**About the Editor**

**Adele Jones** is a Professor of Social Work at the University of Huddersfield, UK and Director/Founder of the None in Three Centre for the Global Prevention of Gender-Based Violence (www.noneinthree.org). The centre is named in recognition that one in three females will experience violence in their lifetime, the None in Three Centre specializes in the use of prosocial computer games to engage young people across the world in changing the attitudes, norms, and behaviors that fuel gender-based violence. Having led or been involved in research in 23 countries, her expertise spans violence against women and children, refugees, the impact of HIV-AIDS, children of imprisoned parents, adoption and residential care. She has numerous publications to her name and was lead author for a series of three scholarly texts on child sexual abuse in the Caribbean, the first in the region: *Understanding Child Sexual Abuse: Perspectives from the Caribbean; An Integrated Systems Model for Preventing Child Sexual Abuse: Perspectives from the Caribbean; and Treating Child Sexual Abuse in Family, Group and Clinical Settings—Culturally Intelligent Practice for Caribbean and International Contexts*. Her most recent work has resulted in new research into the social and cultural factors implicated in violence against women and children, and education interventions to support social change, in Barbados, Grenada, St Lucia, Jamaica, India, the UK, Uganda, and Brazil.

### **Preface to "Leaving a Violent Relationship"**

Intimate partner violence (IPV), defined as physical, sexual, emotional and economic abuse and controlling behaviours inflicted within intimate partner relationships, is a global crisis that extends beyond national and sociocultural boundaries, affecting people of all ages, religions, ethnicities and economic backgrounds. Although women can be violent towards their partners (male, female, transgender or non-binary), IPV is most commonly perpetrated by males towards females, and the overwhelming global burden is thus borne by women. Indeed, the World Health Organisation estimates that worldwide, one in three women will experience sexual or physical violence in their lifetime (2013).

People often ask of women in abusive relationships "why does she stay?" Critics sugges<sup>t</sup> that this question carries implicit notions of victim blame and fails to hold to account the perpetrators of abuse. Targeted at the individual, it can mask societal and institutional failings that create barriers to leaving (Barnett 2000). A better question might be "why doesn't he stop?" since this would direct the attention to where responsibility lies, would bring into focus the limitations of criminal justice systems, and would enable a more nuanced approach to understanding the multiple ways through which survivors of abuse can become trapped within violent relationships (Jones et al. 2017).

The purpose of this book, then, is to deepen understandings of survivor agency and of the structural and interpersonal factors which facilitate or hinder escape from abuse. There are often major barriers to leaving a violent relationship and a multiplicity of factors to consider (Anderson et al. 2003). For some women, especially those from poor and marginalised groups, the choices may be very limited, while for others, staying may actually be a calculated survival decision under the circumstances in which they live their lives (Heise et al. 1999). Discourse has, however, changed over recent years, and new alliances to support women have emerged. Across the world, public disinterest about IPV has increasingly given way to public disquiet, largely as a consequence of renewed local and international activism. Such campaigns enable survivors to speak out and speaking out can be the precursor or catalyst to accessing the help needed to leave.

Then, in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic happened! During humanitarian crises such as conflict, natural disasters or, health epidemics, violence against women often escalates. Past epidemics, including Ebola and Zika, have shown that as outbreaks affect social and economic life, risks and vulnerabilities also increase. Governments urged populations to "lock down" and practice social distancing to safeguard against the transmission of the Corona virus but failed to recognise the risks intrinsic in this advice for women living with abuse; the very measures designed to protect could be used by the perpetrators of violence to isolate victims of abuse and prevent them from getting help.

Therefore, we must be reminded, lest we forget, that the gains of activism against gender-based violence, though hard won, are easily lost.

This book comprises eight chapters and provides new theoretical understandings on intimate partner violence as well as insights into the experiences of marginalised and diverse groups of survivors. In chapter one, David McLeod, Kirsten Havig, Anthony Natale and Angela Pharris discuss emerging theoretical perspectives on IPV. Drawing on intersectionality, decolonization theory and the posttraumatic growth paradigm, the authors use a constructivist lens to elucidate theoretical frameworks that are of value for clinical practice with vulnerable people as well as for policy and research. In chapter two, Luz Adriana Aristizabal describes her research into the experiences of ´ Colombian women, which explored the interaction between co-dependency, violent relationships and

female crime. She argues that enabling women to leave requires the strengthening of interventions that empower women while they are in prison as well as after release.

Ana Isabel Sani and Dora Pereira conducted research among a group of mothers in Portugal (chapter three) and concluded that the reasons for remaining in an abusive relationship were related to extrinsic factors (e.g., children, the aggressor, society) which reinforce myths (e.g., marriage is for life) and make it difficult to leave. They sugges<sup>t</sup> that the resilience portfolio model, which focuses on three major factors (self-regulation, interpersonal forces, and construction of meaning) is a useful tool for interventions that enable survivors to reconceptualize the factors that prevent leaving. Through the process of ascribing new meanings to experience, women can be empowered to take actions to protect themselves and their children.

The study described in chapter four was also set in Portugal. S´onia Caridade, Inesˆ Pinheiro and Maria Dinis present a qualitative analysis of the reasons and barriers young people give for leaving or staying in a violent dating relationship. The emotional and affective dependence of the partner and the belief that behaviour may change emerged as the main reasons participants remained, while shame, fear of losing the partner, and failure to recognize the abusive relationship were reported as the main barriers to leaving. The authors make the point that given the importance of disrupting potential trajectories of victimization during the adolescent stage of development, these insights are essential for promoting help-seeking behaviours among survivors of dating violence.

Chapter five, "When Sexting Crosses the Line: Educator Responsibilities in the Support of Prosocial Adolescent Behavior and the Prevention of Violence", also focused on adolescents, examines sexting within the context of IPV. Melinda Lemke and Katelyn Rogers undertake a critical analysis of the connections between adolescent sexting as consensual adolescent behavior and sexting as a form of sexual violence. By weighing the prosocial aspects of sexting against those factors that contribute to and make it difficult to leave a violent relationship, the authors provide crucial information for education policy.

In Chapter six, Esther Nanfuka, Florence Turyomurugyendo, Eric Ochen and Graham Gibbs investigated IPV among women who had been child brides in Uganda. Their retrospective study, with 26 Ugandan women who married before they were 18, identified four main factors that helped child marriage survivors to leave violent relationships: (1) having a secure base to return to; (2) reaching a tipping point in the relationship; (3) financial independence; and (4) intervention of a significant other. In conclusion, Esther Nanfuka and her colleagues sugges<sup>t</sup> that in low resource settings, such as Uganda, parental support is a key facilitative factor for leaving violent relationships in the context of child marriage, and argue that positive parenting interventions may significantly contribute to minimising the number of girls trapped in violent unions.

Chapter seven describes the use of a Black Feminist Standpoint Epistemology to analyze the experiences of, and choices available to, women of south Asian heritage living in the UK. The authors, Kalwinder Sandhu and Hazel Barrett, investigate the ways in which these women navigated their way around gender role expectations and the pressures to conform to arranged marriage. Though they were able to exercise agentic power in the relationship choices they made, having done so, this left them without access to family support if the relationship turned violent and made it very difficult to leave. The final chapter assesses cultural responsiveness among agencies providing services to refugee women impacted by IPV in the United States of America. Jessica Lucero, Kristina Scharp and Tanni Hernandez demonstrate that in order to effectively support refugees who are seeking safety from violent relationships, organisations need to improve language services. They further argue

that the engagemen<sup>t</sup> of refugee communities in the design and delivery of programs is essential to ensuring services are culturally sensitive.
