Journal of Child Custody 2006 , 3 (1). 

      A briefer reply to Johnson: Re-affirming the necessity of a gender neutral       

                                       approach to custody evaluations.

                                                      Donald G. Dutton

                                          University of British Columbia

      In a recent issue of Journal of Child Custody, Michael Johnson and I engaged in a debate regarding the use of what I call the “gender paradigm” (Dutton and Nicholls 2005)in custody disputes. The gender paradigm, as I tried to point out, is the collective set of beliefs in the domestic violence field, that intimate partner violence is exclusively or predominantly male perpetrated, when the research data say otherwise. I criticised two books (Bancroft and Silverman 2002; Jaffe, Lemon et al. 2003)and several research papers connecting domestic violence to custody assessments for promoting this view. I will not restate those arguments here. The interested reader can find them, and Johnson’s response to them in Journal of Child Custody, 2005, volume 2(4). In his “brief reply” Michael Johnson says he “never denied” that women can be intimate terrorists. I suppose technically that’s true. What he did do though was, as I said in my response to him (Dutton 2005) was to create two categories in the literature; “patriarchal terrorism” and “common couple violence” that deflected attention from female initiated intimate partner violence( IPV).  Although Johnson claims to have revised this view in later papers of his, I was responding to his rebuttal in the above volume, in which he re-asserts that “intimate terrorism (also known as domestic violence, etc) is, indeed, primarily male perpetrated”. I have reviewed evidence that shows this view is no longer supported by recent research (Dutton 2005; Dutton 2006) and hence can be especially misleading as a “mindset” for custody assessments. I cannot see how Johnson has anywhere made it clear that by “intimate terrorism” he intends the assessor to apply this term to both men and women, especially given his statement above. He still argues in his “brief reply” that intimate terrorism is “largely male perpetrated and related to gender attitudes”. I will only briefly re-assert that the evidence shows IPV is perpetrated more by women (Archer 2000) including the severe form (Stets and Straus 1992). Johnson’s inability or unwillingness to comprehend these data is a pure example of the belief perseverance I have already described (Dutton and Nicholls 2005).

    Apart from IPV directed to a partner, feminist theory also ignores violence by women directed at children, probably because such violence falls outside the political view of being a response to an oppressor male. However, violence and abuse toward children is of central importance to custody assessors, more so than the varieties of IPV described by Johnson. In that respect, custody assessors should be aware of the largest study of child abuse and neglect that, to my knowledge, has ever been conducted. This is a study of 135, 573 child maltreatment investigations conducted by Health Canada and Published by the National Clearing House on Family Violence (Trocme and al. 2001). The study designates the abuse type as physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, emotional maltreatment and “multiple categories”. The investigations are further divided into substantiated, suspected and unsubstantiated categories. Substantiation rates do not, in general, vary by gender of perpetrator and run from 52 to 58%. Biological mothers (as compared to biological fathers) are the more likely substantiated perpetrator of physical abuse (47 vs. 42%), neglect (86% vs. 33%), emotional maltreatment  (61% vs. 55%) and multiple categories (66% vs. 36%). The biological father is the most likely perpetrator of sexual abuse (15% vs. 5%). For physical abuse the substantiation rate was 6% higher for fathers, bringing the total perpetration rates to equality ( Table 4, page 49). These data, based on a huge nationally representative sample, tell a very different picture than that presented by Jaffe et al, Bancroft et al, or Johnson, all of whom over rely on shelter samples to draw erroneous conclusions about risk to children. Johnson concludes by saying “assume that all violence is intimate terrorism (which is “largely male perpetrated and related to gender attitudes”) until proven otherwise”. Compare this to the American Psychological Association Guidelines for forensic evaluation summarised in Weissman and DeBow (2003). The forensic evaluation must begin with a “cognitive set and evaluative attitude” of the assessor that is “neutral, objective and detached” (p. 39). Jaffe et al, Bancroft et al and Johnson make adherence to this principle impossible.

References

Archer, J. (2000). "Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners: A meta-analytic review." Psychological Bulletin 126(5): 651-680.

Bancroft, L. and J. G. Silverman (2002). The batterer as parent: Addressing the impact of domestic violence on family dynamics. Thousand Oaks, CA., Sage.

Dutton, D. G. (2005). "On comparing apples to apples deemed non-existent: A reply to Johnson." Journal of Child Custody 2(4): 53- 63.

Dutton, D. G. (2006). Rethinking domestic violence. Vancouver, UBC Press.

Dutton, D. G. and T. L. Nicholls (2005). "The gender paradigm in domestic violence research and theory: Part 1- The conflict of theory and data." Aggression and Violent Behavior 10(6): 680 - 714.

Jaffe, P., N. Lemon, et al. (2003). Child custody & domestic violence:  A call for safety and accountability. Thousand Oaks, Sage.

Stets, J. and M. A. Straus (1992). The marriage license as a hitting license. Physical violence in American Families. New Brunswick, N.J., Transaction Publishers.

Trocme, N. and e. al. (2001). Canadian incidence study of reported child abuse and neglect. Ottawa, Health Canada: 1-179.

Weissman, H. N. and D. H. DeBow (2003). Ethical principles and professional competencies. Handbook of Psychology: Forensic Psychology. A. Goldstein. Hoboken, N.J., Wiley & Sons. 11: 33- 53.

Contact info: dondutton at shaw.ca

    Department of Psychology, 2136 West Mall, University of British Columbia,

      Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V6T 1&7.

Bio: Don Dutton is Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia. He has written The Domestic Assault of Women (1995), The Abusive Personality (2003) and Rethinking Domestic Violence (2006).