SELECTED
WORK ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Book
Johnson,
Michael P. (2008). A Typology of Domestic Violence: Intimate Terrorism, Violent
Resistance, and Situational Couple Violence. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Domestic
violence, a serious and far-reaching social problem, has generated two key
debates among researchers. The first debate is about gender and domestic
violence. Some scholars argue that domestic violence is primarily
male-perpetrated, others that women are as violent as men in intimate
relationships. Johnson's response to this debate--and the central theme of this
book--is that there is more than one type of intimate partner violence. Some
studies address the type of violence that is perpetrated primarily by men,
while others are getting at the kind of violence that women are involved in as
well. Because there has been no theoretical framework
delineating types of domestic violence, researchers have easily misread one
another's studies. The second major debate involves how many women are abused
each year by their partners. Estimates range from two to six million. Johnson's
response once again comes from this book's central theme. If there is more than
one type of intimate partner violence, then the numbers depend on what type
you're talking about. Johnson argues that domestic violence is not a unitary
phenomenon. Instead, he delineates three major, dramatically different, forms
of partner violence: intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational
couple violence. He roots the conceptual distinctions among the forms of
violence in an analysis of the role of power and control in relationship
violence and shows that the failure to make these basic distinctions among
types of partner violence has produced a research literature that is plagued by
both overgeneralizations and ostensibly contradictory findings. This volume
begins the work of theorizing forms of domestic violence, a crucial first step
to a better understanding of these phenomena among scholars, social scientists,
policy makers, and service providers.
YouTube
Types of domestic violence: Research evidence. Presented at Third Nordic Conference on Barnet og Rusen. Sandefjord, Norway. September 2012. (about an hour)
Radio
Interview
Michael Johnson - Radio New Zealand (October 28, 2012)
Unpublished Bibliographies
Johnson, Michael P. (2015). Bibliography of Empirical Papers Addressing the Typology. 6pp
Johnson, Michael P. (2015). Bibliography of Empirical Papers Addressing the Typology with Abstracts and Notes. 27pp
Articles,
Chapters, and Presentations
McKay, T., Tueller, S. J., Landwehr, J., & Johnson, M. (2022).
Types of partner violence in couples affected by incarceration: Applying
Johnson’s typology to understand the couple-level context for violence. Journal
of Interpersonal Violence 37 (9-10), NP8056-NP8087. In prior research, samples of incarcerated and reentering
men and their partners report partner violence at roughly 10 times the
frequency found in the general population. The relationship dynamics underlying
these experiences remain poorly understood. Addressing this gap and expanding
prior applications of Johnson’s typology in other populations—which typically
rely on survey data alone and include reports from just one member of a couple—we
applied latent class analysis with dyadic survey data from 1,112 couples to
identify types of partner violence in couples affected by incarceration. We
assessed congruence between quantitative types and couples’ qualitative
accounts and compared the two major types using two-sample t-tests.
In some couples, one partner used
various tactics to systematically dominate and control the other, as in
Johnson’s coercive controlling violence. In others, physical violence arose in
the context of jealousy but no other controlling behavior. This type resembled Johnson’s situational couple violence.
Qualitative data suggested that jealousy represented a common, situational
response to periods of prolonged separation, relationship instability, status
insecurity, and partnership concurrence and not a tactic of control per se.
Victims of coercive controlling violence experienced more PTSD symptoms and
felt less safe in their relationships than victims of jealous-only violence.
Perpetrators of coercive controlling violence were more likely to use severe
physical violence against their partners than perpetrators of jealous-only
violence. Findings indicate that broader context is critical for interpreting
the presence of jealousy (and whether it constitutes a control tactic). They
indicate that prevention and response strategies tailored to these types could
help couples cope safely with the extreme relationship stressors of
incarceration and reentry. Finally, they suggest a need to move from an
exclusive focus on individual accountability and services toward a model that
also incorporates institutional accountability and change.
Johnson, Michael P.
(2017). A personal social history of a typology of intimate partner violence. Journal of Family Theory and Review 9
(June), 150-164. This article is a
personal social narrative of the development of my control-based typology of
intimate partner violence (IPV). The influence of friends and colleagues in all
aspects of this process was so central and so pervasive that it just did not
make sense to me to make this a story only about myself. After I tell the
social story of the development of the first version and then later versions of
my thinking about types of IPV, I leave the personal realm and lay out the
implications of the typology for the question of the relationship between
gender and intimate partner violence. Finally, I briefly tie the gender
question to the general issues of inequality that have driven me throughout my
career.
