RESEARCH TO STUDY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AMONG ASIANS
New York, 28 September 2007 (IANS)

New research has been launched in the US to study the degree to which South Asian women in the country seek help to deal with domestic violence and the effectiveness of criminal justice interventions. The Asian Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence (APIIDV), in association with the University of Michigan School of Social Work, has launched the research project, funded by the National Institute of Justice.

"One of the things we know from our direct service work in the South Asian community is that, in many cases, the violence is perpetrated by the in-laws or the extended family," APIIDV director Firoza Chic Dabby told India-West, an ethnic Indian newspaper.

The study will issue a recommendation on how local law enforcement agencies can improve their domestic violence investigations in South Asian households. The recommendation will be based on 220 confidential interviews with battered South Asian women.

"One of the reasons we wanted to interview the group is to make recommendations about how the criminal justice response can take this into consideration," Dabby added.

"Domestic violence is usually defined and understood as intimate partner violence," Dabby explained. "For example, the young sister-in-law answers the door, saying that everything is fine, the investigators may go away, not realising that there still might be something worth checking out."

She added that the way local law enforcement agencies respond has a huge impact on South Asian women's future "help-seeking behaviour".

According to a 2002 study in the Journal of American Medical Women's Association, 41 percent of the Indian American women interviewed had experienced domestic violence, of whom 65 percent had also reported sexual abuse. In the extended family households, women also reported being abused by male and female in-laws and other members of the family.