DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
from www.psychpage.com; prepared by Richard Niolon, Ph.D. [rniolon@csopp.edu]

Domestic violence in heterosexual relationships is a serious issue, with 20% of women reporting they have been assaulted by their partners, and this is true among married adult women as well as dating college women (IPARV, 2002). However, domestic violence against men is often ignored in clinical discussions because it is assumed that the overwhelming majority of victims are women (Steinmetz & Lucca, 1988). Some have in the past gone so far as to argue that men are more likely to initiate violence, and initiate more severe violence at that, and so warrant little attention as victims (Walker, 1984). While Steinmetz and Lucca (1988) reported that cases of domestic violence harming women outnumber violence harming men by a factor of 12 or 13 to 1, such views ignore gay and lesbian relationships. Gay men are not intimately involved with female lovers, and lesbians are not intimately involved with male lovers. Thus, adhering to this conceptualization means that lesbians can not be battered because there is no male to serve as perpetrator of the violence, and gay men can not batter as there is no female to serve as victim.

This kind of view has, for some, led to excluding gay and lesbian victims from clinical services and research. For example, although the 1995 Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy, a venerable review of a range of couple therapy issues, does include a chapter on domestic violence (Holtzworth-Munroe et al, 1995), there is no mention of domestic violence in gay and lesbian couples. While there is a chapter on couple therapy with gay and lesbian couples (Brown, 1995), there is only passing mention that domestic violence is an issue for same-sex couples too. More recent publications show little improvement. A recent book about domestic violence, Couples in Conflict, (Booth et al, 2001) includes 17 chapters on recognizing and responding to domestic violence, but does not include any chapters on domestic violence in gay and lesbian couples.

This does a great disservice to the gay and lesbian community. Even where gay and lesbian domestic violence is recognized, it may still be misunderstood. One study found counselors in training, when given a vignette about a lesbian couple experiencing domestic violence, were more likely to recommend inappropriate interventions (e.g. couples therapy). However, when given the same vignette with an unmarried straight couple, counselors in training were more likely to recommend appropriate interventions (e.g., police involvement and referral to a shelter for battered women). Further, respondents rated straight violence as more serious and aggressive compared to lesbian violence (Wise and Bowman, 1997). This is not surprising given older studies indicating that that people viewed gay victims of violence more negatively compared to straight victims of violence (Harris and Cook, 1994)

However, others have focused in detail on domestic violence in gay and lesbian couples, citing some higher estimates of gay domestic violence to support a view of gay and lesbian relationships as inherently dysfunctional, and the gay and lesbian community as aware but hiding this from mainstream society. There are two ways to respond to this.

On the one hand, these numbers may not be accurate. For example, some research shows that the lifetime prevalence of physical assault among women living with female partners was 35.4%, compared to 20.4% among women living with male partners. However, looking deeper, women living with female partners were almost three times more likely to report having been victimized by a previous male, rather than a female partner (IPARV, 2002). Thus, some sources carelessly misquote research to support their negative views of gays and lesbians, simply to promote their own agenda.

On the other hand, the reasoning displayed may be flawed. For example, some would argue that women are at risk for violence because they are women in a patriarchal society that devalues women. As a result, one would expect higher levels of domestic violence in heterosexual couples because it is easier to victimize a woman than a man (Burke and Follingstad, 1999).

As a result, discussing gay and lesbian domestic violence has the potential to be of aid to the Gay and Lesbian community, but also to be of harm. In order to explore the issue but minimize the potential harm, this paper begins with a discussion of normal gay couple development, and then moves to a discussion of domestic violence, referencing research from straight and lesbian couple violence as well. It should be noted that being lesbian involves being a minority person who seeks socially disfavored intimate relationships with members of the same sex. In as much as gays and lesbians are thus similar, the contents of this article would apply to lesbians. However, being lesbian involves being a woman in a male dominated society, and seeking an intimate relationship with another women. As a result, being lesbian is rather different from being gay, and so the contents of this article would not apply to lesbians, and generalization to lesbian couples should be made with caution.

