“Someone Who Has Been in My Shoes”: The Effectiveness of a Peer Support Model for Providing Support to Partners, Family and Friends of Child Sexual Abuse Material Offenders
Reports of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on the internet are rapidly increasing and the number of people accessing it is substantial. Many of these men have partners or families who are impacted by their CSAM use. These families experience negative mental health and social outcomes as a result. Despite this, there are limited services that provide support to this population. In this article, we examine the findings of an evaluation of PartnerSPEAK, a service in Victoria, Australia, that supports the non-offending partners and families of CSAM offenders. The evaluation included a survey of 53 clients as well as seven in-depth interviews. The findings showed that the peer support model utilized by PartnerSPEAK offered effective support for this underserved client group including the reduction of shame and isolation.
Technology facilitated coercive control: domestic violence and the competing roles of digital media platforms
This article describes domestic violence as a key context of online misogyny, foregrounding the role of digital media in mediating, coordinating, and regulating it; and proposing an agenda for future research. Scholars and anti-violence advocates have documented the ways digital media exacerbate existing patterns of gendered violence and introduce new modes of abuse, a trend highlighted by this special issue. We propose the term “technology facilitated coercive control” (TFCC) to encompass the technological and relational aspects of patterns of abuse against intimate partners. Our definition of TFCC is grounded in the understanding of domestic violence (DV) as coercive, controlling, and profoundly contextualised in relationship dynamics, cultural norms, and structural inequality. We situate TFCC within the multiple affordances and modes of governance of digital media platforms for amplifying and ameliorating abuse. In addition to investigating TFCC, scholars are beginning to document the ways platforms can engender counter-misogynistic discourse, and are powerful actors for positive change via the regulation and governance of online abuse. Accordingly, we propose four key directions for a TFCC research agenda that recognises and asks new questions about the role of digital media platforms as both facilitators of abuse and potential partners in TFCC prevention and intervention.
Technology-Facilitated Stalking and Unwanted Sexual Messages/Images in a College Campus Community: The Role of Negative Peer Support
Researchers have accumulated much social scientific knowledge about the scope, distribution, causes, and outcomes of the physical and sexual abuse of female students in North American institutions of higher learning. However, surveys of technology-facilitated stalking and the dissemination of unwanted sexual messages/images in college campus communities are in short supply. The few that have been conducted do not identify key sociological risk factors associated with these two electronic forms of victimization. This paper, then, has two objectives: (1) to examine the influence of two types of negative peer support and (2) to determine if being the target of technology-facilitated stalking and receiving unwanted sexual messages/images are associated with female students’ intimate partner violence and sexual assault experiences. The results confirm that the two variants of negative peer support examined in this study are significant predictors of digital victimization and that such abuse is strongly associated with intimate partner violence and sexual assault.
Spaceless violence: Women's experiences of technology-facilitated domestic violence in regional, rural and remote areas
Digital media and devices are increasingly used by perpetrators of interpersonal and domestic violence to enact harm, coerce and control. The ways that technology is used by perpetrators, victimsurvivors, support services and justice agencies have received growing attention in recent years. Work has been produced by advocates and academics in the United States (see Dimond, Fiesler & Bruckman 2011; Fraser et al. 2010; Mason & Magnet 2012; Southworth et al. 2005) and in Australia (Hand, Chung & Peters 2009; Woodlock 2017). There has been no examination of differences in the way harms manifest and are responded to in urban and non-urban (regional, rural and remote) landscapes (Harris 2016). This is a significant deficit, given the barriers encountered by victim–survivors beyond the cityscape when seeking assistance and responding to violence (Neilson & Renou 2015; Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence in Queensland 2015; State of Victoria 2016).
Secrecy, control and violence in women's intimate relationships with child sexual abuse material offenders
Many child sexual abuse material (CSAM) offenders have nonoffending partners and children who are impacted by their CSAM use. However, the specific dynamics of CSAM offending within a relationship or family context have been overlooked in forensic research, while scholarship on domestic violence and coercive control has not focused on CSAM offending as a possible correlate of domestic abuse. This paper presents the findings of the first study to examine the crossover between domestic violence, coercive control and CSAM offending in intimate relationships.
