How Do Practitioners and Program Managers Working with Male Perpetrators View IPV? A Quebec Study
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
How Do Practitioners and Program Managers Working with Male Perpetrators View IPV? A Quebec Study Valérie Roy 1
&
Normand Brodeur 1 & Michel Labarre 1 & Marc-Antoine Bousquet 1 & Tatiana Sanhueza 1,2
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract To document the viewpoints on intimate partner violence (IPV) of Québec practitioners working with violent partners and of program managers of batterer intervention programs (BIPs). Based on Loseke’s (2003) theory of the construction of social problems, a qualitative study was carried out with 25 practitioners working with violent partners and with18 program managers of BIPs so as to explore their conceptions of IPV and their representations of perpetrators and victims. Study participants primarily defined IPV as a way of taking control, while nonetheless noting other motivations. They also insisted on the diversity of contexts of IPV and its numerous manifestations. For them, IPV was a complex, multifactorial problem, involving individual risk factors for the most part, though also including contextual and social ones. Not only did they not see a single type of IPV, but they also saw no single perpetrator or victim profile. They saw both perpetrators and victims as accountable for their choices, even though they posed some limitations on this general principle of accountability. Complexity and diversity seemed to characterize their conceptions of IPV and their representations of perpetrators and victims. Findings are discussed in the light of current debates about IPV, of implications for BIPs, and of contexts that may influence IPV conceptions. Keywords Intimate partner violence . Practitioners . Program managers . Perpetrators . Typology . Batterer intervention programs . Construction of social problems
Since its acknowledgement in the 1970s as a public problem rather than as a private one, the way of seeing and understanding IPV has evolved and been the subject of several debates. It was initially defined as a manifestation of violence against women, a definition that has been enshrined in the public policies of many Western states, including those of the Province of Québec, Canada (Gouvernement du Québec 1995). According to this perspective, which can be associated with the feminist paradigm, IPV is a behavior that stems from patriarchal values which allow men to dominate their partners. Accordingly, IPV is gendered and the violence committed by men is different and more frequent than that committed by women due to the context in which it occurs and the
* Valérie Roy [email protected] 1
School of Social Work and Criminology, Université Laval, Quebec City, QC, Canada
2
Social Work Department, University of Concepcion, Concepción, Chile
perpetrators’ motivations (DeKeseredy 2016). The asymmetry of certain forms of IPV (e.g., sexual assault, stalking, and homicide) and their consequences are also highlighted (DeKeseredy 2016). For example, 2015 police data from the Province of Québec indicated that women
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