Are Mexican Immigrant and Mexican American Female Victims of Intimate Partner Violence Being Served in Memphis, Tennessee?: Support Services for Victims of Intimate Partner Violence Among Mexican Immigrant and Mexican American Women in Memphis, Tennessee

By M. Helena Vanderlei Collins

Domestic violence against women is an oppressive condition that extends across race, class, and gender. This work examines intimate partner violence against women in Memphis, Tennessee, focusing on Mexican immigrant and Mexican American female survivors of domestic violence.

Author M. Helena Vanderlei Collins interviewed ten Mexican immigrant women and seven Mexican American women to investigate factors that influence helpseeking behavior. Collins focused on the perceptions of Mexican immigrant and Mexican American women regarding the social services available to them and explored how their help-seeking behavior is affected by their degree of acculturation and the incidence of intimate partner violence.

Collins employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to answer seven key research questions. The quantitative instruments included ARSMA-II, the Inventory of Abusive Behavior, and a customized demographic questionnaire. The qualitative data was drawn from the semi-structured interviews with the domestic violence survivors. Collins concluded her study by describing the challenges women of Hispanic origin face when seeking help from social service providers and by offering recommendations on how to improve the quality of services these women receive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462021383

M. Helena Vanderlei Collins

M. Helena Vanderlei Collins works as a bilingual mental health provider at Choices Counseling Center of Memphis, Tennessee, where she offers professional assistance to victims of crimes such as rape, kidnapping, and intimate partner violence. She holds a doctorate in education from the School of Educational Leadership and Change at Fielding Graduate University.

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Contents

DEDICATION

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE:

Violence Against Women

CHAPTER TWO:

Review Of The Literature

CHAPTER THREE:

Methodology

CHAPTER FOUR:

RESULTS

CHAPTER FIVE:

DISCUSSION

REFERENCES

APPENDIX A

Permission to Publish the Graphic, A Decade of Non-Fatal Incidents

APPENDIX B

Demographic Questionnaire – English version

APPENDIX C

Semi-Structured Interview – English Version:

APPENDIX D

Permission to Use the Inventory of Abusive Behavior (ABI)

APPENDIX E

Flyer (English)

APPENDIX F

Flyer (Spanish)

APPENDIX G

Informed Consent Form

Glossary/Notes

BIOGRAPHY

Resources

DEDICATION

To my God: The utmost everlasting support in moments of desolation and despair.

To my dear deceased mother: Maria de Nazaré Vanderlei Penha, a survivor of intimate partner violence.

To my beloved children: Allan V. Canavarro, Marcus Fábio V. Canavarro (deceased), and Fabiana V. Canavarro.

To all innocent women and children who became victims of abuse and were directly or indirectly affected by domestic violence.

To my dear first granddaughter: Mariana Xavier Canavarro.

To my abusive, deceased, and unforgotten father: Francisco Penha de Araújo.

To my abusers, whose harmful behavior gave me enough strength to seek healing, forgiveness, and growth. Such strength prepared me to live for serving those oppressed by abuse.

(my grief is with you, may God bless)

Epigraph

I was the one who sustained the physical, moral, psychological and emotional pain caused by my abusers.