Similarly, domestic violence is about violence, control, and abuse. In as much as this is true for any violent relationship, the material here could be generalized to any kind of relationship, dating or married, gay or straight. However, gay relationships are not privileged with the same social, religious, legal, and family support as the vast majority of straight relationships. As a result, domestic violence in straight relationships is very different, and generalization to straight couples should be made with caution.

Some people view the violence that happens in some gay and lesbian relationships as "less serious" than the violence in straight relationships (Wise and Bowman, 1997) or feel less empathy for gay victims (Harris and Cook, 1994; Howard, 1984a, 1984b; Ford et al, 1998; Davies et al, 2001). However, the violence that abusive gay men inflict on domestic partners is no less serious than the violence inflicted by abusive heterosexual men on their domestic partners. One study found 79% of gay victims had suffered some physical injury, with 60% reporting bruises, 23% reporting head injuries and concussions, 13% reporting forced sex with the intention to infect the victim with HIV, 12% reporting broken bones, and 10% reporting burns (Merrill and Wolfe, 2000). Thus, the issue deserves the same attention in gay relationships as it does in straight relationships.

While the gay and lesbian community is far more willing to discuss domestic violence today, this was not always so. Many in the 1980's and 1990's feared open discussion of this kind of issue would make gays and lesbians "look bad" in an already homophobic society, and take the focus off of fighting heterosexism. While that argument may seem outdated, reasons to continue with this concern are still present today (see Citizens for Parents' Rights). Other noted that dealing with the AIDS crises in the 1980's took tremendous energy for the gay community, and exposed gays to significant hatred, fear, and negative attention. As a result, there was little energy and attention left over for concerns about domestic violence (Elliot, 1996).

That being said, several points must be noted in attempting to understand the data on gay and lesbian domestic violence. For example, only since 1987 have statistics regarding gay and lesbian domestic violence been collected. Estimates have varied considerably since then, with numbers ranging from 11% (Bryant and Demien, 1994), to 17% (Gay and Lesbian Community Action Council, 1987), to 25-26% (Brand and Kidd, 1986; Lie et al, 1991), to 38% (Gardner, 1989), to as high as 46% (Coleman, 1990).

While 15 years of statistics might seem to be a sufficiently large body of numbers to draw solid conclusions, this is not the case. There are several concerns that must be taken into consideration.

For example, one has to be concerned with how well these statistics have been collected. A recent (2004) news story told of a government agency that, under the director's decision, simply stopped collecting statistics on gays and lesbians experiencing discrimination in the workplace (see story but this was corrected). Some states do not participate in the FBI collection of hate crime statistics as well. Thus, some of the data available may not have been consistently, diligently, or thoroughly collected.

Another concern is that the violence may have been denied by victims, or incorrectly recorded as "mutual combat." The logic behind this is simple: If a community refuses to acknowledge gay relationships, it can not acknowledge the violence in the relationship. The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs reported in 1997 that seven states did not consider gay and lesbian relationships to be "domestic." Thus, they did not included gay and lesbian relationship violence as a kind of "domestic" violence (IPARV, 2002). Murphy (1995) found that six jurisdictions in the US had laws protecting victims who lived with their abuser, but specifically excluded gays and lesbians from protection under these laws. Jablow (2000) notes that only one US State, Vermont, clearly classifies same-sex relationship violence as domestic violence in their State laws.

Another concern relates to the source of the sample. Some studies fail to exclude the second partner from the relationship. These studies sample gay men from a community and ask only about a "history of domestic violence," and thus for some relationships may count both the abuser and the victim, effectively inflating the resulting estimates. Others have questioned men who used violence, and failed to differentiate between violence that was inflicted as abuse and violence that was inflicted in self-defense, again possibly doubling estimates by counting both abusers and victims. Other studies have sampled men from very small communities or from agencies providing mental health services, and introduced other confounds with regard to the representativeness of the sample (Burke and Follingstad, 1999).

