Forensic Psychology

1
Forensic Psychology

• Battered Woman Syndrome
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

2
Plan for Today

• Battered Women Syndrome
• Learned Helplessness
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Rape Trauma Syndrome

3
Domestic Abuse (Jones, 1994a)

• Leading cause of injury in American women sending
  more than 1 million for medical treatment every
  year
• Spousal violence contributes ot one fourth of all
  suicide attempts by women
• 37 of all obstetric patients are battered during
  pregnancy
• 50 of homeless women and children are fleeing
  from male violence

4
Domestic Abuse

• FBI reports that over 1400 women are killed by
  their partners each year (6 of homicides)
• Lenore Walker (1992) over one third of all
  women will be abused at some point in their lives
• 16 of American families experience violence,
  3-4 experience life threatening violence
• Each year 188,000 women are injured severely
  enough to require serious medical attention
  (Straus Gelles, 1988)

5
Domestic Abusers Typology

• Psychopathic abuser
• Overcontrolled exploder
• Emotionally volatile
• no consistent typology for victims
• Despite myths to the contrary domestic abuse
  victims cover all ethnicities, all levels of
  society, and all personality types

6
Syndrome

• A group of symptoms that occur together and
  characterize a disease
• Battered Woman Syndrome a womans presumed
  reactions to a pattern of continual physical and
  psychological abuse inflicted on her by her mate
• BWS is not a diagnosable Mental Disorder

7
Battered Women Syndrome

• American Psychiatric Association has recognized
  the syndrome in amicus briefs filed as evidence
  in homicide cases with self-defense pleas.
• BWS is a justification to certain crimes like
  homicide that is used to support defenses of
  self-defense or insanity
• Has been used to support children who kill
  abusive parents, same sex partner homicides, rape
  victims who kill attackers, coercion to
  participate as co-defendant in a serious crime

8
Components of Battered Woman Syndrome

• Learned Helplessness
• Lowered self-esteem
• Impaired functioning
• Loss of assumption of safety
• Fear and terror
• Anger/rage
• Diminished alternatives
• Cycle of abuse
• Hypervigilance
• High tolerance for cognitive inconsistency

9
Learned Helplessness

• Seligman Johnston (1973)
• dogs shocked in harness and placed in shuttlebox,
  60 could not avoid shock
• Hiroto Seligman (1975)
• 3 groups exposed to loud noise
• Group 1 could find a button to stop noise
• Group 2 nothing would stop noise
• Gropu 3 asked to please sit and listen

10
Cognitive Qualifiers of Learned Helplessness

• Inescapable aversive events inhibit learning
• Loss of sense of control behavior has no effect
  on environment this generalizes to multiple
  situations
• Global vs. Specific view of negative situations
• External vs. Internal locus of control
• Stable vs. Transitory view of life conditions

11
Learned Helplessness

• Loose motivation to try to control events in
  environment or give up easily
• Cognitively, ability to learn from experience is
  impaired
• Emotional problems
• Rats (ulcers), cats (ate less), dogs,
  (critically impaired task learning), monkeys
  (illness) humans (high blood pressure, depression)

12
Cycle of Abuse

• Tension building phase
• Acute battering incident
• Contrition phase
• - positive and negative reinforcement powerfully
  affect behavior
• - Not all battering relationships follow this
  cycle (60-70)

13
Forensic Assessment of BWS

• Self-reports, medical records, interviews with
  family, friends, co-workers and others
• Abusive Behavior Observation Checklist (Dutton,
  1992)
• Power and Control Wheel (Pence Paymor, 1985)

14
Psychological Abuse

• Coercion and threats
• Intimidation
• Emotional abuse (humiliation)
• Isolation
• Minimization, denial, and blaming
• Use of children to control spouse
• Use of male privilege
• Economic/resource abuse

15
Elements of Self-Defense

• Seriousness of threatened harm
• Imminence
• Overt act
• Rule of retreat
• Responsibility for provoking incident
• Equal force rule
• Excessive force
• Reasonableness (subjective vs. objective belief)

16
Battered Woman Defense

• Most battered women who kill get convicted
• Only 1/3 of homicides by battered women take
  place during a battering incident
• Problem of imminence and reasonableness
• R. v. Lavallee

17
Insanity and BWS

• Insanity pleas do not succeed very often
• Beatings rendered her insane at time of killing
• Demeaning to characterize a women killing to save
  her own life as insane
• Automatism plea (head injury caused a
  dissociative state such that intent could not be
  formed)
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

18
Expert Testimony on BWS

• social framework evidence
• Was perception of danger reasonable
• Psychological damage from abuse
• Why battered women stay in these relationships
  (recant testimony of past violence)
• - personal strategies, formal and informal
  help-seeking efforts

19
Expert Myth Busting

• Battered women are masochistic, crazy, low class,
  uneducated, and deserve abuse as they provoke the
  beatings
• Battered women can always just leave the
  relationship (they dont mind abuse)
• Batterer is not a loving partner or father and
  must be psychopathic

20
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

• Exposed to a traumatic event
• experienced threat and intense fear or horror
• B. The event is persistently re-experienced
• - emotional recollections, nightmares,
  hallucinations, flashbacks, extreme reactivity,
  intense distress to objects that symbolize the
  event

21
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

• C. Avoidance of trauma stimuli and general
  numbing
• flat affect, social isolation, lack of interest
  in activities, feelings of doom, detachment,
  memory blocks for the event
• D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal
• insomnia, irritability, exaggerated startle
  response, difficulty concentrating
• E. Duration of disturbance more than 1 month
• F. The disturbance causes clinically significant
  distress or impairment in social, occupational,
  or other important areas of functioning
• Acute Stress Disorder (less than 1 month)

22
Rape Trauma Syndrome

• Acute Crisis Phase
• Denial, shock, and disbelief
• Disruption
• Guilt, hostility, and blame (victim blaming)
• Regression to state of helplessness or dependency
• Distorted perceptions

23
Rape Trauma Syndrome

• Long Term Reactions
• Phobias
• Disturbances in general functioning
• Sexual problems
• Changes in lifestyle

24
Rape Trauma Syndrome and PTSD

• PTSD is present in many survivors of rape
• Rape survivors may be the largest single group of
  PTSD sufferers
• RTS is not in the DSM-IV, rather it is a concept
  used to describe common behaviors associated with
  rape survivors
• Rape in RTS is prejudicial at trial
• PTSD does not included important aspects of RTS
  such as depression, anger, and sexual disfunction

25
Expert Testimony

• Address rape myths such as women secretly wish to
  be raped, most accusations are fake, and women
  cannot be raped against their will
• On the issue of consent
• On questions about the victims behavior
• Addressing damages in a civil suit
• As a defense for culpable behavior by a rape
  survivor