Informing Services for Forced Migrant Survivors of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault in the United States

Background and purpose: This paper presents findings from an ongoing multi methods study with women resettling in the U.S. as a result of armed conflict and displacement.  Research on domestic violence and sexual assault (DV/SA) help-seeking has systematically overlooked how social location, cumulative victimization, and co-occurring stressors may shape how women identify needs and seek support (Kennedy et al., 2012).  We have insufficient empirical evidence related to what happens when refugee and immigrant DV/SA survivors disclose, seek and access informal support mechanisms or formal services in terms of what they experience, whether they receive relevant services and support and are better off as a result of having disclosed and sought help. This project seeks to bridge some of those gaps.

Methods:  This study tracks disclosure rates from a DV/SA screening intervention implemented by a refugee resettlement agency.  A secondary analysis of screening data (N = 120) will serve to answer the following research questions: what services/support do women request, what services/support do women utilize, how, where and from whom do women access related formal and informal services/support? The study also collects qualitative data to deepen our understanding of migrating women’s support needs and options as they relate to experiences of DV/SA. Participants (N = 50) include women who screened positive for DV/SA, clients across language groups, service providers and representatives for community-based organizations.  Deductive, inductive and thematic analysis approaches guide the identification of salient themes in the data. 

Findings: Preliminary results indicate that pre- and post-migration stressors shape women’s support seeking from both informal and formal resources, and support needs do not always correspond with service providers’ conceptualizations of services for survivors of DV/SA. 

Conclusion and Implications: War and displacement ruptures critical networks, dramatically reducing women’s informal support options and impacting help-seeking behavior. This study seeks to fill an important gap in both the research literature and practice knowledge base by analyzing women’s service experiences expressed during DV/SA screening, referral services and follow-up; identifying the challenges and opportunities for providing culturally competent survivor-centered DV/SA services to refugee and immigrant women that accounts for their experiences fleeing violence and persecution; and producing and disseminating research findings and analysis targeting practitioners, policymakers and researchers.