Violence against women
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Violence against women · Sep 2014
Interviewing therapists about working with sexual assault survivors: researcher and therapist perspectives.
This article provides an account of the author's experience interviewing clinicians about their work with sexual assault survivors and clinicians' experiences working with this population. Twelve clinicians who worked with sexual assault survivors practicing in a range of professional settings completed semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Grounded theory and open-coding analyses were conducted on the researcher's log, case summaries, and verbatim-transcribed interview transcripts to uncover themes regarding (a) the researcher's experience of the interviewees and (b) the therapists' reports of their experiences working with survivors. Conclusions are drawn for researchers conducting interviews with therapists and clinicians working with sexual assault survivors.
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Violence against women · May 2014
The Impact of Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Programs on Criminal Justice Case Outcomes: A Multisite Replication Study.
To address the underreporting and underprosecution of adult sexual assaults, communities throughout the United States have implemented multidisciplinary interventions to improve postassault care for victims and the criminal justice system response. One such model is the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Program, whereby specially trained nurses provide comprehensive psychological, medical, and forensic services for sexual assault. In this study, we conducted a multisite evaluation of six SANE programs (two rural programs, two serving midsized communities, two urban) to assess how implementation of SANE programs affects adult sexual assault prosecution rates. ⋯ However, when the data were aggregated across sites, thereby increasing statistical power, there was a significant effect such that cases were more likely to be prosecuted post-SANE as compared with pre-SANE. These findings suggest that the SANE intervention model does have a positive impact on sexual assault case progression in the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, there is still a pressing need for improvement as the vast majority of both pre-SANE and post-SANE resulted in nonreferral/no charges filed.
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Violence against women · Mar 2014
From gun politics to self-defense politics: a feminist critique of the great gun debate.
This article calls attention to a problematic binary produced by public debates surrounding gun rights and gun control-namely, that women must choose armed self-protection or no self-protection at all. I argue that both anti- and pro-gun discourses, drawing on and reproducing race and class privileges, use assumptions about women's physical inferiority to further their agendas. I highlight how both sides have used guns as the proxy for self-defense and conclude by calling for a shift in public discourse to focus on the broader question of the right to self-defense rather than the narrower question of gun rights.
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Violence against women · Jul 2013
Randomized Controlled TrialViolence against women and HIV risk behaviors in Kampala, Uganda: baseline findings from the SASA! Study.
This article presents baseline data from the SASA! (this is the Swahili for 'now') Study, a cluster randomized trial of a community-mobilization intervention to prevent violence against women and HIV/AIDS in Kampala, Uganda. Logistic regression was used to explore associations between intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual risk behaviors, among 1,206 ever-partnered men and women (18-49 years). ⋯ Female experience and male perpetration of IPV were strongly associated with sexual risk behaviors. Findings confirm the importance of the SASA! intervention in this setting and endorse integrated strategies for IPV and HIV prevention.
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Violence against women · Mar 2013
Violence against women in the context of war: experiences of Shi'i women and Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon.
In times of war, women are likely to experience, in addition to the "normal" violence of peacetime, random cruelties perpetrated by the enemy against all members of the community. During research conducted with Palestinian refugees and Shi'i Muslims in Lebanon, women described various forms of violence and, in this article, I examine violence suffered by women in the context of conflict from three perspectives: victimization, trauma, and resistance. I argue that traumatic events have the effect of obliterating identity, but they can also strengthen the resolve to resist.