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INTIMATE VIOLENCE AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM:
THE EXPERIENCE OF VIETNAMESE-AMERICAN WOMEN

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INTIMATE VIOLENCE AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM:
THE EXPERIENCE OF VIETNAMESE-AMERICAN WOMEN

By

Hoan N. Bui

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
School of Criminal Justice

2001

ABSTRACT

INTIMATE VIOLENCE AND TH E CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM:
THE EXPERIENCE OF VIETNAMESE-AMERICAN WOMEN

By.

Hoan N. Bui

The present study examines the contacts of Vietnamese-American women
with the criminal justice system as victims and offenders of intimate violence. Data
obtained from in-depth interviews with 34 abused-women in the core sample, a
survey of 440 Vietnamese Americans, and interviews with 11 Vietnamese
Americans working in various social and legal service agencies and the media
shows that various structural, cultural, and organizational forces have
simultaneously affected the experiences of Vietnamese-American women with the
criminal justice system when they are involved in intimate violence.

Vietnamese-American abused women, like the general Vietnamese-
American population, are supportive of government interventions to stop the
problem of intimate violence. However, socioeconomic conditions, language
barriers, immigration status, fear of reprisal, Vietnamese family traditions, and
insensitive treatments of criminal justice ofﬁcials often prevent women from
reporting abuse incidents to the police and participating in the criminal justice
process as witnesses. On the other hand, financial and emotional support provided
by victim’s advocate, legal service, and welfare service agencies can facilitate

women use of the criminal justice approach to deal with intimate violence.

Organizational structure and culture of the criminal court also affect the
experiences with the criminal justice system of abused women who were charged
with a domestic offense. A lack of public defense services and pressure for plea-
bargaining often leads to inadequate legal counsel for women offenders.
Organizational practices that define the victim and the offender as two separate
entities have important safety implication for women because abused women who

are charged with a domestic offense are excluded from supportive services for
victims of domestic violence. In addition, given women’s subordination to men in

terms of economic and emotional dependency, police investigation practices and
judicial evidentiary rules in intimate violence cases that heavily rely on information
provided by the complainants to establish evidence in domestic violence cases can
cause women to be convicted on the sole basis of their husbands/partners’
complaints and make domestic violence laws become a power tool for men to
control their wives/partners’ behavior.

The study suggests that criminal justice interventions in intimate violence
can reduce intimate violence to some extent, but they are far to be an approach to
improve both women’s safety and family relationship. Women can experience a
reduction of violence and feel satisﬁed because of the protection that they receive
from the criminal justice system. At the same time, many women also experience
strained family relationships, increasing emotional abuse, and sometimes family

break—up after criminal justice interventions.

Copyright by
. HOAN N. BUI
2001

To

My parents who had decided to migrate
to the United State, so that I was able to
pursue my educationand career goal.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The completion of this research project was made possible by the support
of numerous people. My greatest debt is to all Vietnamese-American women
who shared their personal experiences with me. Special thanks to Hai Nguyen,
Ngo Tuy An, Thanh Thuy, Kathy Thuy Pham, Vietnamese Community of Orange
County Inc., Thai Ha, Thanh Thao, Tam Nguyen, Lan Q. Nguyen, Thien Cao,
Quynh Dang, Katherine Nguyen, Tuong Nguyen, Oanh Tran, and Truong Tran for
invaluable information about the legal and social services for Vietnamese
Americans and for helping me recruit participants for the study.

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to my Chair, Dr. Merry
Morash, and the members of my Dissertation Committee, Dr. Christopher Smith,
Dr. Katherine See, and Dr. Steven Gold. Their guidance, enthusiasm, and
unwavering support made the completion of this study possible. I am especially
grateful to Dr. Christopher Smith and Dr. Steven Gold who have generously
worked with mein this research project during their sabbatical leaves.

I also owe my thanks to all members of my family. Their love and
unconditioned support over years have helped me finish the long road of graduate

studies and complete this research project.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ ix

INTRODUCTION ..... . ................................................ 1
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................... 7
Vietnamese in the United States ................................................................................. 7
Migration History ................................................................................................... 7
Cultural Backgrounds .......................................................................................... 11
Family Traditions and Women’s Status ............................................................... l4
Immigrant Family Life: Cultural Continuity and Change .................................... 18
Criminal Justice Responses to Intimate Violence in the US .................................... 22
The Problem of Intimate Violence in the US ....................................................... 22
Traditional Criminal Justice Responses to Intimate Violence ............................. 24
Changes in Criminal Justice Responses to Intimate Violence ............................. 31
Effects of Changes in Criminal Justice Response to Intimate Violence .............. 44
Gaps in the Literature of Domestic Violence ..................................................... ..54
CHAPTER 2: THEORY AND METHOD ...................................................................... 59
Theoretical and Methodological Orientation ............................................................ 59
Feminist Standpoint ............................................................................................. 59
Practice-Based Theoryof Gender Relations ........................................................ 62
Qualitative-Case-Study Method ........................................................................... 69
Method for the Study ................................................................................................ 73
Concept Deﬁnitions ............................................................................................. 74
The Setting ........................................................................................................... 75
Sample and Data .................................................................................................. 83
Analytical Procedure ............................................................................................ 89
Sample Characteristics ......................................................................................... 91
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS .............................................................................................. 101
Perceptions of Vietnamese Americans about the Criminal Justice Approach to
Intimate Violence .................................................................................................... 102
Vietnamese-American Women’s Experience with the Criminal Justice System as
Victims .................................................................................................................... 104
Women Victims’ Experiences of Intimate Violence ......................................... 105
Contacts with Law Enforcement ........................................................................ 108
Contacts with the Judicial System ..................................................................... 132
Women Victims and Restraining Order ............................................................. 149

vii

Vietnamese-American Women’s Experiences with the Criminal Justice System as

Offenders of Inmate Violence ................................................................................. 155
Women Offenders’ Experiences of Intimate Abuse .......................................... 156
Contacts with the Police ..................................................................................... 157
Women Offenders’ Experiences with the Judicial Process ............................... 162