PREFACE

Domestic violence against women is an oppressive condition extended across race, class, and gender in the United States (Sokoloff, & Pratt 2005; U.S. Department of Justice, 2004). Athena’s (2000) discussion the English Common Law of 1967 in the context of wife abuse was supported by Stedman’s (1917) statement that, by the old common law rule the husband had the right to inflict moderate personal chastisement on his wife, provided that he used, as some of his domestic authorities stated it, a switch no longer than his thumb (p. 1). This work examined the help-seeking behavior of women of Hispanic origin who have been in situations of domestic violence. In particular, it is focused on the perceptions of Mexican immigrant and Mexican American women regarding the social services available to them (Tiefenthaler, Farmer, & Sambira, 2005). I also explored how this help-seeking behavior is affected by their degree of acculturation and the incidence of intimate partner violence. I wanted to understand whether a difference existed between these two similar ethnic groups. In the Are the Mexican immigrant and Mexican American female victims of intimate partner violence being served in Memphis, Tennessee? I reviewed their differences in perception about their situation, as well as their awareness of the quality of social services available to them. In this work the author reports the result of her study with 10 Mexican immigrant and 7 Mexican American women who were living in Memphis, Tennessee when the research was conducted. In order to investigate the phenomena, mixed methods were used. The quantitative instruments selected were ARSMA-II (Cuéllar & Maldonado, 1995), the Abusive Behavior Inventory (Shepard & Campbell, 1992), and a customized demographic questionnaire. The qualitative data were collected through a semi-structured interview. Descriptive data and t-tests were reported for the quantitative data, and constant comparative analysis (Glaser, 1965) supported the interpretation of the qualitative data. I report the challenges that women of Hispanic origin had while seeking help from social service providers and the relationship between acculturation and incidence of intimate partner violence. Recommendations to improve the quality of services that this population receives, as well as suggestions for future research, are also provided.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am a believer in God’s endless influence in our daily struggle in the process of understanding His will and becoming better human beings. I have no doubt that all of my past, present, and future experiences are within God’s plan for me, even though most of the time, I couldn’t and still am not able to grasp their meanings. One of God’s mysterious plans for me was to meet with and to be directly or indirectly enriched by many people who contributed to my reaching this milestone. The task of starting and completing this dissertation was an overwhelming one and could not have been accomplished without the support and motivation of those who helped me to believe that I could complete this piece of work.

I first want to thank God for the gift of have gained emotional and spiritual strength to believe that regardless how narrow was the road I had to journey, He was always there to support me, especially when I had lost the proper direction leading to the objective: to complete a doctoral program.

Second, I would like to acknowledge the role played in my academic life by the following two clinical psychologists: Dr. Will Kouw, former cluster leader for the PhD program in clinical psychology (San Antonio, Texas), and Dr. Alex Galloway, my former site clinical supervisor for my PhD practicum in Memphis, Tennessee.

Third, I want to give thanks to Dean Judy Witt for having listened to me when I made the personal decision to withdraw from clinical psychology and apply to the ELC program. My extended thanks to my first chairperson, Nicola Smith in the ELC program, for her assistance and guidance in my writing the proposal outline.

Fourth, thanks also go to my computer technician, Nathan Hill, for his constant assistance over 10 years with computer-related problems. Many times, you rescued me by recovering lost data when my computers crashed. It is still hard for me to imagine the outcome of my academic life without your support. I extend thanks to Mrs. Cooper, my first American teacher, whose patience and dedication introduced me to standard English lessons and the American culture.

Fifth, I want to express gratitude to my clients, whose visible emotional pain became invisible, but was one of the strongest internal and external motivations for me to advance in my studies. The more complex and deeper your suffering, the more motivated I became to gain further knowledge in order to even better serve you. Moreover, your looking at me as a strong role model made me more conscious of my personal weaknesses, and thus, I felt deeply obligated to gain further knowledge and live a lifestyle without deviating from the precepts of moral authenticity, which is primarily founded in the principles of ethics and justice in my designated role of a healer or mental health provider. By allowing me to walk with you on the road of fear, uncertainty, anger, despair, and a generalized helpless and hopeless attitude toward life, self, and others, you thought me remarkable life lessons. For example, I soon realized that I could not be of any support to you unless I was going to teach you not only with a well-prepared professional discussion based on theories originated in my academic knowledge. You taught me, instead, that to be effective I had to live my professional and personal lives according to the same values that fortunately, most of you learned to embrace. Because you were open to accept the message, you many times called, wrote, or told me face-to-face, Thank you because now I know I can overcome the feelings of anger toward myself and my abuser, which set me free to be me without having to worry about fulfilling others’ expectations in my life. Through you, I learned that first of all, I had to be the invisible bridge to help you discover the natural inner-healing power, which enriched the quality of your personal and your family lives.

Sixth, my sincere thanks to my friend, Vinus Middleton D., who kindly told me You already went too far to drop the ball. She helped me accept the reality that the distance I already had walked was much longer when compared with the one pointing to the goal—to graduate from a doctoral program.

