The aim of this study was to explore the links between the different types of intimate partner violence (physical, psychological and sexual) and child abuse (abuse, omissions) in the victims’ life experiences.
Although they are reprehensible by law, domestic violence is a public health phenomenon widespread in our European societies. One in three women in Europe would experience one of these and one in eight women in France. The costs and consequences for their victims are substantial, especially when they are suffered during childhood. That is why this study aims to understand their mechanisms of evolution and to allow a better prevention and a better care of victims of intimate partner violence.
According to the literature, we can define three types of intimate partner violence : physical, sexual and psychological. Physical violence can be characterized by blows, slaps, etc. Sexual violence includes any act that affects the sexual integrity of the victim, such as sexual assaults or marital rape. And psychological violence involve all insults, denigrations, isolations, paradoxical injunctions, manipulation, threats..
For define the child maltreatment, she includes what are called abuses. We find the physical abuses like: slaps, corporal punishments, burns; but also sexual abuse: rape, touching … Non-contact behavior will also be considered as an abuse such as: showing pornography to a child , inciting sexualized behaviors etc. Psychological abuses are defined with insults, denigrations and mockeries for example. Maltreatment also includes what are called omissions; physically such as not feeding a child, or not caring for him and psychological omissions including a lack of warmth, love or no longer talking to his child ect.
The theoretical contribution allowed to consider the intimate partner violence as a phenomenon of learning (theory of the learning vicariant of Bandura, 1976). The experience and / or observation of violence such as psychological, physical and / or sexual abuse as well as physical and / or psychological omissions would be learned by the victim and reproduced through intergenerational transmission in adulthood future relationships. Parents, who are considered as identifying patterns by children, learn parental behaviors according to family models are transmitted, whether adapted or inadequate.
The methodology used in this study included twenty-two victims of intra-conjugal psychological harassment (HPIC) who participated in a semi-structured interview and completed two questionnaires in their French version: ConflictTacticScale 2, and Harassment Tracking Questionnaire psychological inter-conjugal.
What the study has demonstrated is that child maltreatment suffered directly or indirectly was observed for all participants during their childhood. No association between the different types of violence (physical, sexual) perceived or experienced – during childhood and those experienced in adulthood in the relationship – has been shown, with the exception of psychological violence. For all the participants, the presence of psychological violence systematically came with physical and / or sexual violence, in the adult love relationship.
This comes to validate our hypothesis. Indeed, psychological violence can be exercised alone within the couple or the family. Violence and psychological harassment appear to be the only form of violence that can be exercised independently of others. Nevertheless, as society tends to separate physical violence and sexual violence, we can see that those forms of violence are not carried out without psychological violence with them. It looks like that after suffering of child maltreatment, you’re more vulnerable to become an adult victim of domestic violence. The transmission of violence is thus explained according to a learning vicariant of the models of parental references and reproduced in the relations of couple. If this violence is subsequently reproduced on children, we will talk about the intergenerational cycle.
Violence and psychological harassment must be seen as crucial in identifying and dealing with intra-family violence
