What Does Justice Look like for Survivors of Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence? a Qualitative Study of Survivors Who Did and Did Not Pursue Legal Action Against Their Abusers

Background. Intimate partner violence (IPV), which may include a host of behaviors aimed at physically, sexually, and psychologically dominating a current or former significant other, is estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to affect nearly one in four women and one in ten men during their lifetime. Thirty years into the Violence Against Women Act and aided by video footage of police brutality in Black communities, activists and scholars alike recognize that a reliance on the state to pursue feminist goals of justice for survivors—so-called “carceral feminism”—has contributed to mass incarceration while failing to prevent and redress crimes such as intimate partner violence and rape. Many activists and abolitionists have called for divestment from the criminal justice system and the adoption of a restorative justice framework for addressing gender-based violence. Largely absent from this public reckoning are the voices of survivors themselves. Thus the pathway toward a justice for survivors that does not rely on purely carceral approaches begins with a mere question. What do survivors of intimate partner and sexual violence themselves have to tell us about the carceral approach to gender-based violence?

Methods. This exploratory qualitative study leveraged partnerships with agencies serving survivors of IPV and rape (e.g. shelters, rape crisis centers, court-based advocacy services, and legal agencies) to purposively sample and identify 30 women who had been victimized by IPV, rape, or both, within the previous two years. Prospective subjects were screened for lethality of violence experienced using the Danger Assessment-5. Semi-structured interviews were recorded and professionally transcribed, then analyzed from a phenomenological lens.

Results. The sample was heterogeneous in terms of race (37% white, 53% Black, 7% Asian), age (mean 39.5), marital status, income, education level, and housing status. The majority were mothers and all had been victimized by men. Twelve (40%) had pursued legal action against their abusers, although all but one had some contact with law enforcement during the course of the relationship. The majority of survivors believed that punishment for IPV via the carceral system was warranted and often necessary, but most felt that any such sentence should be brief and must include mental health services for abusers to address trauma and reeducate the men who perpetrate such violence to have any kind of effect on preventing further harm.

Conclusions. The wisdom of these 30 survivors generates difficult questions and future areas of inquiry for social work practice, policy, and research. The tension between carceral approaches that are seen as overly punitive, particularly low-income and Black men, versus survivors’ urgent and often unmet needs for protection and redress (usually financial in nature, to support children or moving house) are ethical dilemmas with which the profession must grapple. Increased access to quality trauma-informed mental health care, particularly among young men, represent the bare minimum of our societal responsibility to survivors.