Effects and Consequences of Criminal Justice Interventions ................................. 168
Women’s Satisfaction ........................................................................................ 169
Women’s Safety ................................................................................................. 175
Quality of Family Life ........................................................................................ 181
Other Costs ......................................................................................................... 184

Perceptions of Vietnamese Americans about Solutions to the Problem of Intimate

Violence .................................................................................................................. 186

CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ..................................................... 194
. Summary of Findings from the Study ..................................................................... 194

Discussions of Findings .......................................................................................... 199

Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 213

Policy Implications ................................................................................................. 215

Limitations of the Study ......................................................................................... 218

Contributions of the Study ...................................................................................... 220

APPENDICES ............................................................................................................... 222

Appendix 1: Coding Techniques for Qualitative Analysis ..................................... 223

Appendix 2: In-Depth Interview Questionnaire ..................................................... 230

Appendix 3: Survey Questionnaire ......................................................................... 238

REFERENCES .............................................................. . ................................................ 241

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Core Sample: Ethnicity, Actual Age, and Age at the Time of Resettlement ..... 92
Table 2: Core Sample: Types of Migration, Time in the US, and Legal Status .............. 93

Table 3. Core Sample: Types of Relationship, Length of Relationship, and Children....95

Table 4. Core Sample: Education, English Proﬁciency and Occupation ......................... 96
Table 5. Survey Sample: Place Birth, Sex, and Marital Status ............................... 97
Table 6. Survey Sample: Age and Time in the US ................................................... 97
Table 7. Survey Sample: Education and Language Proﬁciency .............................. 98
Table 8. Survey Sample: Occupation and Income ..................................................... 99
Table 9. Community Sample: Occupation, Sex, and Location ..................................... 100

Table 10. Perceptions of Vietnamese Americans about Solutions to Intimate Violence ........ 190

Table 11. Perceptions of Criminal Justice Interventions .............................................. 192

ix

INTRODUCTION

Criminal justice policies dealing with intimate violence have changed
considerably over the last ten or fifteen years. The change resulted in part from
criticisms that the traditional criminal justice response to family violence was
less substantial than the response to assaultive behavior committed by strangers
(Buzawa & Buzawa, 1990; R. E. Dobash & R. P. Dobash, 1979; Pleck, 1987).
The police were criticized for failing to arrest wife assaulters and for not
initiating the criminal justice process to protect battered wives (Jaffe, Hastings,
Reitzel & Austin, 1993; Schechter, 1982). Similarly, prosecutors were
criticized for their lack of interest in family violence cases and their failure to ﬁle
charges or aggressively pursue a conviction and sanction against domestic
violence offenders (Ford, 1983; Ford & Regoli, 1993; Lerman, 1986). If a
husband was charged, he was likely to be charged with a less serious offense,
such as disturbing the peace, instead. of assault or aggravated assault (R. E.
Dobash & R. P. Dobash, 1979). Some prosecutor ofﬁces were found to set up
obstacles to prosecution by requiring complainants of domestic violence cases
to return after a “cooling-off” period, or by charging victims of domestic
violence a fee for filing criminal complaints (Ford, 1983). Critics also pointed
out that trial courts often failed to convict domestic violence offenders, and that
punishment for convicted wife assaulters was often very light (R. E. Dobash & R.

P. Dobash, 1979; Ford, 1983). Fines, probation, deferred and suspended

sentences, and admonisliment appeared to be principal sanctions for wife
assaulters (R. E. Dobash & R. P. Dobash, 1979).

During the women’s movement in the 19705, feminist leaders and
battered women advocates began to challenge the social indifference toward
domestic violence and call for criminal justice protection of battered women
(Hilton, 1989). As a result, new policies have been implemented to improve the
criminal justice response to wife assaults. Under new arrest policies in some
locations (mandatory arrest and warrantless arrest), police ofﬁcers are required
to arrest, regardless of the victim’s desire for prosecution, when there is a
probable cause of family violence (Ferraro, 1989). Two prosecutorial
innovations, the prosecutor-ﬁling-charge and no-drop-charge, have been created
in an attempt to facilitate the prosecution of domestic violence cases and make
more wife assaulters accountable for their violent. behavior through criminal
proceeding. Under the prosecutor-ﬁling-charge policy, prosecutors, instead of
victims, are required to ﬁle. charges in domestic violence cases in the same
manner as in other criminal cases. The no-drop-charge policy emphasizes
prosecutors’ decisions to charge and pursue cases by ignoring victims’ desire to
drop charges (Cahn, 1992). In addition, most states have established the
protection order and the emergency protection order (or temporary protection
order), designed to protect battered women from future violence by their abusers
(Chadhuri & Daly, 1992; Klein & Orloff, 1999).

Although new policies have been established with intent to protect

women from intimate violence, many victims still hesitate to rely on the

criminal justice system to avoid abuse. For example, victims are often reluctant
to start the process of obtaining a protection order, or they may start but not
complete the process (Kaci, 1992). In addition, the proportion of complainants
who are reluctant to work with the criminal justice system in domestic violence
cases still remains high, and by many accounts, encompasses the majority of
domestic violence misdemeanor arrests (Davis & Smith, 1995). Intimate
victims of assault were less likely than other assault victims to follow through
with prosecution, and many either requested that charges against their assailants
be dropped, or failed to appear as witnesses (Ferraro, 1993; Ford & Regoli,
1993).

Understanding why battered women are reluctant to use criminal justice
services to end intimate violence is of great'importance to inform public
policies and help design effective prevention strategies to combat domestic
violence. A sizable body of literature has been devoted to the discussion of
reasons leading to victims’ lack of reliance on the criminal justice system (See
E. Buzawa & C. Buzawa, 1993; Corsilles, 1994; Davis & Smith, 1995; Ferraro
& Pope, 1993; Hart, 1993; Mills, 1996; Walsh, 1995; Wanless, 1996).
However, only a few empirical studies focused on understanding intimate
violence victims’ desire to drop charges (Ferraro, 1993; Ford & Regoli, 1993;
McLeod, 1983), and victims’ persistence in obtaining personal protection orders
(Fernandez, Iwamoto & Muscat, 1997; Kaci, 1992). In addition, the uses of
protection orders and prosecution have not been comprehensively examined or

received rigorous attention in the research literature (Chalk & King, 1998), and

little is understood about intimate violence victims’ experiences with the police
and the court. Furthermore, since the application of mandatory arrest policies,
scholars have pointed to the problem of dual arrests in which the victim is
arrested along with her abuser (E. Buzawa & C. Bizawa, 1993; Walsh, 1995;
Wanless, 1996). However, no existing study explores the experiences of abused
women who are involved in the criminal justice system as domestic violence
offenders.