Other studies have sampled very narrow populations, such as only gay men from clubs and bars. Such men are more likely to be extroverted, to live in urban areas, to use alcohol, and to be single or in short-term relationships. Relationship status may be an important confound. For example, Brand and Kidd (1986) found 72% of the violence reported was perpetrated by men, and 28% perpetrated by women. These differing rates were seen only in short-term relationships, however. When violence only from committed relationships was examined, only 27% of straight couples and 25% of lesbian couples had experienced violence. Thus, estimates based on a sample of mostly younger and single gay men may be inflated when compared to estimates based on committed couples (Burke and Follingstad, 1999).

Differing definitions of domestic violence or abuse lead to different rates. Potoczniak and colleagues (2003) offer that domestic violence is basically "a pattern of violent or coercive behavior [used by one person] to control the thoughts, beliefs, or conduct" of his or her partner. What constitutes "violent or coercive behavior?" Some differentiate physical violence (hitting and punching) from property violence (kicking in doors and smashing things), sexual violence (forced sex), and psychological violence (intimidation and verbal threats) (Burke and Follingstad, 1999). More "lenient" definitions (e.g., including general insults and withholding sex to hurt a partner, or verbal threats to harm the victim of his possessions) produce higher estimates of violence in both the straight and gay community, while more "severe" ones (e.g., choking, stabbing, or hitting with a closed fist) produce lower estimates in both communities.

One might think the field would simply agree on one definition to clarify the data gathered. However, this has been difficult, and is perhaps unwarranted. Research shows that abuse meeting "lenient" definitions generally leads to abuse that meets more serious definitions (REFERENCE). Thus, while verbal attacks and insults do not leave bruises, over time, they are likely to lead to physical assaults that do. Thus, research is needed to understand not only "serious" abuse but also the "lenient" abuse that would possibly predict it. As noted above, critics of gays and lesbians often use citations of higher rates of domestic violence as "proof" that gay and lesbian relationships are dysfunctional. On the one hand, as noted earlier, these numbers may not be accurate. Results based on questions about the presence domestic violence might be inflated, results based on questions about the absence of violence should not be subject to the same problems. Gardner (1989) had straight, gay, and lesbian couples rate the violence in their relationship on a scale ranging from 36 (no violence) to 288 (severe violence). The average score for straight couples was 38.51, for gay couples was 39.6, and for lesbian couples was 40.22. Thus, as noted earlier, there is some reason to believe that the incidence of domestic violence in gay and lesbian couples may not be any higher than in straight couples. Thus, non-violent relationships would seem as prevalent in the gay and lesbian community as in the straight community.

On the other hand, it is worth noting that it is reasonable to assume that gay and lesbian relationships would show higher rates of domestic abuse because there are more ways that gays and lesbians can be abused. For example, batterers can make specific threats to "out" the victim to family, coworkers, and friends. This may mean greater isolation and painful rejection by loved ones, loss of employment, and loss of emotional support and aid.

Where the victim is a parent, threats to out the victim could lead to loss of custody or contact with their children. Fray-Witzer (1999) tells of a 1996 case in which a judge awarded custody of an 11 year old girl to her father, a convicted murderer, rather than give custody to the mother, a lesbian. The judge argued that the child had a right to grow up in a heterosexual home.

While some might argue the risk associated with being out these days is very limited, this is a dangerous assumption. The reader should consider a gay man who today in 2004 is 27 years old. This man would have been born in 1977. He would have been 14 in 1991 when the police found 14 year old boy named Konerak naked and bleeding, and returned him to a man who claimed to be his lover and who later killed him, Jeffrey Dahmer (Potoczniak et al, 2003).

Between his 18th and 21st birthdays (1995 to 1998), the number of hate crimes based on sexual orientation reported to the FBI would increase 24%, to finally comprise 16% of all hate crimes in the US and become the third largest category of hate crimes after race and religion (see link1 and link2, as well as link3 and link4).

