Social and institutional support as perceived by female domestic violence victims serving custodial sentence

Abstract

A frequent reason for women remaining in harmful, abusive relationships is mainly fear of revenge, losing children, sense of guilt and erroneous conviction on abuse. Financial dependence and a lack of familiarity with forms of assistance and available support force a woman to remain in a disordered relationship, sometimes running afoul of the law. Sometimes it is the case that during yet another bout of abuse they reach for any object at hand and give a fatal blow to their torturer – the worst and at the same time the saddest scenario. Both options result in “the end” of one suffering – experiencing violence and the onset of another one related to serving a custodial sentence. In this article I would like to signal that some life paths combine those two awful experiences implying an absence of support of the immediate environment as well as of institutional support by entities whose responsibility it is to provide help.