Intimate Partner Violence Case Study

Men do not engage in as much physical violence as women. Yet, when men do use physical violence towards their partner, they inflict more harm on their partner than women perpetrators (Archer, 2000). These finding conflicts with the public perception that intimate partner violence is a “women’s issue.” According to research, women and men are perpetrators of intimate partner violence and their victims can be a man or a woman. But, will jurors give equal weight to male abusers and female abusers?

Court rooms are designed to be a neutral setting for both parties to settle a conflict. Yet, previously held biases can affect court proceedings. For example, the judge’s biases may affect how she or he rules; and jurors bias may affect the guilty/non-guilty

Hodell and his colleagues looked at juror gender bias on cases in which a mock jurors determined the guilt of female and male defendants who committed murder. All defendants in their study claimed to be victims of intimate domestic violence and they cited self-defense as their defense. The results of this study were that jurors were more likely to believe a female defendants claim of self-defense than a male defendant claim of self-defense (Hodell, Wasarhaley, Lynch, and Golding, 2014). Hodell, Wasarhaley, Lynch, and Golding (2014) argued that jurors reasoned that a male defendant can defend himself against a female defendant; while it will be harder for a female defendant to defend herself against a male defendant. Based on this study conclusion, female abuser are less of a threat when the victim is a male. One reason of this could be that male victims of intimate partner violence are less publicized in the media. Therefore, the public fails to realize the seriousness of female perpetrated intimate partner violence on male victims. Dutton and Nicholls (2005) stated in their study that male victims report the abuse less than female victims. Therefore, the public’s perception of intimate partner violence is that it does affect male victims and if it does it is as serious as female