ABSTRACT
Researchers and therapists working with perpetrators and survivors of domestic violence are engaged in a complex, multifaceted task that involves not only the analysis of gender–power relations, but an acknowledgement of meanings from moral, legal, social and psychological perspectives. Activists and women’s advocates have been highly successful in raising political and academic awareness of domestic abuse bringing about key legal changes, particularly in North America and Europe where domestic violence is now an indictable offence. Even so, studies have identified a gap between policy and evidence-based knowledge, particularly about public perceptions of causes, prevalence and the seriousness of domestic abuse.
It is apparent that there is a morality implicit in lay thinking about domestic violence and abuse that is present in the press coverage, which frequently implicates the survivors, as well as the perpetrators. In other words, there seems to be an everyday understanding of domestic violence and abuse that does not mesh with the messages that have emerged from the campaigners and women’s advocates about gender–power relations, i.e. that men are wholly responsible for their violence in heterosexual relationships. Why should this be? What are the differences between these understandings?
