Child Abuse and Violence in Society – Sen. Anne Cools 1995

A speech delivered by Senator Anne Cools to the Canadian Senate on March 28, 1995. Honorable Senators, my intention today is to focus on children as recipients of violence in the family. I shall review some of the research and findings on the troubled family and child at risk. Honourable Senators, the understanding of human

Read More

Aggression in British Heterosexual Relationships: A Descriptive Analysis

British 1994 CTS Domestic Violence Survey shows more married men are victims …
A 12-item scale, derived from the Conflict Tactics Scale, was administered to a representative sample of 1,978 heterosexual men and women in Great Britain in mid November 1994. Men and women were asked to identify conflict tactics sustained or inflicted in all past and present relationships and those sustained in current relationships. This paper reports results for physical victimization and also reports on two further questions asked to discern context and meaning ascribed to such sustained or inflicted victimization. Both sexes reported having experienced physical victimization with a higher percentage of men sustaining victimization, mainly as a result of minor acts of assault. Almost equal percentages of men and women reported inflicting victimization against partners. Additionally, incidence of physical victimization is presented according to relationship status, age, socioeconomic category and by regional distribution. Both sexes reported a range of reasons or contexts ascribed to their sustained or inflicted victimization.

Read More

Riding the Donkey Backwards: Men as the Unacceptable Victims of Marital Violence

In post-Renaissance France and England, society ridiculed and humiliated husbands thought to be battered and/or dominated by their wives (Steinmetz, 1977-78). In France, for instance, a “battered” husband was trotted around town riding a donkey backwards while holding its tail. In England, “abused” husbands were strapped to a cart and paraded around town, all the

Read More

Riding the Donkey Backwards: Men as the Unacceptable Victims of Marital Violence

In post-Renaissance France and England, society ridiculed and humiliated husbands thought to be battered and/or dominated by their wives (Steinmetz, 1977-78). In France, for instance, a “battered” husband was trotted around town riding a donkey backwards while holding its tail. In England, “abused” husbands were strapped to a cart and paraded around town, all the while subjected to the people’s derision and contempt. Such “treatments” for these husbands arose out of the patriarchal ethos where a husband was expected to dominate his wife, making her, if the occasion arose, the proper target for necessary marital chastisement; not the other way around (Dobash & Dobash, 1979).

Read More

Preventing Parentectomy Following Divorce

Parentectomy is the removal, erasure, or severe diminution of a caring parent in a child’s life, following separation or divorce.
Parentectomy covers a large range of parent removal from partial parentectomy, “You may visit your Daddy or Mommy every other Sunday”; to total parentectomy, as in Parental Alienation Syndrome, described by Gardner; or complete parent absence or removal. The victims of parentectomy are the children and the parents so severed from each other’s lives. A parentectomy is the most cruel infringement upon children’s rights to be carried out against human children by human adults. Parentectomies are psychologically lethal to children and parents.

Read More