The Help Seeking Behaviors of Female IPV Victims

• Main Authors: Chia-Yun Lu, 呂佳芸
• Other Authors: 黃蘭媖
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/85642091922116831673

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 犯罪學研究所 === 99 === Most studies regarding help seeking behaviors in IPV (intimate partner violence) cases discuss in the field of informal support system. Those studies deal with help seeking behaviors in formal support system are limited in the petition of civil protective orders. In order to capture more comprehensive characters in domestic violence, we need to magnify the size of sample. Moreover, in order to analyze and evaluate different help seeking behaviors, we need to compare different sources of samples with longitudinal data. This study focuses on female victims’ help seeking behaviors of intimate partner violence. We divide women’s help seeking behaviors according to law enforcement party’s involvement and women’s choice of follow-up civil or criminal procedure. By analyzing different levels of help seeking behaviors and victims’ characters, offenders’ characters, cases’ characters and needs for help, I expect to know correlations between different levels of help seeking behaviors and independent variables. We also want to discover distinctions between two violence reported cases from different report time. I collected totally 1770 samples from Taoyuan County in 2008. About 32.4％ of female victims were reported by hospitals. Slightly more than hospital reports, 33.9％ of the women reported to the police; only 24.5％ received civil protective order. Fewer victims, 9.2％, have placed criminal charges to their offenders (or in rare cases, the offenders were prosecuted by authority of law enforcement). Chi-squares test shows that there is significant relation between different levels of help seeking behaviors and victims’ characters, offenders’ characters, cases’ characters and needs for help. Logistic regressions also find that offenders’ characters, cases’ characters and needs for help can have important influences in the possibility of repeat report in the following year (2009). In their second report of IPV cases, about half victims have changed their report institutions and the seriousness of injury increased. Most of the period between two reports is from six to twelve months. This study suggests that not only material supports but also emotional supports are important to female victims of IPV. The more time victims seek help, the more help they need. The distribution and use of the resources in preventing domestic violence is quite important. It also considers that since more serious injury and higher level of help seeking behaviors are highly connected, members of formal support system should enhance the penetration in every case. Finally, the finding shows that having problems getting alone with intimate partners is a major cause of IPV cases. Instead of official intervention, this study brings up other practicable solutions for reference, such as couple counseling and mediation. It seems that official interventions have only limited effectiveness. Alternatives such as counseling and mediation are needed for resolving the underneath problems of violence between intimate partners and preventing future conflicts.