Seventh, thanks to my dissertation committee members, who in their specified roles gave me insights into the most appropriate forms of presenting my work. My mentor, Yolanda Gayol, assisted me in two different roles. First, she helped with the preparation of a standard IRB and dissertation proposal. Second, as a native speaker of Spanish, she assisted me in the translation and proofreading of the Spanish flyers, semi-structured interview, informed consent, demographic questionnaire, and the Inventory of Abusive Behavior (Shepard & Campbell, 1992). My research faculty member, Jenny Edwards, also assisted me in two different ways. As an expert in research, she not only helped me to design appropriate interview and research questions, but she also helped with issues related to editing and APA style. Without your support, I could have not completed this project. In the role of faculty reader, Dean Judy Witt always provided me with prompt, clear feedback to my written material, and she was always available when needed. Charlotte Marie Freeman was my external examiner, whose input indicated what I needed to include or omit from my writing in order to make my ideas clear to the reader. Laura A. Michell also helped in this journey as my student reader and gave me excellent ideas on how to improve the clarity of my writing. I also want to thank my student advisors, Ban Haidar and Kara Gaston, who were always there to give me prompt, straightforward answers to my questions through the years.

Last, my deep gratitude goes out to those whose attitude or verbal statement implied that I could never complete this journey because I just did not fit. Your lack of interest and respect for my work produced an opposite effect–my resolve to prove to you and myself that I could succeed.

In a final note, let me say that the completion of this work would not have been possible if I had not lived up to the promise I made to my beloved son, Marcos Fábio, to forgive his father for his abusive behavior—the secondary source of abuse throughout the life of our marriage.

INTRODUCTION

In the first chapter, I introduce the problem of help-seeking behaviors of Mexican immigrant and Mexican American female victims of domestic violence (VDV). I explain the background of the problem and include the research questions chosen as a result of an extensive review of the literature and my own experience as a counselor. In addition, I provide initial arguments hypothesizing apparent communication problems between clients and providers associated with the female’s cultural background. I discuss the parameters framing this research, which include definitions, assumptions, and limitations. Finally, I present the research questions and explain the contributions of this study to the literature and the dynamics of intervention among practitioners.

Theoretical Background

Violence among humans refers to aggressive behavior manifested through the physical, mental, or financial power to inflict injury on the other for the purpose of subjugation or destruction (Sonkin & Durphy, 1979; World Health Organization, 2007). Torres (2001) defined violence as an enacted or avoided behavior for the purpose of doing harm or injury to a person, in which the action transgressed the right of another individual (p. 29). Researchers have found divergent evidence supporting the idea of the inherent nature or cultural origin of violence. Ury (2002) relied on the primatology, and anthropology, and conflict resolution (p. 12) approaches to study archaeological remains to explain the nature versus nurture conflict among the chimp, the bonobo, the gorilla, and us (p. 20). Ury determined that a DNA hybrid tree shows that the bond is as close to us as is the chimpanzee (p. 22). Ury concluded that all behavior, and this applies to both human and animals, is a combination of two influences. One is the environmental [(nurture)] and the other is a genetic [(nature)] one (pp. 23-24); however, Ury further stated that aggression is triggered by particular situation (p. 13). Ury also argued that even though human aggression may partially stem from genetic roots, at the same time it is clear that we also have lots of natural mechanisms of cooperation, to keep conflict in check, to channel aggression, and to overcome conflict. These are just as natural to us as the aggressive tendencies. (p. 25)

Ferguson (2002), however, argued that for years, centuries, perhaps millennia, before any fossil evidence to speak of, learned men were certain that our distant past was war of all against all (p. 27). Those who defend the idea of a biologically ingrained nature of violence (nature) have provided a vision loaded with a sense of inevitability that prevents humans from conceiving peace (Sen, 2006). I disagree with the innate position because I embrace the possibility of change through counseling and conflict negotiation. From my perspective, violence is socially constructed (nurture) (Gottlieb, 2002). Violence denies the recipient of the aggression or the other the possibility of choice and forces submissive behavior and unquestioned acceptance of values and practices (Sen, 2006). The term violence is antidemocratic because it eliminates the possibility of reasoning, dissenting, or being treated in a situation of equity. Violence is opposed to freedom.

Violence changes with time and place (Sen, 2006). As a social system changes, the definition of violence is also altered (Goode, Hopkins & McClure, 1971). The relevance of time could be exemplified by slavery. When slavery was a common practice, the total submission of slaves was considered normal, and their ideal behavior was blind obedience. At that time, the superiority of masters was perpetrated by law, customs, and later on, by science. Numerous deficiency theories were developed to support inequity as the natural order (Said, 1978). The relevance of place could be illustrated with current practices in Pakistan in which the simple expression of the will to exercise the right of choosing a husband is punished with death (Shahzad, 2008).