Hardesty,
Jennifer L., Kimberly A. Crossman, Megan L. Haselschwerdt,
Marcela Raffaelli, Brian G. Ogolsky,
and Michael P. Johnson. (2015). Toward a standard approach to operationalizing coercive control and
classifying violence types. Journal of
Marriage and Family 77 (August), 833-843.
Coercive control is central to distinguishing
between Johnson's (2008) 2 main types of intimate partner violence: (a)
coercive controlling violence and (b) situational couple violence. Approaches
to assessing coercive control, however, have been inconsistent. Using data from
2 projects involving divorcing mothers (N
= 190), the authors compared common analytic strategies for operationalizing
coercive control and classifying types of violence. The results establish
advantages to measuring coercive control in terms of frequency versus number of
tactics, illustrate the use of both hierarchical and k-means clustering methods to identify patterns of coercive control
and evaluate clustering solutions, and offer a suggested cutoff for classifying
violence types in general samples of separated women using the
Dominance–Isolation subscale of the widely used Psychological Maltreatment of
Women Inventory (Tolman, 1992). Finally, the authors demonstrate associations
between types of violence and theoretically relevant variables, including
frequency and severity of violence, harassment and violence after separation,
fear, and perceived threat.
Johnson, Michael P. (2014). Les types de violence familiale. Pp. 15-31 in Maryse Rinfret-Raynor, Élisabeth Lesieux, Marie-Marthe Cousineau, Sonia Gauthier, and Elizabeth Harper (Eds.), Violences Envers les Femmes: Réalités Complexes et Nouveaux Enjeux dans un Monde en Transformation. Québec: Presses Universitaires de l’Université du Québec. (Final draft in English without paging: Distinguishing among types of intimate partner violence: Intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence. Pp. 15-31 in Maryse Rinfret-Raynor, Élisabeth Lesieux, Marie-Marthe Cousineau, Sonia Gauthier, and Elizabeth Harper (Eds.), Violence Against Women: Complex Realities and New Issues in a Changing World. Québec: Presses Universitaires de l’Université du Québec.)
Johnson, Michael P., Janel M. Leone, & Yili Xu. (2014). Intimate terrorism and situational couple violence in general surveys: Ex-spouses required. Violence Against Women 20 (February), 186-207. (Nominated by the journal's associate editors and editorial board for the 2014 Best Article Award.)
In this paper we argue that past efforts to
distinguish among types of intimate partner violence in survey data have
committed a critical error: using data on current spouses to develop
operationalizations of intimate terrorism and situational couple violence. We
use ex-spouse data from the National Violence Against Women survey to develop
new operationalizations. We then demonstrate that NVAW current spouse data
contain little intimate terrorism; we argue that this is likely to be the case
for all general surveys. In addition, the ex-spouse data confirm past findings
regarding a variety of differences between intimate terrorism and situational
couple violence, including those predicted by feminist theories.
Hardesty, Jennifer
L., Megan L. Haselschwerdt, and Michael P. Johnson. (2012). Domestic violence
and child custody. In Kathryn
Kuehnle and Leslie Drozd
(Eds.), Parenting
Plan Evaluations: Applied Research for the Family Court (pp.
442-475). New York: Oxford University Press. The purpose of this chapter is to
review empirical research that will inform the process of evaluating separating
parents in the context of DV. We begin
by introducing distinctions among types of DV, distinctions that are important
for understanding the relevant research and for evaluating the implications of
DV for custody decisions. To help
establish the relevance of DV to child custody, we provide a summary of the
effects of DV exposure on children. Then
we review the research on parenting in the context of DV. This growing body of research provides
insight into post-separation relationship dynamics and parenting
characteristics of victims and abusers.
The chapter concludes with the options available for parenting plans
that prioritize both safety and the long-term adjustment of parents and
children affected by DV.
Johnson, Michael P.