He would have been 21 in 1998 when Matthew Shepard, a 21 year old Wyoming college student, was brutally beaten and left to die on a frigid night, tied to a fence, in the middle of nowhere. After this event, Republicans in the House and Senate rejected the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1999 twice, with the second time being after President Clinton vetoed the original bill they brought him because it omitted this legislation.

He would have been 26 when the US Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws that made consensual sex between men illegal, and he would turned 27 as hate crimes against gays and lesbians rose in the six months after this, doubling from their 2002 levels in Chicago, Illinois for example (NCAVP, 2004). Whether or not the risk associated with being out today in rural areas is or is not high is irrelevant. Most gay men have already learned to be very cautious about being out, especially in rural and suburban areas.

A further example of the risks of being out occur when a victim has resorted to some violence to defend themselves. Merrill (1998) reported that 58% of gay males who had been victimized fought back. The police and courts are less likely to take the time to figure out who is the abuser and who is the victim, and more likely to simply assume the violence is "mutual combat" rather than abuse. Thus, the batterer may actually threaten to call the police himself, claim the victim is the abuser, and press charges against the victim. The victim could then be listed as an abuser with the county or city hall, and be further victimized.

Thus, as explained above, domestic violence in gay and lesbian couples is a serious problem, just as it is in straight couples. Until recently, the problem has been completely discounted by many researchers and writers, and has received very little theoretical and empirical attention. Newer work has shown that some of what is known based on violence in straight couples can serve as a starting point for understanding violence in gay couples. However, because many research and theoretical models were based only on straight batterers and victims, empirical results of testing these models can only serve as a starting point to understanding gay domestic violence.

Treatment options may be similarly understood. Just as treatment providers for batterers and victims in straight couples require a specific knowledge base, so do providers for batterers and victims in gay couples. However, because of the additional complexities of working with gay and with lesbian relationships, this knowledge base, built on treatment straight couples, can only serve as a starting point for intervention for gay couples. Several points for treatment can still be offered, however.

First, the therapist must have a solid knowledge base about the dynamics of domestic violence, based on general theory as well as on specific research about violence in gay couples. This knowledge base would include an understanding of:

• the assessment of specific risk factors for violence, as well as recognition of changing risk factors depending upon the couple's stage in "The Cycle of Violence"
• the importance of focusing on physical safety of the victim in treatment and periodic "safety check-ins" to assure the situation remains safe for the victim
• the power differences between batterer and victim, both those that are "acquired" as well as those that are "inherent"

It must also be noted that the treatment provider must be aware of the lack of adequate community resources, and the prejudice the client is more likely to experience in the legal system. This lack of external resources means the treatment provider may need to reconceptualize their role, shifting from "one of many" providers with straight victims to being the primary or even only point of intervention for gay victims.

These two notes are especially important in working with gay victims, as they are already a stigmatized population. Failure to recognize the victim's specific needs and resources available is likely to only compound the trauma.

Second, the therapist must be Gay and Lesbian Affirming. The therapist must be knowledgeable of issues such as coming out, normal gay and lesbian relationship development, societal response to gays and lesbians, internal and external homophobia, and theoretical biases in psychological theory.

This is likely to require an examination of any personal biases for the treatment provider. Such biases may be obvious, as in seeing domestic violence as "proof" of the untenability of gay relationships, or more subtle, as in minimizing the risk for harm and encouraging gay victims to fight back and defend themselves.

Third, there is considerable debate about the appropriateness of couples counseling with violent couples, be they straight, gay, or lesbian.

