CIB 2 - Abusive Myths

Hey All!

So today I read the chapter on abusive mythology in “Why Does He Do That”. Of course I picked out this chapter because I wanted to bust social myths revolving around DV, because our society has a lot of them. Anyway, the first myth Bancroft brings up is “He was abused as a child and therefore he abuses”

 After reading this first myth I became highly skeptical. Granted, I am usually really skeptical at books that don’t show a lot of facts and a written by one author. So I did some extra research.

Bancroft talks about how the correlations between past abuse and future abuse is weak. He doesn’t really bring up his other reasons he believes people abuse other than that they have an abuse problem. However, I remember reading from the textbook from this class that brought up a study that said direct physical or sexual abuse or exposure to interparental violence is associated with later aggression. I also searched around the resources in the library and found a study done on a large sample of folks through a three part longitudinal study that analyzed if past abuse would lead to adolescent dating violence and therefore result in adult interpersonal violence. The study discovered, again, that yes, there is a moderate correlation between former abuse and future abuse.  (That study can be found here: http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:5053/content/43/1/171.full.pdf+html). I also read some of the abstracts from another article that said the same thing. Gender differences also play a role in the correlation between child abuse and future abuse. I found this great study here if you all want to check that out as well! (http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:6233/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=b44e5e1a-3401-4c81-b621-3dab5ab83bbb%40sessionmgr114&vid=2&hid=123)

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are definitely other factors that play into a person’s life that leads them to become abusive or not (resilience is a very overlooked factor). However, I think Bancroft really threw this out the window as a complete myth, which from my research shows that it is not. Of course, you are more than welcome to form you own opinion, and I urge you all to do studying and research for yourself as well! Don’t take me as a soul source of information, but rather a good start to future knowledge. Anyway, if you want to take a look at Bancroft’s ideas and information you can check out his website here: (http://www.lundybancroft.com/)

While I don’t want this post to be too big Bancroft does go over many other myths that I totally want to cover in a future post (if you can’t wait that long please e-mail me!!) But I wanted to talk about this one solely today since it is a big one and one that needs to be covered with some depth.

And, as in last post, here’s a video of me explaining the association between child abuse and future abuse: