Physical prevarication within the couple: an empirical analysis of a typology of violent men
The aim of this paper is to examine differences in batterers’ patterns of violence within the couple between an Australian and an Italian National sample of women who have suffered physical or sexual violence. I attempt to identify abusers types using 4 descriptive dimensions (i.e., severity of physical or sexual violence, severity of psychological violence, alcohol use, generality of violence). Latent class analyses is used to identify subgroups of violent men; the violence patterns and prevalence of subgroups are then compared across countries’ samples. Australian data is drawn from the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS, 2003). The sample consists of 6,677 women and 1,709 violent men were found; Italian data is drawn from the Indagine sulla Sicurezza delle Donne, Istat (ISD, 2006). The sample consists of 25,065 women and 2,536 abusers were investigated. The main result is the identification of three types of batterers (family only, FO; borderline, BD; and generally violent-antisocial, GVA) in each sample. This typology is consistent with previous results from batterers’ non-representative samples researches. FO men show a low severity level of violence; BD men reveal higher level of violence severity and point out a higher level of alcohol use; GVA men achieve a high level of violence combined with alcohol abuse, and criminal behaviour. Despite uniformity in typology found across countries, there are notable sample differences in class prevalence. FO batterers, for example, are widespread in the ISD, on the contrary BD are rampant in the IVAWS. On the one hand these findings highlight the utility of latent class techniques for understanding men’s use of violence within the couple. On the other these results show that a consistent abusers typology is likely to be identified also using the victims’ point of view
Santangelo, F.