(2011). Gender and types of intimate partner violence: A response to an
anti-feminist literature review. Aggression
and Violent Behavior 16 (July/August), 289-296. This article presents a feminist perspective
on domestic violence that is rooted in an explication of the differences among
three major types of intimate partner violence (intimate terrorism, violent
resistance, and situational couple violence). Theory and research from this
perspective is then reviewed to rebut recent attacks on feminist scholarship
and policy regarding intimate partner violence.
Johnson,
Michael P. (2010). We haven’t reached post-feminism yet. Building Partnerships (Winter), 9. The Centre for Research & Education on
Violence against Women and Children, The University of Western Ontario.
Johnson,
Michael P. (February, 2010). Types of domestic
violence: Implications for policy.
Handouts for the second of two Powerpoint
presentations for the practitioners’ workshop sponsored by the New Directions
Program of Catholic Family Service Ottawa. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Johnson,
Michael P. (February, 2010). Types of domestic
violence: Research evidence.
Handouts for the first of two Powerpoint
presentations for the practitioners’ workshop sponsored by the New Directions
Program of Catholic Family Service Ottawa. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Johnson, Michael
P. (2010). Langhinrichsen-Rohling’s Confirmation of
the Feminist Analysis of Intimate Partner Violence: Comment on “Controversies
Involving Gender and Intimate Partner Violence in the United States.” Sex Roles, 62 (3-4), 212-219. This article makes four major points in
response to Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling’s (2010)
review of the intimate partner violence literature. First, the evidence is
clear that there is more than one type of intimate partner violence. Second,
the feminists are right. Gender is central to the analysis of intimate partner
violence, and the coercive controlling violence that most people associate with
the term “domestic violence” is perpetrated primarily by men against their
female partners. Third, different types of intimate partner violence have
different causes, different developmental trajectories, and different
consequences. They require different models to understand them. Finally, we
need more qualitative research focused on the least understood types of intimate
partner violence: violent resistance and situational couple violence. [Correction
Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Sex Roles (2010) 62:220.]
In “Langhinrichsen-Rohling’s Confirmation of the
Feminist Analysis of Intimate Partner Violence: Comment on ‘Controversies
Involving Gender and Intimate Partner Violence in the United States’” (Volume
62, Numbers 3/4, February 2010,DOI:
10.1007/s11199-009-9697-2) Langhinrichsen-Rohling’s
name was erroneously misspelled in the title, the abstract, and the conclusion.
The correct spelling is Langhinrichsen-Rohling.
Johnson,
Michael P. (May, 2009). Where Do “Domestic Violence” Statistics Come From and
Why Do They Vary So Much? Paper presented at a workshop sponsored by the
Healthy Marriage Resource Center and the National Resource Center on Domestic
Violence: Towards a Common Understanding: Domestic Violence Typologies and
Implications for Healthy Marriage and Domestic Violence Programs. Warrenton,
Virginia. Available at the Healthy Marriage Resource Center Web site:
http://www.healthymarriageinfo.org/docs/DomesticViolenceStatistics.pdf. Domestic violence advocates and family
violence researchers often appear to contradict each other when they describe and report on the
extent and nature of intimate partner violence (IPV). Although the term
“domestic violence” has a very clear specific meaning to advocates working in
the domestic violence field, it is used in other ways in other contexts to
cover many different types of couple conflict. This paper helps to clarify some
of the misunderstandings, errors, and apparent contradictions that derive in
part from these differences in language use, in part from not understanding
where the statistics come from and what the strengths and limitations of the
data are, and in part from wrongly treating “domestic violence” as a single
phenomenon.
Johnson,
Michael P., Janel M. Leone, and Yili Xu. (November, 2008). Gender, intimate terrorism, and situational
couple violence in general survey data: The gender debate revisited--again.
Poster presented at the National Council on Family Relations annual meeting.
Little Rock, AR. (Powerpoint) We use National
Violence Against Women Survey data to develop an operationalization of intimate
terrorism and situational couple violence. We argue that past efforts to
distinguish among types of intimate partner violence in general survey data
have committed a critical error in using cluster analysis with data on current
spouses. We develop a valid operationalization based on data regarding
ex-spouses. The data on ex-spouses confirm past findings regarding a variety of
differences between intimate terrorism and situational couple violence,
including the gender patterns predicted by feminist theories of intimate
partner violence. We then apply this new operationalization to the current spouse
data in the National Violence Against Women Survey to demonstrate that general
survey data on current relationships contain little or no intimate terrorism.