‘You Can’t Actually Escape It’: Policing the Use of Technology in Domestic Violence in Rural Australia
The abuse of technology by perpetrators of domestic violence is ‘spaceless’; however, in this article, we argue that experiences of and responses to digital coercive control are shaped by both the place (geographic location) and space (practical and ideological features of a location) that a victim/survivor and criminal justice agency occupy. We examined this issue by conducting interviews and focus groups with 13 female victim/survivors in regional, rural and remote Australia. All participants had contact with police as part of their help-seeking for domestic violence, and some suggested that officers sometimes paralleled perpetrator behaviours, resulting in a narrowing of women’s ‘space for action’. We conclude that, in the interests of protecting and empowering women, socio-spatial frameworks must be considered by practitioners and researchers, and there should be a concerted effort to expand resourcing and training for justice agencies beyond the cityscape.
The antiepistemology of organized abuse: Ignorance, exploitation, inaction
Organized abuse, in which multiple adults sexually abuse multiple children, has an important role to play in the production of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) but has been relegated to the margins of criminological concern. This paper presents the findings of an international survey of 74 adults who described childhood victimization in CSAM and organized abuse, emphasizing the relationship between organized abuse and entrenched ignorance of it. The paper identifies the multiple zones, practices and structures of ignorance that render organized abuse unknowable and advocates for strategic forms of knowledge production in which ignorance features as a provocation towards information-seeking rather than as a defence mechanism against intolerable realities.
Digital Coercive Control: Insights From Two Landmark Domestic Violence Studies
This paper examines the use of digital technologies by domestic violence perpetrators, which we believe constitutes 'digital coercive control'. We draw on two Australian research projects and emerging research to provide definitional, conceptual and theoretical frames for harmful and invasive behaviours enacted through technology. Additionally, we highlight how such abuse intersects with other forms of violence but has unique and distinct features, including spacelessness. Spatiality is central in our examination, and we consider the spaceless yet geographically situated experiences of and risk faced by victim/survivors in regional, rural and remote locations. In the interests of empowering and protecting women, we also problematize victim-blaming and burdens of 'safety work' frequently imposed on women encountering digital coercive control.
The impact of rurality on women's 'space for action' in domestic violence: Findings from a meta-synthesis
Men's violence against women is a global human rights issue, with domestic violence one of the most common forms (World Health Organization, 2017). The consequences of domestic violence include detrimental effects on victim-survivors' health, well-being, and sense of safety. To understand these impacts, the concept of 'space for action' seeks to evaluate how perpetrators of domestic violence narrow women's life choices, constraining their freedom (Kelly, 2003). In this article, we build upon the concept of 'space for action' by examining if, and how, rural geographical space and place can be used by perpetrators to constrict women's options for escape, or even shape the violence itself. In conducting a meta-synthesis of 32 global studies, we found similarities in rural women's experiences of violence. Perpetrators used both geographical space and rural social norms to constrain women's space for action. In particular, geographical and social isolation were used to hold women in literal captivity. Rural communities were often experienced as shaming and ostracizing. This provided women with few opportunities to help-seek and aided perpetrators in reducing women's spaces for safety. Women's space for action was also curtailed in the realms of finance, employment, and their ability to care for their children. These findings demonstrate that geographical place and space can be used by perpetrators to narrow and limit women's space for action. As such, rurality should be included in understanding how men's violence limits women's freedoms.
‘If I’m not real, I’m Not Having an Impact’: Relationality and Vicarious Resistance in Complex Trauma Care
There is growing commitment to trauma-informed practice and increased recognition of risks associated with this work. However, the benefits of working with trauma-affected clients are under-studied. Drawing on interviews with sixty-three welfare, health and legal professionals in Australia, we consider the salutogenic dynamics of work with women with experiences of complex trauma. Participants articulated an ethics of care in which professionals ally with clients against abuse and violence as well as transactional neoliberal service models. We identify this approach to trauma work as a form of vicarious resistance that challenges dichotomies of vicarious trauma and resilience.