Scholarship on gender has suggested that women’s experiences are the
products of social interactions and unequal gender relations (Scott, 1986).
However, women’s experiences also differ depending on their places in the
social hierarchies of race/ethnicity and class because “[t]here is no gender
relations per se, but only gender relations constructed by and between classes,
races, and cultures” (Harding, 1991, p. 171). The interaction of race, class, and
gender creates a matrix of domination that shapes the personal, cultural, and
social contexts of women’s experiences (Baca-Zinn & Dill, 1994). Scholars
have recognized the importance of knowledge about race/ethnicity, culture, and
social contexts for the understanding of women’s experiences of intimate
violence and the design of effective intervention strategies (Crowell & Burgess,
1996; Kanuha, 1996; Rasche, 1988).

The immigration context can also affect women’s experiences because
women possess unique situations resulting from immigration and resettlement
processes (Bui & Morash, 1999, Dasgupta 8:. Warrier, 1996; Kibria, 1993). On

the one hand, immigrant women have brought their traditional cultures and their

experiences with legal norms and social structures in their countries of origin to
the US. On the other hand, they have also adapted to American culture during
the resettlement process; they and their families often experience stress related
to relocation and a change in social status (Bui & Morash, 1999). Research has
recognized the effects of peculiar social contexts, including culture, language
barriers, ethnic community, on family dynamics and women’s experiences of
and responses to abuse (Dasgupta & Warrier, 1996; Huisman, 1996; Morash,
Bui & Santiago, 2000; Pressier, 1999; Rimonte, 1989). Scholars have suggested
that immigrant women are not often familiar'with the criminal justice system
and have less access to legal and social services for victims of domestic
violence (Orloff, Jang & Klein, 1995). Immigration laws can also affect
women’s responses to intimate violence because women whose legal status
depends on their partners are isolated by power dynamics that can prevent them
from seeking assistance from the legal system (Orloff et al., 1995).

Despite the important effects of culture, race/ethnicity, and social
contexts on women’s diverse experiences, studies of the use of criminal justice
services among intimate violence victims have failed to address the issues of
social and cultural differences that may affect. domestic violence victims’
decisions to rely on the formal system to solve the problem. Particularly, the
immigration context, in which language barriers, cultural differences, or ethnic
solidarity may affect women’s use of the criminal justice system to deal with

intimate violence, has been largely neglected in scientiﬁc research.

To fill the gap in the literature, this study examined the experiences of
Vietnamese-American women with the criminal justice system as victims and
offenders of intimate violence. The study focused on understanding the
criminal justice process in intimate violence cases and how the interactions
between class, gender, culture, and ethnicity within the context of immigration
resettlement can facilitate or impede women’s use of the criminal justice
approach to avoid violence. The goal of the study was to improve knowledge of
women’s diverse experiences and provide inputs for policy makers to design
effective interventions. It is also my hope that ﬁndings from the study will
sensitize criminal justice practitioners and social service agencies to the diverse
needs of intimate violence victims who come from different social,
racial/ethnic, and cultural backgrounds and provide them with appropriate

resources to escape intimate violence.

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

Vietnamese in the United States

One of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the US, Vietnamese began
immigrating to the US in large numbers in 1975, after the end of the Vietnam
War (H. Nguyen & Haines, 1996). Most Vietnamese Americans came to the US
during the last 25 years and are foreign-born. As ﬁrst-generation immigrants,
Vietnamese Americans are more likely to be influenced by Vietnamese cultural
values and practices. The legacy of war that caused their journey to the US also
has an impact on their lives in the new land. To understand Vietnamese-
American women’s experiences with the criminal justice system as victims and
offenders of intimate violence, it is important to look at the migration history and
cultural background of the Vietnamese-American group from which they are a

part.
Migration History

The intense involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War has led
to the immigration of more than a million Vietnamese to America in the twenty
five years following the victory of Vietnamese communists. Beginning with the
first major group of 125,000 Vietnamese refugees coming to the US in the early
1975, the Vietnamese American population in the US has increased substantially
over time and has become the fastest growing ethnic group in the US during the
last two decades (H. Nguyen & Haines, 1996). By the time of the 1990 Census,

more than 600,000 Vietnamese had been resettled in the US and become the sixth

largest Asian—American group (US Census Bureau, 1993). Less than ten years
later, by 1998, the number of Vietnamese resettled the US had reached more than
a million, and Vietnamese Americans have become the third largest foreign-born
Asian-American population (US Census Bureau, 1997; US Department of Justice,
1999)

Vietnamese came to the US from a variety of social, religious and ethnic
backgrounds. They also came in different periods, each of which had its unique
features. The first major exodus of Vietnamese to the US occurred in 1975 after
the collapse of South Vietnam (Do, 1999). This group included many South
Vietnamese military ofﬁcers, government ofﬁcials, and professionals who, along
with their families, were evacuated by air or boat from South Vietnam during the
communist take-over. They were generally well educated and had more exposure
to Western culture than those who migrated later (Do, 1999; Gold, 1992). Most
of them left because of their fear of communism and their concerns about their
fates under the new regime: possible imprisonment or even execution as well as
expected loss of social status and political freedom (H. Nguyen & Haines, 1996).

The second major wave of Vietnamese refugees to the US began in 1978
and continued sporadically through the 19803. This group of Vietnamese
refugees consisted of those who escaped Vietnam by boats, hence the name “boat
people.” Many of this group were ethnic Chinese, including business or merchant
class families and working class people who had lived in North Vietnam for
generations (H. Nguyen & Haines, 1996). Most of them left Vietnam through

“unofﬁcial-departure” organized unofﬁcially by the Vietnamese authorities by

paying a certain amount of gold for a place in a often over-crowded boat. For
those who were not ethnic Chinese, clandestine escapes by sea in small, unsafe
boats were often their route out of Vietnam (Gold, 1992; H. Nguyen & Haines,
1996)

Discrimination and its severe economic consequences fueled the second
wave of refugee exodus. Ethnic Chinese left because of racial and economic
discrimination occurring after the Sino-Vietnamese conﬂict and the border war of
1979 (Gold, 1992); some even were forced or “asked” to leave by the communist
government (H. Nguyen & Haines, 1996). Religious leaders and their followers
(Christians and Buddhists) escaped to avoid religious persecutions (H. Nguyen &
Haines, 1996).

