and commercial factors in how these young ethnic minority consumers make their consumption decisions, define and manage their various ‘selves’ in the postmodern society. It specifically highlights that they use symbolic consumption to address their need for acceptance in the society. It updates the extant ethnic minority studies and enriches the current understanding about symbolic consumption and brand personification especially with a focus on a specific segment of the society. The managerial implications of the study are highlighted in the article.