IPV re-victimization: Women's perceptions of safety and risk

Intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization is typically not a one-time event and, in many cases, a victim experiences multiple incidents of victimization from the same “offender” over time, sometimes even after an offender has been arrested. The purpose of this study was to identify the factors associated with female IPV survivors' perceptions of safety and risk of future violence following police intervention. 164 women who had experience police response to violence from an intimate partner completed questionnaires and 11 of those women also participated in qualitative interviews. Just over half of the participants said that they felt safe after data collection and nearly half said that they thought it was unlikely that their (ex)partners would use violence against them in the future. Feeling unsafe and perceiving oneself to be at risk of future violence was associated with experiencing particular forms of IPV, including battering, lethality threats, and sexual violence; having support from others and distance from the partner helped women feel safer. The findings indicate that it is not the violence itself that causes women to feel in danger but, rather, the meaning of the violence and the context in which the violence occurs. This study reinforces the need to identify the type, context, and meaning of the violence from the victim's perspective in order to match women with effective interventions, and to focus special attention on sexual violence, lethality threats, and battering, which appear to carry special meaning and be particularly significant for women's sense of safety.