Others left because life had become hard and unbearable to them and held
no future for their children (H. Nguyen & Haines, 1996). Those who were
released from re-education camps and those who were associated with the former
government suffered severe discrimination that bad economic consequences.
Many were forced to go to the new economic zones where their lives became so
hard and hopeless that they came back to the cities as illegal residents. They
could not get jobs and sufﬁcient rations for necessities from government stores,
and their children were deprived of the opportunity for college education (H.
Nguyen & Haines). Thus, it became common for Vietnamese parents to sacriﬁce
everything in order to enable their children to escape the country, with a result
that children and young people were a major segment of those escaping by boats

in the late 1970s (H. Nguyen & Haines, 1996).

The second group of Vietnamese refugees spent many years in
overcrowded refugee camps in Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia,
and Singapore while waiting to be sponsored to the US (Do, 1999). The
conditions in most of these camps were very hard: sanitary conditions were poor;
people lived in cramped spaces; malnutrition was the norm rather than the
exception, and there were no schools for children. In addition, there was a high
incidence of sexual violence against women (rape) in the refugee camps as well
as on their route of escape; The “boat rapes” were often committed by Thai
pirates who frequently attacked these refugees’ boats as they tried to escape
Vietnam via the South China Sea (C. Tran, 1997).

In 1979, the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) was created to provide a
safer and legal route of exist for Vietnamese immigrants, and the ODP group of
immigrants represented the third wave of Vietnamese migration. The program
was initially for those with family ties to people already living in the US. It was
later extended to Amerasian children who had been subjectedto both ofﬁcial and
popular abuse, and to former employees of American missions in Vietnam during
the Vietnam War (H. Nguyen & Haines, 1996). The ODP program reduced, but
did not halt, the flow of refugees leaving Vietnam illegally and dangerously on
small boats.

More recently, a fourth wave of migration resulted from a program that
was initiated in 1989 to allow the resettlement in the US of communist labor

.camp survivors (or re-education camp survivors). Many of these South

10

Vietnamese veterans had faced years of debilitating life in the camps and severe
discrimination after their release (H. Nguyen & Haines, 1996).

After 25 years of immigration and resettlement, more than a million
Vietnamese Americans, including American-born and foreign-born, have their
presence in every state in the US. Despite the initial government attempt to
disperse them throughout the country, secondary migration has led to heavy
concentrations of refugees and immigrants in a few states in the West Coast and
the South, including California, Texas, and Louisiana, where the climate is more
moderate and Asian culture is more prevalent (Gold, 1992; H. Nguyen & Haines,

1996).
Cultural Backgrounds

Religious beliefs have exercised the most powerful influence in the
formation of Vietnamese society (T. Tran, 1959). Vietnam’s religious outlook,
called Tam Giao, actually consists of three faiths: Buddhism, Confucianism, and
Taoism. Despite the existence of Christianity that was introduced into Vietnam
in the sixteenth century, these three schools of philOSOphy coalesced to form the
core of the Vietnamese religious-cultural tradition (Gold, 1992; Kibria, 1993; L.
Nguyen, 1987). In contrast to monotheistic Westerners, most Vietnamese ﬁnd no
contradiction in combining multiple belief systems (Gold, 1992). In some
studies, Vietnamese Catholicism was treated as a form of “Confucianized
Christianity” because it has been deeply inﬂuenced by cultural traditions derived
from centuries of Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucianist practices (Nash, cited in

Zhou & Bankston, 1998).

ll

The essence of Buddha’s teaching is contained in the concept of Karma
(the law of causality) according to which the vicious circle of existence is
renewal in the course of endless reincarnations, and the present existence is
conditioned by earlier existence and will condition those that follow (L. Nguyen,
1987). As such, Buddhism emphasizes the principle of “good works” toward all
living things; it argues for detachment from the material world and views wealth,
power, and status as corrupting forces that cause suffering (Gold, 1992).

Taoism, which was founded by Lao Tse in China around 600 BC,
emphasizes humility and renunciation of the material world (Gold, 1992).
Although Taoism is currently regarded as a religion, Lao Tse thought of himself
as a philosopher. His philosophy focused on the idea of a human being’s oneness
with the universe. The fundamental belief in Taoism is that since the law of the
universe and nature cannot be changed, one should not try to change them;
instead, one should be content to live with them and make the best of the
situation (Do, 1999).

Confucianism, a philosophy of life rather than a religion, posits the
patriarchal family as the ideal human institution (Gold, 1992). For hundreds of
years, teachings of Confucius have been practiced in Vietnam and have become a
code of conduct. It requires the sacriﬁce of the individual to the family and the
state as well as each man’s and woman’s obedience to higher authorities: rulers,
parents, husbands, and older siblings (Do, 1999; Gold, 1992; T. Tran, 1959).

The influence of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism is reflected in

many social practices and traditions. In the ancient Vietnamese society, there

12

was a prescribed social hierarchy in the amount of respect given to different
classes. In this hierarchy, the scholar class was at the top, followed by farmers,
manual workers (artisans or laborers), and merchants (Do, 1999). The importance
of the scholar class is reflected in an old saying “A mandarin can help all his
relatives.” The merchant or business class was often looked down on and was
considered undesirable because business transactions were generally seen as
involving dishonesty. Because achieving a high education was the way to
achieve high status (the scholar class) and to be considered successful, education
was revered in Vietnamese society (Do, 1999).

Vietnamese also place a high value on the art of peacefulness and living in
harmony (Do, 1999). In any social interactions, open disagreements disturb the
harmony of the group. As a result, Vietnamese tend to seek out peaceful
resolutions and avoid confrontations. The importance of harmony and
peacefulness is reﬂected in the Five Cardinal Virtues that all people are expected
to practices. These include: 1) benevolence; 2) equity and justice; 3) polite and
civil; 4) wisdom; 5) truthfulness.