This finding has major implications for the use of such data to test feminist
theories of intimate partner violence. The new operationalization avoids the
vagaries of cluster analysis in investigations
of the balance of major types of intimate partner violence in different
populations.
Kelly,
Joan B. and Michael P. Johnson. (2008). Differentiation among types of intimate
partner violence: Research update and implications for interventions. Family Court Review 46 (3), 476-499. A growing body of empirical research
has demonstrated that intimate partner violence is not a unitary phenomenon and
that types of domestic violence can be differentiated with respect to partner
dynamics, context, and consequences. Four patterns of violence are described:
Coercive Controlling Violence, Violent Resistance, Situational Couple Violence,
and Separation-Instigated Violence. The controversial matter of gender symmetry
and asymmetry in intimate partner violence is discussed in terms of sampling
differences and methodological limitations. Implications of differentiation
among types of domestic violence include the need for improved screening
measures and procedures in civil, family, and criminal court and the
possibility of better decision making, appropriate sanctions, and more
effective treatment programs tailored to the characteristics of different types
of partner violence. In family court, reliable differentiation should provide
the basis for determining what safeguards are necessary and what types of
parenting plans are appropriate to ensure healthy outcomes for children and
parent-child relationships.
Three
important characteristics of domestic violence emerge from the results of this
study. First, patriarchy does not necessarily lead to the use of violence.
Second, violence may be used primarily as a means of last resort, after all
other control tactics have failed. Third, discourses of love have
to be incorporated into our understanding of violence within the family.
Leone, Janel M., Michael P. Johnson, and
Catherine M. Cohan. (2007). Victim help-seeking: Differences between intimate
terrorism and situational couple violence. Family
Relations 56 (5), 427-439. Research
indicates that two major forms of partner violence exist, intimate terrorism
(IT) and situational couple violence (SCV). The current study (N = 389) used a
subgroup of women who responded to the Chicago Women's Health Risk Study to
examine whether type of violence experienced is differentially related to
formal (e.g., police, medical agencies, counseling) and informal (e.g., family,
friends/neighbors) help seeking. IT victims were more likely to seek each type
of formal help but were equally or less likely to seek informal help. Findings
can inform both family violence research and the development and implementation
of social service programs.
Johnson,
Michael P. (2007). Domestic violence: The intersection of gender and control.
In Laura L. O’Toole, Jessica R. Schiffman, & Margie Kiter Edwards (Eds.), Gender Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,
2nd edition (pp. 257-268). New York: New York University Press. Reprinted in
Andrew J. Cherlin (Ed.), Public &
Private Families, A Reader 5/e, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.
The first section of this chapter will
demonstrate how attention to distinctions among types of intimate partner
violence makes sense of ostensibly contradictory data regarding men's and
women's violence in intimate relationships. The second section describes the
basic structure of the types of intimate partner violence that most people
associate with the term domestic violence, violence that is associated with
coercive control, that is, one partner's attempt to take general control over
the other. The third section presents a theory of domestic violence that is
focused on the relationship between gender and coercive control. The fourth
section addresses the role of gender in the type of intimate partner violence
that does not involve an attempt to take general control over one's partner.
The final section of the chapter deals with some of the intervention and policy
implications of what we know about these types of intimate partner violence and
their relationship to gender.
Johnson,
Michael P. (2006). A Sociologist’s Perspective on Domestic Violence: A
Conversation with Michael Johnson, Ph.D. Interview by Theodora Ooms, CLASP. Available at the Healthy Marriage
Resource Center Web site: http://www.healthymarriageinfo.org/docs/ASociologistsPerspective.pdf.
