Domestic violence, safe space and vicarious abuse: inside a Pennsylvania Exchange and Visitation Center

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in the ‘safe space’ of an exchange and visitation center, this article examines center staffs’ experiences of vicarious abuse. Vicarious abuse refers to the emotional effects that occur when someone – other than the victim in the relationship – experiences or witnesses the coercively controlling tactics of a domestic violence abuser. This article examines the limitations of safe space that fails to consider the physical and emotional security needs of all who utilize the space. By tracing the fears of staff who interact with abusers, this article also frames domestic violence as a public safety concern with implications beyond the intimate. With recognition that staff experiences of vicarious abuse differ from the embodied experiences of victims in abusive relationships, this article applies a feminist geographic analytic to examine how the ‘safe space’ of an exchange and visitation center enables fear and normalizes vicarious abuse.

Keywords:

• Child custody
• coercive control
• fear domestic violence
• safe space
• vicarious abuse

Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks go to the exchange and visitation center staff who generously gave their time as research participants for this project and who work every day to create an environment that supports survivors of domestic violence and their children. Thank you to Vanessa Massaro for her close read of a draft of this article, and to Janet Bowstead and Pamela Moss for their editorial insights. Lastly, I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and enormously helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Panic buttons are small devices that when activated elicit a silent alarm that summons emergency services, including police.

2 Lykens is a local gas station and convenience store.

3 Sheetz is a regional gas station and convenience store.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dana Cuomo

Dana Cuomo is a feminist geographer with research interests that focus on the intersections between institutional and interpersonal violence and the structural inequalities within experiences of citizenship and security. Her research is informed by her professional experience working as a victim advocate for over 800 survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking. Currently her work investigates the role of technology in facilitating abuse and assesses the needs of survivors whose safety and security are compromised as a result. Dana’s research has been published in Gender, Place & Culture, Progress in Human Geography, Social & Cultural Geography, and Geopolitics.