One major fundamental difference between Vietnamese and Western
culture is that the Vietnamese lifestyle is more orientated toward the family and
the group. Vietnamese religious faiths, especially Confucianism, which
emphasize collectivism and hierarchy in social interactions, also shape the

Vietnamese family institution.

l3

Family Traditions and Women’s Status

The traditional Vietnamese family has been considered the most basic,
enduring, and self-consciously acknowledged form of national culture among
Vietnamese refugees and immigrants (Gold, 1992). Unlike the typical “nuclear”
family in the US, the traditional Vietnamese family, which was seen as the most
important of all social units in Vietnam, was a large, patriarchal, extended unit
where people from three or four generations lived under the same roof and acted
as a source of mutual support. The family was also an institution where
individual problems and social conﬂicts could be resolved (Do, 1999; Gold,
1992)

The collectivist orientation of the traditional Vietnamese family stemmed
from the inﬂuence of the Confucian philosophy that emphasized close family ties,
' 'erarchy, and order in interpersonal relationships but did not stress independence
and autonomy of the individual (Jamieson, 1993). Within the family, collective
obligations and decision-making were encouraged. Because the individual was
part of the family whose needs took precedent over the individual’s needs, each
member was expected to keep harmony, adhere to speciﬁed hierarchical
positions, and comply with familial and social roles (Gold, 1992; Kibria, 1993).

Even though Confucianism stresses the obedience of females to males
(Three Obediences), traditional Vietnamese women had a relatively favorable
economic position in comparison with their Chinese counterparts, whose culture
also incorporates the norms and values of Confucianism (Gold, 1992).

Vietnamese women commonly handled ﬁnancial affairs of the household, acted

l4

as conservers on the family wealth, and were often jokingly referred to as “Noi
Tuong” or “Chief of Domestic Affairs” (Gold, 1992; Kibria, 1993; Ta, 1981). The
relative independence and autonomy of Vietnamese women resulted from their
right of inheritance granted by Vietnamese ancient laws since the ﬁfteenth
century and their involvement in economic activities when men spent time
studying, so they could move up to the scholar class, or when men fought at the
battle fields in war times (Finnan & Cooperstein, 1983; Keyes, 1977; Ta, 1981).

Despite the fact that women in traditional Vietnamese society could enjoy
some economic and property rights, their subordination to men was embedded
across kinship, political, legal as well as economic institutions and reﬂected in
various traditional ideals and practices. Traditionally, the birth of a boy was
given greater importance than that of a girl; therefore, women who produced sons
were given greater status in society and in their husbands’ families than those
who were unable to have sons. Women who were unable to bear sons were
stigmatized and suffered great shame and maltreatment by their husbands and in-
laws because they were considered “defected” (C. Tran, 1997).

In the society as well as in the family, men’s and women’s behaviors were
bound by different sets of rules and precedents based on Confucian teachings that
basically dictated the subordinate of women to men (T. Tran, 1959). Men were to
work outside the home and serve the community, and women’s lives were
oriented toward the family and motherhood (T. Tran, 1959). A typical woman
was expected to be married and educated in the way that made her a good

housewife, perform her productive duty of carrying on the lineage, and devote her

15

life to her husband and children (T. Tran, 1959). Traditionally, most marriages
were pre-arranged and most women had little to say about the choice of their
mates (Jamieson, 1993). Because marriages usually involved the exchange of
money and gifts from the man’s family to the woman’s family, a wife was often
considered to be a property paid for by the husband and his family.

Various rules and ideologies were used to legitimate the inferior status of
women by glorifying passivity and submission to male authority. For example, a
model woman should possess the Four Virtues, which include good working
habit, attractive appearance, polite speech, and exemplary conduct (L. Nguyen,
1987; Kibria, 1993); she should also follow the principle of Three Obediences,
which says that-a woman should obey and submit to their fathers when young, to
their husbands when married, and to their oldest sons when widowed (Jamieson,
1993).

In addition to the Three Obediences and Four Virtues, suffering and
persevering were also valued virtues for traditional Vietnamese women. The
emphasis on enduring,lsuffering and persevering, which was in accord with the
Buddhist belief in the acceptance of fate, was adaptive in Vietnamese traditional
culture because it served to preserve harmony and order in the family.
Vietnamese folklore often dramatizes and gloriﬁes the ideal wife as someone who
is completely devoted to her husband, her children, and her two sets of parents.
Her primary mission in life was to be completely selﬂess and to care for everyone

but herself. Her complete devotion was measured by her numerous self-

16

sacrifices, and her ability to endure and persevere under the worst mistreatments
and circumstances (C. Tran, 1997).

The idealized image of a “good woman,” which was used to create a
double standard held for judging the sexual conduct of men and women,
conveyed to women a message that their submission to men would have positive
results and was a good thing they should strive to attain. Embedded in the Four
Virtues was the unwritten rule that women must “retain their purity” before
marriage (C. Tran, 1997). At the same time, such standards were not expected of
men. Traditionally, Vietnamese men were allowed to be sexually promiscuous
before and after marriage. It was not uncommon for Vietnamese men to have
open and/or frequent affairs with more than one woman. In fact, traditional legal
codes sanctioned polygamy, which was held as a mark of afﬂuence and prestige
and was usually practiced by wealthy men (Kibria, 1993). However, unwealthy
men also had affairs that were used to demonstrate their manly prowess and
superior male status in society. Such a double standard for judging the sexual
conduct of men and women is reﬂected in the popular old saying, “A man could
have five wives and seven concubines, but a woman could have only one
husband.”

Women were also completely absent from all political and leadership
positions; only men were heads of towns and family groups (Kibria, 1993).
While Vietnamese women could participate in ancestral rituals, they were not
given the authority to be ritual heads who were responsible for maintaining the

lineage assets, making entries in the family genealogies, approving major

17

decisions such as marriages or divorce, and arbitrating various disputes which
might occur among members within the lineage (Kibria, 1993).