Johnson,
Michael P. (2006). Violence and abuse in
personal relationships: Conflict, terror, and resistance in intimate
partnerships. In Anita Vangelisti & Daniel Perlman (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships
(pp. 557-576. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This chapter
focuses on intimate partner violence (IPV). I believe the two core lessons to
be learned from work on IPV are simple, profound, and broadly applicable to
violence in all types of personal relationships. First, one cannot understand
violence in personal relationships without understanding its role in the
relationship itself. Second, and more substantively, there are three quite
different types of intimate partner violence, identified by their role in the
control context of the relationship in which they are embedded. One type
involves a violent attempt to take complete control or at least generally
dominate the relationship (intimate terrorism), another involves violent
resistance to such a control attempt (violent resistance), and the third is
violence that is a product of particular conflicts or
tensions within the relationship (situational couple violence). As this chapter
shows, the nature of the control context is a major theme in the IPV
literature, and although it has as yet received little
attention in research on other types of personal relationships, there are hints
of it in the parent-child literature.
Johnson, Michael P.
(2006). Conflict and control: Gender, symmetry, and asymmetry in domestic
violence. Violence Against Women 12 (November),
1003-1018. Four types of individual partner violence are identified on the basis of the dyadic control context of the violence.
In intimate terrorism the individual is violent and controlling; the partner is
not. In violent resistance the individual is violent but not controlling;
the partner is the violent and controlling one. In situational couple
violence, although the individual is violent, neither the individual nor the
partner is violent and controlling. In mutual violent control both the
individual and the partner are violent and controlling. Evidence is
presented that situational couple violence dominates the violence identified in
general surveys, while intimate terrorism and violent resistance dominate the
violence in agency samples, and that this is the source of differences across
studies with respect to the gender symmetry of partner violence. An
argument is made that if we want to understand partner violence, to intervene
effectively in individual cases, or to make useful policy recommendations, we
must make these distinctions in our research.
Johnson, Michael P.
(2005). Apples and oranges in child custody disputes: Intimate terrorism vs.
situational couple violence. Journal of
Child Custody, 2 (4), 43-52. Also: A brief reply to Dutton.
Journal of Child Custody, 2 (4),
65-67.
In response to
Dutton's (this issue) critique of feminist theories of domestic violence, the
author of this article makes three points relevant to the debate about the
gender asymmetry of intimate partner violence. First, there are three major
types of intimate partner violence, only one of which (intimate terrorism) is
the kind of violence that we all think of when we hear the term “domestic
violence.” Second, both major types of sampling designs in domestic violence
research are seriously biased, and those biases account for the fact that both
sides of this debate have been able to marshal ostensibly contradictory
empirical evidence for their position. Third, intimate terrorism (also know as
domestic violence, spouse abuse, wife-beating, etc.) is, indeed, primarily
male-perpetrated and, in the case of heterosexual relationships, probably best
understood through some version of a feminist theory of domestic violence. The
author then discusses the implications of these points for assessment of risk
in child custody deliberations.
I make four major
points in my response to the Fergusson, Horwood, and Ridder article, points
that are equally relevant to other articles like it that continue to appear in
our journals and in the general media suggesting that women are as violent as
men in intimate relationships. First, there are three major types of intimate
partner violence, only one of which is the kind of violence that we all think
of when we hear the term ‘‘domestic violence.’’ Second, that type of intimate
partner violence is, indeed, primarily male perpetrated and is most definitely
a gender issue. Third, Fergusson, Horwood, and Ridder’s article is not about
that type of violence. In fact, it is hardly about violence at all. Fourth,
serious errors of fact, theory, and intervention inevitably follow from the
failure to acknowledge the major differences among the three types of intimate
partner violence.
Data from the National Violence Against
Women Survey show that the two major forms of husband violence toward their
wives (intimate terrorism and situational couple violence) have different
effects on their victims. Victims of intimate terrorism are attacked more
frequently and experience violence that is less likely to stop. They are more
likely to be injured, to exhibit more of the symptoms of posttraumatic stress
syndrome, to use painkillers (perhaps also tranquilizers), and to miss work.
They have left their husbands more often, and when they do leave, they are more
likely to acquire their own residence. If we want to understand the true impact
of wife abuse from survey data (rather than from agency data), we must make
distinctions among types of violence so that the data used to describe
battering are not diluted by data regarding other types of partner violence.
