Resistance and Submission: A Case Study of the Training of DV Advocates

ABSTRACT

Domestic violence work typically happens within the confines of significant macro forces that shape most social work practice, including but not limited to neoliberalism, criminalization and professionalization. Using the concept of professional resistance, we discuss and present our case study research that sought to understand how these intersecting macro forces shape domestic violence advocacy training in Oregon. House Bill (HB) 3476 established privilege for certain communications between people seeking DV services and “certified advocates.” This bill mandates training for advocates as a condition for accessing privileged communications. Our research suggests that understanding dynamics of power, resistance, and compliance with macro forces that shape domestic violence advocacy training and consequently social work require epistemologies that move us beyond binary thinking, and toward the assemblage of complicated dynamics.

KEYWORDS:

• Domestic violence
• resistance
• case study
• criminalization
• professionalization
• feminisms

Notes

¹ Community-based advocates tend to work for community-based agencies with the goal of supporting victim/survivors of IPV and sexual assault to navigate experiences of violence. They tend to offer support, information, safety planning, referrals, assistance with protective orders, trauma informed system navigation and accompaniment, including referrals to legal, medical, and community resources. Community-based advocacy programs generally offer a mix of emergency safe housing and long-term shelter while connecting survivors to additional supports and services. CBA in Oregon who have gone through the on-line training we studied are eligible for confidentiality privileges with survivors assuming they don’t have another credential that makes them a mandatory reporter.

² System-based advocates are employed by a law enforcement agency, office of the prosecuting attorney, the military, or some other entity within the city, county, state, or federal government. Because of their responsibility to the State, system-based advocates primary responsibility is typically to support victim/survivors as witnesses to a crime. (Lonsway et al.,). Consequently, they tend to be prohibited by the constitution to having confidentiality privilege. A victim/survivor never has complete confidentiality when working with system-based advocate because their mission is to serve the State in prosecuting the person who committed the crime.

³ Culturally-specific advocacy rests on a foundation of communities designing programs to serve ethnic- or identity-specific groups taking into account their identity, language, history, and contexts of historical marginalization and oppression; with advocates drawing on their knowledge of, and connection to, their community’s social, political, cultural, and gender issues. (Asian Pacific Institute on Gender Based Violence, 2017).

⁴ Community-based programs define domestic violence as: a pattern of coercive tactics that can include physical, psychological, sexual, economic, and/or emotional abuse, perpetrated by one person against a family member, current or former intimate partner, or person in his or her care, with the goal of establishing and maintaining power and control.

Oregon law defines domestic violence as: abuse between family or household members, including spouses, former spouses, adult persons related by blood or marriage, persons cohabiting with each other, persons who have cohabitated with each other or who have been involved in a sexually intimate relationship, and unmarried parents of a minor child. Abuse is defined as attempting to cause or intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causing physical injury; intentionally, knowingly or recklessly placing another in fear of imminent serious physical injury; or committing sexual abuse in any degree as defined in ORS 163.415, 163.425, and 163.427.