The subordination of women to men is also reﬂected in Vietnamese
ancient laws that treated women more harshly than men. The laws punished
offenses committed by the wife against the husband with the same severity as
crime committed by children or grandchildren against parents or grandparents, or
as offenses committed by slaves or serfs against masters (Ta, 1981; Vu, 1971).
When men and women committed the same crime, women were punished more
severely than men were. Particularly, wife beating was legally sanctioned as long
as no injuries resulted, but husband beating was severely punished. Exile was
often the penalty for women who struck their husbands. The dominant position
of the husband was also evident in the stipulation in ancient laws that the
husband could repudiate his wife on several» grounds, such as childlessness,
lasciviousness, refusal to serve and obey parents-in-law, jealousy, or incurable

diseases (Ta, 1981; Vu, 1971).
Immigrant Family Life: Cultural Continuity and Change

Growing up in a country with a culture different from that in the United
States, Vietnamese immigrants have brought their traditional cultural norms and
practices to the new land. Not surprisingly, many Vietnamese continue to uphold
the traditional Vietnamese family as the preferable basis of social organization in
the US (Gold, 1992).

However, Vietnamese culture and the traditional Vietnamese family have

undergone tremendous changes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For one

18

thing, the long history of multiple wars has altered the basic structure of the
Vietnamese traditional family. Because many male members were absent from
home or killed in war times, it was difficult to maintain the expected ancient
traditions and practices (Do, 1999). In addition, urbanization and contacts with
western culture during French colonization and the Vietnam War also undermined
some old manners and customs in the traditional family (Gold, 1992). The
experience of refugee migration and cultural transitions further challenges the
homeostasis of the traditional Vietnamese family. The migration process not only
requires that new arrivals learn a different language and customs, it also disrupts
the continuity of family life and norms because new values ultimately affect how
family members relate to each other (C. Tran, 1997).

For many Vietnamese immigrants, a challenge to the integrity of
Vietnamese culture and identity in the US, and changes in the relations of men
and women are central to the experience of disorder that accompanies settlement
in the US (Kibria, 1993). Vietnamese Americans view American culture as
extremely corrosive to traditional Vietnamese patterns of gender relations. It is
apparent that the traditional role of the Vietnamese woman and her relationship
with her husband according to Confucian norms and values clash with American
culture that support the equality of men and women.

Settlement in the United States has altered the power dynamics between
husbands and wives due to a profound loss of economic and social status among
men and increased opportunities for the growth of women’s power (Gold, 1992;

Kibria, 1993; L. Nguyen, 1987). Because of limited language and occupational

19

skills, discriminatory requirements of experience and certifications in the US, or
an ethnic minority status, many Vietnamese immigrants cannot obtain
employment that is commensurable with their education and training in Vietnam
(Gold, 1992). This is particular true for a large number of former military
officers who have skills that are not marketable in the US.

Men’s downward mobility is accompanied by a role reversal and a shift of
power in the family. In most cases, the husbands’ salaries alone are not sufﬁcient
to meet the high cost of living, and the wives have to work to contribute to the
family economy. As in Vietnam, women often engage in a variety of income
generating activities, but different from traditional Vietnam, the economic
contributions of women to the family budget rise relative to men’s contributions.
Women even can contribute more partly because women’s jobs, such as house
cleaner, hotel maid, and food service worker, are more readily available than
male oriented, unskilled occupation, and partly because women are willing to
work in menial jobs to support the family while men may attempt to ﬁnd
professional employment which is less available for new immigrants (Gold,
1992).

Although the process of migration has shifted the gender balance between
Vietnamese men and women, this shift in power still remains conservative, as
male authority is rarely openly challenged. Vietnamese immigrant women can
participate in informal networks that counteract male abuses while
simultaneously espousing and supporting the traditional ideology of gender

relations as well as the fundamental structure and coherence of the traditional

20

Vietnamese family (Kibria, 1993). They may be less enthusiastic about the
patriarchal Vietnamese family traditions than are their male counterparts, but they
also view economic protection from men and officially sanctioned authority of
parents over children as attractive and beneﬁcial for themselves (Gold, 1992;
Kibria, 1993).

Because the allegiance and deference to the patrilineal family system can
give women significant important advantages and reward in their old age,
Vietnamese immigrant women often try to maintain the patriarchal family
structure (Kibria, 1993). They also fear the disruptive effects of assimilation to
American culture on men’s and children’s obligations to the family (Kibria,
1993). For one thing, the survival of most Vietnamese immigrants depends
heavily on the cooperative household economy. For example, the practice
referred to as patchworking is the bringing together and sharing disparate
resources commonly found in Vietnamese American households and requires
close ties of men, women, and children in the family and their activities toward
the kin group (Kibria, 1993). In addition, Vietnamese traditional family
ideologies uphold not only the economic obligations of men to the family but also
those of children. As part of their ﬁlial obligations, children are expected to
provide economic resources to parents and other family elders (Kibria, 1993).

In summary, Vietnamese have come to the US under different situations
and from a variety of social, religious and ethnic backgrounds. Resettlement and
adaptation have created changes in gender practices and altered the power

dynamics in many Vietnamese-American families. However, Vietnamese-

21

American women still support and rely on some Vietnamese traditional values to
bargain for their power in the family. As it will be showed in later sections, a
woman’s migration history, her socioeconomic background, and the inﬂuence of
both Vietnamese and American cultures on her present life have had an important
impact on her experience with the criminal justice system as victims and
offenders of intimate violence.

For many Vietnamese Americans, one of the special features of American
life is the prohibition of domestic violence and criminal justice policies dealing
with domestic violence. The next section will examine the traditional criminal
justice response to domestic violence in the US, changes in American criminal
justice policies dealing with domestic violence during the last two decades, and

the effects of these changes on women’s experiences of and responses to abuse.