The current study used
a random sample of 563 low-income women to test Johnson’s (1995) theory that
there are two major forms of male-partner violence, situational couple violence
and intimate terrorism, which are distinguished in terms of their embeddedness
in a general pattern of control. The study examined the associations between
type of violence experienced and respondents’ physical health, psychological
distress, and economic well-being. Analyses revealed three distinct patterns of
partner violence: intimate terrorism, control/no threat, and situational couple
violence. Compared to victims of control/no threat and situational couple
violence, victims of intimate terrorism reported more injuries from physical
violence and more work/activity time lost because of injuries. Compared to
women who experienced no violence in the previous year, victims of intimate
terrorism reported a greater likelihood of visiting a doctor, poorer health,
more psychological distress, and a greater likelihood of receiving government
assistance
Johnson, Michael P. (2004). Review of Restorative
Justice and Family Violence, edited by Heather Strang and John Braithwaite.
Contemporary Sociology, 33 (PART 1), 96-97.
Johnson, Michael P. (2003). Review of Home
Truths about Domestic Violence: Feminist Influences on Policy and Practice,
edited by J. Hanmer & C. Itzin. Journal
of Social and Personal Relationships, 20 (2), 263.
Johnson, Michael P., Valerie Conklin, and Nividetha Menon. (2002, November). The effects of different types of domestic violence on women: Intimate terrorism vs. situational couple violence. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations. Houston, Texas.
Johnson,
Michael P. (2001). Review of The
Violences of Men, by Jeff Hearn. Contemporary
Sociology, 30 (#1), 26-27.
Johnson,
Michael P. and Kathleen J. Ferraro.
(2000). Research on domestic
violence in the 1990s: Making distinctions.
Journal of Marriage and the
Family, 62 (November): 948-963. (Adobe)
Reviews family literature on domestic violence and suggests that 2 broad themes
of the 1990s provide the most promising directions for the future. The 1st is
the importance of distinctions among types or contexts of violence. Some
distinctions are central to the theoretical and practical understanding of the
nature of partner violence, others provide contexts for developing more
sensitive and comprehensive theories, and others may simply force questioning
the tendency to generalize carelessly from one context to another. Second,
issues of control, although most visible in the feminist literature that
focuses on men using violence to control "their women," also arise in
other contexts, calling for more general analyses of the interplay of violence
power, and control in relationships. In addition to these 2 general themes, the
review covers literature on coping with violence, the effects on victims and
their children, and the social effects of partner violence.
Klein, Renate and Michael P. Johnson. (2000). Conflict in family relationships. In Robert M. Milardo and Steve Duck (Eds.), Families as Relationships (pp. 79-97). New York: Wiley.
One of the most long-standing and acrimonious debates in the history of
the sociology of the family concerns the alleged gender-symmetry of domestic
violence. Using data from a late 1970s survey, this paper demonstrates
that the violence that most people associate with the term “domestic violence,”
i.e., recurrent, escalating, violent control of one’s partner, is decidedly
male. This conclusion is reached through the operationalization of a
typology of partner violence that is based in the connections of individual
violence with a general pattern of power and control, and that distinguishes
among four types of partner violence: patriarchal terrorism, common couple
violence, violent resistance, and mutual violent control. Patriarchal
terrorism, the type of violence that is referenced by the term “domestic
violence” in everyday speech and in the media, is almost exclusively
male. The most general implication of the results is that if we want to
understand the nature of violence that takes place between domestic partners,
we cannot continue to treat intimate violence as a unitary phenomenon.
When we fail to make important distinctions among types of violence, we get the
sort of conflicting, confusing evidence that has plagued the debate regarding
the gender asymmetry of domestic violence.
Johnson, Michael P. (1996). Violence against women in the family: The United States and Vietnam. Pp. 287-296 in Kathleen Barry (ed.), Vietnam 's Women in Transition. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Johnson, Michael P.
(1995). Patriarchal terrorism and common couple violence: Two forms of violence
against women in U.S. families. Journal
of Marriage and the Family, 57 (May): 283-294. (Adobe) This
article argues that there are two distinct forms of couple violence taking
place within families in the United States and other Western countries. A
review of evidence from large-sample survey research and from qualitative and
quantitative data gathered from women's shelters suggests that some families
suffer from occasional outbursts of violence from either husbands or wives
(common couple violence), while other families are terrorized by systematic
male violence (patriarchal terrorism). It is argued that the distinction
between common couple violence and patriarchal terrorism is important because
it has implications for the implementation of public policy, the development of
educational programs and intervention strategies, and the development of
theories of interpersonal violence.