Rescripting Relationships: Towards a Nuanced Theory of Intimate Violence as Sex Discrimination

Expanding a Community’s Justice Response to Sex Crimes Through Advocacy, Prosecutorial, and Public Health Collaboration

“…The need for justice is an intrinsic motive that is seen in higher primates as well as human beings. Although the actual social institutions that developed as a response have differed across time and place, efforts to eradicate intimate abuse extend back 2,000 years (Hopkins, 2002). Today many nations use an adversarial justice system based on Anglo-Saxon law (derived from English and French precedents) to adjudicate crimes against women and address victims'needs for protection, reparation, and retribution (see United Nations, 2000;Victims' Rights Working Group, n.d.).…”

“…A collaborative group was essential to developing a program that is recognized by the criminal justice system, observes the Constitutional rights of the accused, fulfills state and international guarantees of victims' rights, provides services that are victim centered and competent in addressing offender conduct, meets guidelines for the restorative justice programs (e.g., Department of Justice, Canada, 2004), and conducts activities within the context of ethical principles regarding human participants in a research and evaluation project. We acknowledge that there are very significant legal issues that we grappled with in the design of the program that we address elsewhere (Hopkins, 2002;Hopkins, Koss, & Bachar, 2004;Hopkins, Koss, & Bachar, in press).…”

The case for treating violence against women as a form of sex discrimination in India

“…In this way, even if it is only one woman who suffers sexual assault or dowry harassment, her experience ‘teaches’ all women something about their place in society and makes them fearful of a similar fate (Gordon and Riger, 1988). This fear is unique to women’s existence (Hopkins, 2001), and another crucial manifestation of this fear lies in the inability of the victims to voice the very thing that they fear – the violence that they experience.…”

“…There are several problems with addressing instances of VAW as mere criminal offences. Victims often lack control over the process of litigation since they are not parties to the case but mere witnesses (Hopkins, 2001: 435). Further, the criminal process fails to recognise and address the psychological harm to the victim.…”

“…Instead, criminal justice remedies such as traditional fines and imprisonment advance the notion that the case has more to do with the defendant’s harm to society, rather than to the victim. These punishments are especially incongruent with victims’ goals in cases of domestic violence or cruelty, since often all the victims want is for the violence to stop and an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, rather than jail time (Hopkins, 2001: 436). In a country like India, where women are dependent on their husbands for bread and shelter due to the lack of education and vocational training provided to them, sending him away without thinking about state support often means making the woman’s position even worse off.…”