Island and Letellier (1991) go so far as to say that couple's counseling is never appropriate. This view makes some sense. Clinicians working with violent couples struggle with a number of concerns, including that couples therapy: reinforces the batterer's efforts to "make up," possibly making it harder for the victim to freely choose to stay or leave the relationship may redefine one person's choice to be violent as "a couple problem" requires careful decision-making regarding client safety outside of the therapy office prevents accurate monitoring of abuse potential, as the victim is likely to be afraid to report honestly if the potential is high could cause more violence after therapy has stirred troublesome issues and conversations or if the victim reports the abuser's actions honestly is demanding, as work with abusers stirs deep feelings and possible transference in therapists to punish batterers and protect victims

Some argue that under specific circumstances, couples therapy might be possible. Holtzworth-Munroe and colleagues (1995) note that there is no data supporting that this approach to treatment is more effective than individual therapy. However, there is no evidence that this approach is less effective than individual treatment. Individual therapy for batterers, however, has low rates of success. For example, Edelson and Grusznski (1989) conducted an intense treatment program including educational self-help groups, therapeutic groups, and individual therapy for heterosexual batterers and found that at a five month post-treatment follow-up, 67% of batterers were reported to have been non-violent by their female partners. However, 43% of the men were reported to have made threats of violence. Thus, in actuality, only 24% of the men could be considered "success cases," who did not become violent or threaten violence toward their partner. Gondolf's (1997) study similarly showed that verbal abuse continued after treatment for 70% of abusive men.

Holtzworth-Munroe and colleagues (1995) offer that couples therapy would offer several benefits over individual treatment, including that couples therapy:

• gives the therapist a more accurate picture of the violence, since it is not based solely on the abuser's report, which is likely to be minimized
• allows for the same techniques and information to be given to both partners, including education about domestic violence and personal responsibility for one's actions and safety, as well as attention to warning signs that the abuser is at risk to lose control over his anger
• can focus on better communication patterns that could help prevent risky situations in which the batterer is prone to lose self-control
• provides a "safe place" to discuss difficult and anxiety-provoking topics

Prerequisites for potentially successful couples treatment would include:

• the violence did not fit a pattern of abuse and control
• the violence only happened once, perhaps twice (separated by a long interval)
• the batterer takes full responsibility for the abuse and is willing to seek treatment to gain better control of his actions
• the batterer is willing to comply with "safety check-ins" and reports by the victim, which typically should be conducted without the batterer present
• a clear set of terms under which therapy would be ended (such as a "relapse" into any violence, or the use of manipulative efforts to control)

• a "no violence" contract that specifically states there is to be no violence between the parties, and that should they become violent, they must report this to the therapist within one day
• part of the "no violence" contract should also include no threats of violence
• the batterer may be required to begin work on his own of some kind (individual therapy, anger management classes, group therapy, etc...) to begin to address his anger problems, perhaps including attention to physiological signs, relaxation therapy, etc...
• there is a safety plan in place for the victim, which spells out under what circumstances he will leave the home; the therapist should meet individually with him to spell out a safe place to go (e.g., a friend or family member who knows the relationship has been violent), and this place should remain secret from the batterer
• there is a safety plan for the batterer, which spells out triggers or physiological signs he can use to warn himself that he is loosing control of his temper, "calming activities" he can engage in to soothe his anger, and a contact person he can go to for support and honest feedback who is aware of the violence in the relationship
• a "no threats" contract that specifically states neither partner will make threats to end the relationship; this would not preclude leaving the home, but it would stipulate that any decision to leave would be reported at a therapy session
• a "no discussion" list of topics; these would include "crazy buttons" or issues that are too volatile for the couple to discuss outside of session, and an agreement for both partners not to discuss these outside of session, and what to do if the other brings up these issues

Of note, work with domestic violence cases is never easy. Some research (Edelson & Grusznski, 1989) shows that even under the most intensive treatment conditions (individual, educational, and group therapy), physical abuse may end in a large number of cases, but many abusers continue to be manipulative, controlling, and threatening in their relationships, and thus therapeutic gains are limited. When there are no or limited resources specifically targeting gays in violent relationships in the community, it is possible that even fewer gains can be made.