Patriarchal Terrorism or Common Couple Violence: Attorneys' Views of Prosecuting and Defending Woman Batterers*
| DOI | 10.1177/026975800000700311 |
| Author | Tammy A. King,Edna Erez |
| Published date | 01 January 2000 |
| Date | 01 January 2000 |
Domestic
Violence:
Global
Responses,
pp.207-226
©
2000
A B
Academic
Publishers
Printed
in
Great
Britain
PATRIARCHAL
TERRORISM
OR
COMMON
COUPLE
VIOLENCE:
ATTORNEYS'
VIEWS
OF
PROSECUTING
AND
DEFENDING
WOMAN
BATTERERS*
EDNA
EREZt
and
TAMMY
A.
KING*
t
Kent
State
University,
Kent,
OH44242,
USA
*Youngstown
State
University
ABSTRACT
In
the last
two
decades,
most
states
in
the
United
States
have
passed
laws
to
protect battered
women
and
to
enhance their
access
to
the
criminal
justice
system.
Preliminary
examinations suggest that
the
reforms
have
had
a
limited
success
on
abused
women's
use
of
the
law.
This
study
examines
the
ways
in
which
prosecuting
and
defense
attorneys
perceive
and
describe
the
dynamics
of battering
as
they
play
out
in
court,
and
presents
attorneys'
views
of
prosecuting,
defending
and
adjudicating
cases
of violence
against
women.
Attorneys'
views
on
the
defenses
commonly
used
in
court
and
other issues of
concern
to
reformers
of
domestic
violence
laws
are
also
discussed.
The
study
suggests that attorneys'
accounts
portray
the
woman-battering
cases
which
reach
the
justice system
as
'common couple violence'
rather
than
'patriarchal terrorism'.
Results
indicate
that
the
legal
profession,
charged
with
the
prosecution
and
adjudication
of
domestic
violence,
resorts
to
gender
stereotypes
to
excuse,
minimize
or
tolerate
violence
against
women.
Similarly,
legal
professionals
evaluate relevant
criminal
justice
policy
according
to
men's
views
of battering.
The
implications
of
the
results
for
combating
woman
battering
through
law
reform
are
discussed.
INTRODUCTION
The criminal justice response to violence against women has been a major area
of
concern for both activists and academics. Over the last two decades, many
jurisdictions in the U.S.A. have adopted a variety
of
measures to combat the
violence
through"
legal means: laws mandating the arrest
of
batterers,
'no
drop'
prosecutorial policies and specialized domestic courts (Davis and Smith, 1995).
Underlying these legal reforms
is
an assumption that policies which force the
police to arrest, help prosecutors to pursue cases by preventing fearful victims
from dropping the charge, or create special courts to deal comprehensively with
family conflict, will enhance the system's ability to combat woman battering.
Studies evaluating the impact of these legal efforts have suggested that the
reforms have had a limited effect on transforming the system's traditional
handling
of
violence against women (e.g., Ferraro, 1989; Sherman, 1992). They
*The
research
was
supported
by
grants
from
the
Urban
University
Program
at
Kent
State University
and
Youngstown
State
University.
An
earlier
version
of
this
paper
was
presented
at
the
1997
American
Society
of Criminology
Annual
meeting
in
San
Diego.
Authors'
names
appear
alphabe-
tically;
both
contributed
equally
to
the
research.
208
highlighted
the
role that stereotypical views of battered
women
and
of abusive
relationships held
by
law
enforcement agents play
in
the
inertia,
and
the barriers
they pose for changing police
and
court practices (e.g., Ferraro,
1989;
Davis and
Smith,
1995).
Researchers also noted that
the
prevailing conception of woman
abuse
as
'family violence' (see
Kurz,
1993)
and
the
myth
of
woman
battering
as
'mutual combat' (Dobash et
al.,
1992)
have
compromised attempts
to
treat
battering cases
as
crimes,
and
to
protect
women
from
violent
men.
These views,
which
suggest sexual symmetry
in
family
violence, distort the
reality
of
domestic violence dynamics
and
play
down
the
danger posed
to
women
in
abusive relationships. Although intimate relationships
may
exhibit sexual
symmetry of partners
in
aggressive
acts
(Campbell,
1993
),
cases of battering that
reach the level of police,
and
particularly court intervention,
are
commonly
characterized
by
the
asymmetry of their injurious consequences,
as
women
typically suffer the brunt ofthe violence (Hamberger,
1997;
Jones, 1994).
The differences between
the
two
bodies of literature -
women
battering
vs.
family violence -suggest that there
may
in
fact
be
two
kinds of violence against
women:
patriarchal terrorism and common couple violence (Johnson, 1995).
In
the
former, the violence
is
severe, occurs relatively frequently and escalates
in
seriousness over time. The husband/male partner almost exclusively initiates
it,
and most wives/female partners
do
not
attempt
to
fight
back.
Those
who
do
often
desist, leaving a small minority of
women
who
respond
with
any
self-defensive
strategies. The central motivating factor behind this
type
of violence
is
a man's
desire
to
exercise general control over 'his'
woman,
and
the
violence
is
only one
out of
many
control tactics used
by
the
man
to
control
his
female partner.
In
common couple violence,
on
the
other hand,
the
violence
is
committed
as
often
by
the
woman
as
it
is
by
the
man,
there
is
little escalation of the level of
violence over
time,
and it
is
not
a part of a pattern of general control. Rather,
the
complexities of life produce conflict that occasionally 'gets out of hand', and
common couple violence
is
by
and
large a non-gendered isolated reaction
to
conflict (Johnson, 1995).
In
addressing
the
qualitative distinction between
the
two
types of violence
emerging from
the
literature, Johnson
(1995)
points out the importance of
the
data source used
to
identify
the
attributes of each type of violence,
its
dynamics,
and the perpetrators' characteristic
behavior.
According
to
Johnson (1995;
p.
285), when court populations
(as
well
as
shelter
and
hospital populations) are
studied, one
is
led
to
conclude that intimate violence reflects patriarchal terrorism
rather than common couple violence.
The current study attempted
to
examine
the
way
in
which
domestic violence
is
presented
in
court
by
prosecuting
and
defense attorneys,
the
kinds of legal
defenses batterers commonly raise,
and
attorneys' experiences and views
on
issues related
to
the adjudication
and
disposition of domestic violence cases. Our
study reveals that although attorneys
deal
with
the
more
serious cases (they
obviously have reached court level),
the
discourse that characterizes them re-
flects common couple violence.
The
results also suggest that court discourse
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