Criminal Justice Responses to Intimate Violence in the US

The Problem of Intimate Violence in the US

During the last few decades, studies have provided evidence of a dark side
of family life that contradicts the view of the family as a safe haven (R. P.
Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979; Heise, Pitanguy & German, 1994; Straus &
Gelles, 1986; Walker, 1979). In the US, intimate violence is a widespread
phenomenon. The first national survey of family violence conducted in 1975
reported that 28 percent of interviewed women experienced at least one instance
of physical assault during their current marriage (Straus & Gelles, 1986). By the

most conservative estimate, one million women suffer non-fatal violence by an

22

intimate partner each year (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995). Another estimate
is that 4 million women experience a serious assault by an intimate partner within
a 12-month period, and that nearly one third of adult women experience at least
one physical assault by an intimate partner during adulthood (American
Psychological Association, 1996).

Violence against female intimate partners has been considered the leading
cause of serious physical and emotional injuries and a major risk factor for
murder of women (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995; Stark & F litcraft, 1992). A
recent report indicated that nearly 30 percent of murdered women whose
relationships with the perpetrators were known were killed by an intimate
partner, such as spouse, ex-spouse, boyfriend, and ex-boyfriend (Bureau of
Justice Statistics, 1995). For many women, however, the psychological effects of
abuse are even more devastating than physical assaults. Fear, anxiety, fatigue,
post-traumatic stress disorder as well as sleeping and eating disturbance are
common long-term reactions to violence (Heise et al., 1994). In addition,
battered women are much more likely than non-battered women to attempt
suicide and go on to abuse alcohol or drugs (Heise et al., 1994).

Despite its serious consequences, violence against wives and intimate
partners did not receive attention from the criminal justice and legal systems or
the public until the 19705. The following section will describe traditional
criminal justice responses to domestic violence and changes during the last three
decades as well as the effects of these changes on efforts to combat domestic

violence.

23

Traditional Criminal Justice Responses to Intimate Violence

Until the late 19605 and early 19705, the criminal justice response to
domestic violence reﬂected a pattern of indifference. Although by the end of the
nineteenth century, wife beating had become illegal in most states, law
enforcement agencies did not respond to domestic violence in the same way they
responded to assaultive behavior committed by strangers (R. P. Dobash & R. E.
Dobash, 1979). The most noticeable aspect of police practices was a lack of
arrest in domestic violence cases (Sherman & Berk, 1984). The notion of the
preciousness of the family, the sanctity of the home, and the inferior status of
women, especially married women have contributed to this lack of concern
(Binder & Meeker, 1992).

In the late 19605, amidst the civil rights movement for social change, the
issue of domestic violence began to get attention from women’s advocates who
asked for government interventions to eliminate domestic violence (Binder &
Meeker, 1992). The demand for intervention in domestic violence coincided with
the period when the psychoanalytic and family system theories, which tended to
favor a non-adversarial approach, such as mediation, to family problems became
popular (Ellis, 1993). In accordance with the high expectation in the 19605 and
early 19705 that the social sciences would contribute to the solution for ongoing
problems in society, clinical psychologists and family-system theorists, who
endorsed mediation and joint counseling as the most effective and appropriate
responses to domestic violence, suggested that police should rarely make arrests

and should mediate the disputes to reduce the risk of escalation of violence and

24

separation (Sherman & Berk, 1984). Thus, the early efforts to enhance the police
response to domestic violence took the form of family crisis intervention through
mediation and counseling (Sherman & Berk, 1984). The approach of mediation
and counseling received approval from the Department of Justice, which provided
funds to police departments nationwide to train law enforcement ofﬁcers in
counseling and mediation techniques when handling domestic calls (Sherman,
1988). By 1977, a national survey of police agencies with 100 or more ofﬁcers
found that over 70 percent of agencies reported having a family crisis
intervention training program in operation (Wylie et al., cited in Sherman &
Berk, 1984).

However; the mediation approach was criticized by those who argued that
mediation not only failed to protect women from subsequent violence, but also
perpetuated their continued victimization (Ellis, 1993). The ﬂaw of the
mediation approach was that it ignored the unequal relationship between men and
women, assumed that the responsibility for wife assault was shared by the
husband and the wife, and facilitated the signing of agreements that legitimate
wife abuse (Ellis, 1993). The mediation and joint counseling approach was also
criticized for allowing batterers to deny their criminal behavior and justify their
actions by claiming that they were provoked by their victims (Wanless, 1996).

By the 19705, the mediation and counseling approach fell into disfavor
(Feder, 1999). Many criticized the approach as being too soft on domestic
violence offenders (Sherman, 1988; Friedman & Shulman, 1990). At the same

time, advocates for battered women were asserting that women victims of

25

domestic violence received less protection from the police' than their non-
domestic-assault counterparts because of a lack of arrest for domestic assaulters
(Feder, 1999). Parnas’s (1967) study of Chicago police’s response to domestic
calls found that police officers often talked out the disputes, threatened the
disputants and then left; they might have asked one of the parties to leave the
premises, but making an arrest rarely occurred. Surveys of battered women who
tried to have their domestic assailants arrested showed that arrest occurred in
only 3 to 10 percent of the cases (Roy, 1977; Langley & Levy, 1977). Surveys of
police agencies also found explicit policies against arrest in the majority of the
agencies surveyed (Hart, cited in Sherman & Berk, 1984; Emerson, cited in
Sherman & Berk, 1984; Patrick et a1, cited in Sherman & Berk, 1984).

There have been many different explanations for the apparent reluctance to
intervene in domestic disputes and violence on the part of law enforcement
agencies. First, police perception of the nature of domestic violence and the
status of women inﬂuenced police training and policies dealing with violence
against wives or female intimate partners (R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979;
Jaffe et al., 1993). Although a considerable proportion of all calls for assistance
received by the police concerned problems occurring in the family, very little
time and attention was devoted to domestic disputes in police training programs
(R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979). Because police policies did not view
domestic violence as a real crime unless it involved weapons and severe injuries,
the training tended to discourage arrests (R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979).

For example, the training manual issued in 1967 by the International Association

26

of Police Chiefs proposed various types of responses to domestic disputes, all of
them oriented toward avoiding arrests.
For the most part these disputes are personal matters requiring no direct
police action. Once inside the home, the officer’s sole role is to preserve
the peace. . . . In dealing with family disputes, the power of arrest should
be exercised as a last resort. The officer should never create a police

problem when there is only a family problem existing (cited in R. P.
Dobash & R. E Dobash, 1979, p. 210).

