ABSTRACT
This study uncovered complex relationships between individual women, their social networks, and the larger society. Their life histories revealed that some had suffered sexual abuse from fathers during childhood, and nearly all experienced some form of violence even before being battered by their husbands. Both the source and age at which these traumatic events occurred influenced the effect of such violence on these women. No evidence supported the popular notion that mothers collude in fathers’ sexual abuse of daughters. Rather, just as alcohol is used as an ‘excuse’ to batter, so some fathers seem to use a mother’s absence as an ‘excuse’ to abuse their daughters with impunity. Nor was there evidence to support an ‘intergenerational cycle of violence’. Most importantly, the women’s histories contradict the common assumption that women’s own psychopathology constitutes a cause of violence.
