Older women and domestic violence

Citation

Goergen, T. (2011), "Older women and domestic violence", The Journal of Adult Protection, Vol. 13 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/jap.2011.54913faa.001

Older women and domestic violence

Article Type: Editorial From: The Journal of Adult Protection, Volume 13, Issue 6

Over the last few decades, domestic violence has been recognized as a social problem and gained wide attention as a topic of social science research. However, this process has not included all groups that may be affected by violence within close relationships to the same extent. The question of taking men into account not only a perpetrators but also as possible victims of domestic violence has been discussed intensively, and has often been fraught with ideological views of women allegedly using (or even abusing) their victim status to strengthen their position and of men pointing at cases of violence by women to draw off attention from gender-related power structures and to give momentum to the backlash against progress in domestic violence policies that has been made largely due to the women’s movement.

There are other groups affected by domestic violence that may be regarded as hidden victims or hard-to-reach populations. This refers to refugee women and women from ethnic minorities (Fontes and McCloskey, 2010; Runner et al., 2009; Senturia et al., 2000), people with disabilities, and very young children (Goodman and Melinder, 2007). In these cases, researchers, law enforcement, and helping institutions often face common problems of gaining access to victims whose chances of successfully seeking help, of reporting their victimization to an appropriate institution and of becoming part of a sample of social science victimization studies is reduced.

One large – and growing – group of possible victims of domestic violence has often been overlooked – and this is older women. Their neglect in research as well as in practice has been a silent and mainly unconscious one. Domestic violence institutions as well as research on domestic violence often maintain a focus on young- and middle-aged women. Existing data point to a decline of victimization rate in older age. However, there are multiple reasons to give special consideration to older females’ experiences of domestic violence and also to consider the ways in which organisations handle such cases:

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  Older women’s experiences of violence may be different from those of young women and those in middle adulthood. How is the fact that male physical violence usually declines with age reflected in older women’s victim experiences? To what extent is battering in old age a late stage of a life history of continued exposure to violence? To what extent do changes associated with older age lead to a late start of violent behaviour?

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  Many older women are dependent upon care or provide care for care-dependent relatives, often their husbands or partners. Care dependency and caregiving imply specific strains and challenges that may be connected to abuse and neglect in later life.

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  Older women’s perceptions of violence and their coping styles may be age-related. Coping with violence often implies changes in the way a person lives. Options for change and consequences of changes can be different in later life than in both middle and young adulthood.

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  Little is known about older female victims’ needs and the ways that institutions and professionals perceive these needs and react to them. While victims of all ages want violence to stop, preferred means and ways to reach this goal may be different with regard to a person’s position in the life cycle.

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  Linked to the topic of victims’ needs is the question of which best practice services can be offered to older victims of domestic violence and how outreach to this group can be improved.

Taken together, there is a need to “widen the circle” (Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, 1999) when researching and tackling domestic violence and to include the growing group of women in later life who have experienced these forms of abuse and violence.

By way of acknowledgement of this most important of issues relating to these forms of abuse, this special issue of the journal has a particular focus on the abuse of older women. In putting together papers for this issue it appeared appropriate to obtain a mixture of contributions that between them discuss recent developments in this area. We are therefore pleased to be able to present papers from a number of different countries and that provide a snapshot of what work has been taking place in recent years in relation to both research and practice.

In the first paper in this special issue, McGarry and Simpson report the findings of focused research on the impact of abuse on the health and lives of older women in one area of England. This small-scale in-depth qualitative study demonstrates that there are significant and long-term impacts of abuse on the health and emotional well-being of the women affected. The paper also considers existing policy and implications for service provision that may be derived from the findings.

The second paper, by De Donder and colleagues also focuses on research, in this case a prevalence study of abuse of older women undertaken in five European countries within the remit of the DAPHNE III Programme. The DAPHNE Programme is related to reduction in and prevention of violence against women and children and generally provides funding for specific projects relating to provision, rather than pure research. In the third phase of the programme (running from 2008 to 2013), a specific call related to the abuse of older women was included and four projects were funded within the programme. Two of the papers in this special issue were undertaken within the DAPHNE programme and it is planned to publish papers from the other projects in future issues. The study reported in De Donder et al.’s paper was undertaken between 2009 and 2011 and the same methodology was employed across the different countries involved. Across all countries a total of 2,880 older women were interviewed and overall some 28 per cent of older women reported experience of at least one form of abuse in the last year.

The specific focus of this paper is to explore findings from the study that relate to the perpetrators of abuse among older women living in the community. The study examines whether differences can be detected between the perpetrators of different forms of abuse, and for different groups of older women (e.g. by income or age groups). The paper also investigates whether older women talk about the abuse to family or friends, or report it to an official or formal agency, in relation to the different perpetrators involved in the abuse situations.

The following paper by Brandl and Dawson from the USA is very much related to the issue of the development of specific programmes in this area. The US Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) funds a small Abuse in Later Life Programme, relating to generally small, localised projects, which is monitored and evaluated by the National Centre for Abuse in Later Life (NCALL) and the paper considers several of the outcomes of the programmes from the perspectives of individual holders of grants awarded by the programme. The paper briefly outlines the dynamics of abuse in later life, the design and objectives of the OVW programme and then considers a number of the principal lessons learnt by grant holders (grantees) during the projects that have been undertaken.

The final paper in this special issue also relates to projects undertaken within the EU DAPHNE Programme and is provided by Strümpel and Hackl of the Austrian Red Cross. Their paper reports findings from the linked Breaking the Taboo projects that began in 2007 and will complete at the end of 2011 (these were two separate projects, one undertaken between 2007 and 2009 and the second from 2009 to 2011). Both of the projects were designed to have a research and a practical phase; the first project consisted of interviews with health and social care staff, together with an organisational survey. Awareness-raising material was then produced for health and social care professionals working in this area. In the second project existing training materials were analysed and specific and tailored training material was developed across the partner countries, forming the basis for training workshops that were then piloted in the different countries. The paper describes relevant findings from both projects and includes insights that will be of use to all who are involved in training in this area of work.

The papers included in this issue are varied but all share a common focus on the abuse of older women. We hope that readers will agree that the papers contain interesting and detailed information that will be useful in extending the knowledge-base and to inform practice in this neglected area.

Thomas Goergen, Bridget Penhale

Corresponding author

Bridget Penhale can be contacted at: B.Penhale@uea.ac.uk