The analysis of violence can be approached from the perspectives of conflict or consensus epistemologies. From the perspective of conflict theories, Marx and Engels (1969) emphasized the use of violence as a way for labor workers to gain freedom from the oppressive structures of capitalism. This radical position influenced further understanding of violence, in general, and of gender inequity in particular. The Russian leader Alexandra Kollontai was one of the first policy makers fighting for gender equity in the nascent revolution of 1917 (Kollontai, 1984; Holt, 1977).

From the perspective of consensus theory, the British conservative school of sociology developed Ameliorism, a method to prevent revolution. Ameliorists decided to focus on individuals as the source of all problems (Ritzer, 2002, p. 45). Ignorance, lust, mendacity, alcoholism, and lack of spirituality were among the causes that supposedly prevented the evolution of society. Ryan (1971) called it to blame the victim approach (p.4), since all pathological manifestations were explained by Ameliorists through individual problems. Often, Ameliorism is still found embedded in both society and expert knowledge as a way of justifying the existence of violence.

Other sociological approaches found the origins of violence in the behavior of a community. Bourdieau and Wacquant (1992) coined the notion of symbolic violence to express a soft way in which violence is inflicted upon individuals. Symbolic violence refers to cultural forms of subordination. Particular forms of language, meaning, and values are imposed by the dominant group to legitimize unequal relationships. These worldviews are accepted as natural on the side of the oppressed. Symbolic violence helps to reproduce the relations of power (Ritzer, 2002). The state, the educational subsystem, and the religious subsystem are major users of symbolic violence. As it is carried by language and meaning, it is clear that symbolic violence is present in many situations of everyday life, and it supports the configuration of subordinated identities.

Giddens (1990) explained that the arrival of modernity dislocated the connection of time and space and enabled absent people and meanings to penetrate and permeate local societies. Media are the most important vehicles to bridge the differences in time and location, and it is well documented that the media are global carriers of dominant ideologies, often used to mystify both physical and symbolic expressions of violence (Lull, 1995). News about wars and crimes (Lopez & Brummett, (2003), films and television series, and video and real-time games saturate our social spaces, presenting violence as inevitable, overwhelming, and even a desirable experience. Violence is also used by media as a mechanism to infuse fear.

Violence is disruptive in any social context. The World Health Organization (2007) reported that violence causes physical injury and affects mental health (Vega, Kolody & Valle, 1987). In addition, it damages the social tissue and destroys the social and financial capital (Galtung, 2007). Furthermore, violence decreases labor productivity and represents a financial burden for society as it translates into security expenses, the provision of medical advice, the intervention of the legal system, and psychological attention to victims and offenders (Reiss & Roth, 1993). Violence also affects school achievement (Gardner, 1971). Francois Bourguignon, chief economist of the world bank, estimated that in 1999, the United States spent 3% of the gross national product as a result of losses caused by violence (Bourguignon, 2000).

This brief review of the importance of violence in society led to the conclusion that while doing research, it is important for researchers to explore concrete situations with historical lenses, that is, considering particular time and place (Orozco, Chávez, Belmonte, & Ramírez, 2005). Similarly, the exploration of ethnicity and culture helps to integrate behavioral nuances that enrich the understanding of the problem and the population studied.

CHAPTER ONE:

Violence Against Women

Torres (2005) developed three models to explain family violence: the individual model, focusing on the personal attributes of the parties in a situation of conflict; the family model, emphasizing the dynamics among the family members; and the socio-cultural model, which focused the attention on the social structure. In Are Mexican Immigrant and Mexican American Female Victims of Intimate Partner Violence Being Serviced in Memphis, Tennessee? I include explanations of the three models; however, my personal position is that violence against women is not simply a non-desired collection of aggressive behaviors, as Ameliorists would suggest. It should be regarded as a systemic problem rooted in inequality. Ritzer (2002) introduced four principles explaining gender inequity as potential roots that trigger male violence. First, women have fewer resources, and opportunities, and less power and status than men do. Second, inequality derives from social norms, rather than from biological differences. Third, natural differences exist, yet those should not be translated as deficiencies. Fourth, both males and females respond better to structures and situations striving for equality (p. 396).

Regarding gender opportunities and power, the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA, 2005) reported that girls tend to be excluded