The Belief That Domestic Abuse Survivors Make False Allegations of Abuse: Comparisons Between Social Worker and Psychologist Child Custody Evaluators

Purpose

Domestic abuse survivors lose custody of their children at surprisingly high rates. Bias among professional child custody evaluators may partially explain such outcomes. Little is known about differences between social workers and other professionals who conduct these evaluations regarding beliefs that could indicate bias. Differences in training, education, gender, experience as a victim, and attitudes could lead to differences in beliefs about cases involving domestic violence, in particular the belief that false allegations by victims are prevalent. The purpose of this study is to determine the differences in beliefs and behaviors of social work and psychologist evaluators and what might explain these differences.

Method

A survey was conducted of child custody evaluators using a web based and mailed survey throughout the U.S. Invitation lists were constructed from membership lists of organizations likely to have evaluators as members. Four hundred thirty-nine evaluators responded; 93 social workers and 208 psychologists were used in this comparison. In addition to demographic information (gender, age), respondents were asked about the custody outcomes of their cases, recommendations they would make for custody in response to a vignette, beliefs about false allegations of various forms of abuse, and their extent of training on domestic violence. The Modern Sexism Scale was used as a distal variable that might explain attitudes about domestic abuse survivors, as it has in other studies.

Results

Social workers and psychologists differed significantly in the extent to which they recommended sole legal and physical custody to victims of abuse or would make such recommendations in response to a case vignette, with social workers more likely to recommend sole custody to the victim. The belief that battered women make false allegations of abuse was related positively to the tendency to recommend joint custody and negatively to the tendency to recommend sole custody to the victim. Social workers were less likely than psychologists to believe that battered women make false allegations of domestic violence, as well as false allegations of child sexual abuse. Social workers were also less likely to believe that battered women are trying to alienate the child from the other parent. Further analysis was conducted to try to explain the difference between the two professions on the belief in false allegations of domestic violence. A regression analysis was used to explore the role of gender, age, training, and sexist beliefs [variables were entered in this order after profession]. The addition of gender and age in the regression equation did not change the contribution of the type of profession to the belief about false allegations; nor did they make an independent contribution to the belief. Training and sexist beliefs also did not explain the differences between the professions; however, each of these variables contributed independently and significantly to the variance in the belief about false allegations.

Implications

Training may lesson the belief that battered women make false allegations of abuse. Further research is needed to test the impact of training on the beliefs and behavior of evaluators.