Abusive Endings: Separation and Divorce Violence against Women, by Walter DeKeseredy
We have not read this book but we know it would be good because Walter DeKeseredy is a highly respected social scientist in the field of domestic abuse.
Here is the blurb:
Abusive Endings offers a thorough analysis of the social-science literature on one of the most significant threats to the health and well-being of women today—abuse at the hands of their male partners. The authors provide a moving description of why and how men abuse women in myriad ways during and after a separation or divorce. The material is punctuated with the stories and voices of both perpetrators and survivors of abuse, as told to the authors over many years of fieldwork.
Written in a highly readable fashion, this book will be a useful resource for researchers, practitioners, activists, and policy makers.
The book came out in May 2017. We hope it gets a wide reading among policy makers. We hope it leads to changes in the system and legislation which will make it safer for victims to leave abusers.
The blurb does not say that the book is written for victims, but if any victims read it we would love to know their view of the book.
UPDATE to add this link: Abusive Endings: Separation and Divorce Violence Against Women, a conversation with the authors
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- Posted in: Abusers
- Tagged: abuser's tactics, divorce, physical abuse, prevention, safety, secular justice systems, separation, social abuse, systemic abuse, violence
A Cry For Justice 
Have not read the book but the summary got me thinking. How many of us actually know women who have not been abused by their boyfriends, husbands, or other males? The general statistic given in the U.S. is that 1 in 4 women are victims of DV at some point in their lives, yet if we really think about it, how many of us have almost all the women we know been victimized currently or in the past at some point?
And why isn’t there school-curriculum from Kindergarten all the way until the end of High School, teaching girls what is and is not okay, they are not the cause of their boyfriends / future husbands abuse, violence is a crime, forced sex is rape and a crime and all sorts of things like that?!?!?
Men control the budgets, most school admin and top positions are occupied by men, and society is male-dominated with men controlling many things. So girls grow up and are but lambs for the slaughter of men’s abuse and violence against women. How many teenage girls are sexually harassed at their very first places of employment? How many are controlled, abused, coerced, and / or beaten by their high school sweethearts? How much date rape happens before they can legally drink at 21? How much harassment, control, abuse, violence, stalking, and so forth do girls and women get indoctrinated into believing is ‘normal’, acceptable, to be expected, their ‘lot in life’??
I think one of the ways the conservative Christian community fails girls and women to a reprehensible degree is the failure to teach girls and women to value themselves, that abuse is not okay, that saying no, being self-protective, self-preserving, and strong-willed is a good thing for girls and women. This “be nice” “speak / hear / see no evil” “assume the best in everyone and everything” “pastors wouldn’t do that” “people from the church wouldn’t do that” “evil doesn’t happen here” crud we are force fed without end is so damaging.
Apparently the book contains a section or chapter on ‘revenge porn’. The use of technology to capture and then post naked / intimate / embarrassing / private moments of any targeted woman is an especially vicious and life-destroying tactic. Hidden cameras. Stripping someone nude and capturing video or pics of them while asleep / unconscious. All sorts of ways to capture images for use in posting such online, sending it to the targeted woman’s friends, family, employer, community, etc.
How many women and girls have suicided over ‘revenge porn’ already? According to the book, some 3,000 online websites exist to facilitate the spreading of targets’ images to a global audience of fellow evil, wicked, depraved, violent, perverted, abusers. And once it is out there, posted somewhere online, it is impossible to get it back and shut the dissemination (criminal activity, perverted sickos’ ‘fun’) down.
Look at your cell phone. There are two cameras that come standard nowadays. A forward facing one and an outward facing camera. Look at the high-quality of the images captured. Note the cheap price for the phone. See how small — and they are TINY — those cameras actually are. When a person gets to realizing just how easy it is to hide a hidden camera, to obtain images of someone undressing, changing clothes, showering, using the toilet, ETC. this is a chapter I am very interested in reading, especially if they propose solid solutions or tell about how other victimized, targets got through the horror and hell of having their privacy obliterated via ‘revenge porn’ – like abuse.
I know our local schools include relationship and mental health info. at least from middle school, mainly through the ‘Health’ curriculum; it’s probably never ‘enough’, but the schools have so many pressures on them as well.
Last summer my daughter (going into 8th grade) went to a local festival with some friends. A boy their age grabbed her friend on the rear; my daughter saw it and hauled off and smacked him across the face so hard he started to cry. When I asked her (later hearing of this) if hitting was necessary, her response was, “Mom, he DESERVED it!” (and inside, I admit I was thinking, ‘yeah, he did!’). Then the next week she saw the same kid at another event, apologized for hitting him, and he told her no, he deserved it and marveled at how strong she was (as the boys get bigger and stronger, her physical type of response could get more dangerous, though).
So I like to think that he is one kid who learned a lesson that will make him think twice or multiple times before doing something similar to girls in the future…
Thanks for sharing this, Active Reader. 🙂
I am all for encouraging girls to defend themselves, to protect themselves, and to fight, if need be. I think he deserved it, too. I was NOT raised to believe such, but my goodness, it’s wrong for girls to be brainwashed into this sprinkles, fairy dust, and nothing but “be nice”, doormat-perfection-training grounds.
Grabbing some girl’s butt is a crime. Technically, assault is any unwanted contact. Sexual assault can go from grabbing someone’s butt, boob, etc. all the way to rape.
Can you imagine any guy not punching another guy who walks up and grabs their penis or testes? The grabber would be punched for sure. Girls should be expected to do the same. Way to be courageous, teenage girl.
You can listen to or read a conversation with the authors of this book here:
Abusive Endings: Separation and Divorce Violence Against Women, a conversation with the authors [Internet Archive link]
Another book to add to my reading list….I am especially interested in the electronic / tech information, having seen some examples – and the potential for more – when the internet first became readily accessible to the public.