Besides the police, other entities also endorsed this view. For example,
the American Bar Association stated in 1973 that police “should engage in the
resolution of conﬂict such as that which occurs between husband and wife . . .
without reliance upon criminal assault or disorderly conduct statutes” (cited in
Walsh, 1995, p. 98). Accordingly, law enforcement agencies which viewed
domestic violence as a private matter rather than real crime assumed that
domestic problems should and would be dealt with by other social agencies or
civil remedies (R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979). Police ofﬁcers were also
encouraged by the American Bar AsSociation to divert wife assault cases, which
were considered appropriate for diversion, along with neighbors’ squabbling over
loud stereos and indiscreet dogs, away from the criminal justice system in order
to relieve court overloads (Fleming, cited in Jaffe, 1993).

Second, police ofﬁcers’ perceptions of women and the nature of domestic
violence, which were claimed to be shared by the society, also affected by police
responses to domestic violence (Hilton, 1993; Websdale, 1995). Police decisions
to arrest and press charges were often based on police ofﬁcers’ assessment of the

circumstances relating to the incidents. Police ofﬁcers’ assessments were

27

affected not only by their training, but also by their individual beliefs (R. P.
Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979; Websdale, 1995). Male police officers’ attitudes
toward arrests may be affected by their identiﬁcation with the husband and by the
notion of the sanctity of the home (Jaffe et al., 1993; Websdale, 1995). Police
officers who believed that “a man’s home is his castle” may be less inclined to
arrest and press charges against wife assaulters (Jaffe et al., 1993). Research
found that police treatment of victims was related to their own approval or use of
marital violence; ofﬁcers who approved domestic violence or who used violence
at home against their wives or intimate partners tended to avoid intervening in
domestic violence cases (Stith, 1991; Websdale, 1995). Other scholars also
believed that responding ofﬁcers, who were usually male, typically sided with the
male offenders, and this taking of sides reinforced a cultural norm stressing male
superiority (Martin, 1978, R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979). In addition, most
police ofﬁcers also believed that women could easily leave the abusive
relationship if they wanted to, and they felt that battered women voluntarily
selected violent partners and chose to remain in an abusive relationship (Ferraro,
1989; Websdale, 1995).

Furthermore, police response to domestic violence was also inﬂuenced by
police perception of the risk of injury to police ofﬁcers. This perception was
reinforced by ﬁndings from studies showing that intervention into family disputes
was particularly dangerous and was the single most frequent cause of police death
(A. R. Robert, cited in Jaffe et al., 1993). Although the National Institute of

Justice tried to refute this view by releasing a 1986 Research Brief showing that

28

injury to officers dealing with wife assault cases was much lower than earlier
studies would lead one to believe, police officers still tended to avoid intervening
in domestic violence incidents (Jaffe et al., 1993).

The traditional judicial response to domestic violence reﬂected the same
pattern of indifference evidenced in the practices of law enforcement. In
principle, the prosecution of wife or intimate-partner assaulters would reﬂect the
state’s intolerance of domestic violence. However, prosecutors have been
criticized for their disinterest in domestic violence cases (R. P. Dobash & R. E.
Dobash, 1979; Fagan, 1988; Ford, 1983). Prosecutors often viewed the problem
of domestic violence primarily as a civil and personal matter requiring neither
arrest nor judicial response (R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979). In some
jurisdictions, court officials may not have ﬁled an ofﬁcial charge, but instead
pursued quasi—judicial remedies to demonstrate to the husband who had assaulted
his wife that his behavior was unacceptable. For example, it was found during
the 19605 that prosecutors in Washington, D. C. often conducted informal
hearings, wrote out mock divorce papers, and produced ofﬁcial-looking
complaints for “failure to do rights,” all in an attempt to deter the offenders while
avoiding arrests (R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979, p. 219).

Critics also indicated that prosecutors often discriminated against married
women who pursued charges against their own husbands for assault. When
husbands were charged, they were likely to be charged with a less serious
offense, such as disturbing the peace or common assault rather than assault or

aggravated assault (R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979). Research also found

29

that some prosecutors set up obstacles to prosecution by insisting that the
complainants return after “cooling off,” or by charging fees for ﬁling criminal
complaints (Ford, 1983; Dunford, Huizinga, & Elliott, 1990). Others required
victims of domestic violence to sign charges to show their willingness to
cooperate with the prosecution (Cahn, 1992). However, Ford and Regoli, (1993)
argued that victims’ non-participation might be a self-fulﬁlling prophecy
attributable to the practices of criminal justice professionals. According to For
and Regoli (1993), when prosecutors tested the victims’ commitment to following
through the process, they might give the victims reasons for not pursuing charges;
if the victims still selected to proceed, they might feel that the prosecutors would
not support them.

Studies also showed that prosecutors were often unresponsive to
complaints of wife assault, even to the point of further victimizing battered
women when they made these women feel responsible for their own victimization
(Ford, 1983; Lerman, 1986). In addition, charging decisions in domestic violence
cases were found more likely to be associated with the evaluation of the victims’
and defendants’ personal attributes than with legal criteria (Schmidt & Steury,
1989). Prosecutors were more likely to charge in cases when victims suffered
serious injuries and when defendants had negative characteristics, such as alcohol
and drug use habits. Conversely, negative victim attributes that called into
question a woman’s status as a victim could reduce the chance of filing charges

(Rauma, 1984). Consequently, many women victims felt little support in seeking

30

prosecution of their partners because of the unwillingness of prosecutors to treat
their cases seriously (Ford, 1983; Walker, 1979).

Similar to the police and prosecutors, most trial judges did not view wife
beating as a criminal behavior; instead, they viewed attacks by a husband as
being justified by the wife’s provocation (R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979).
Therefore, the most common sanction disposed for wife assault was issuing a
peace bond which was primarily a civil action instituted in the fourteenth century
(R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979). When a criminal sanction was applied, it
was likely to be very light. Fines, probation, deferred and suspended sentences,
and admonishment were principal sanctions for wife assaulters (R. P. Dobash &
R. E. Dobash, 1979).

In summary, although criminal justice responses to domestic violence
varied among state law enforcement agencies and judicial systems because of an
absence of a national policy, literature indicates that the general patterns of
police and judicial practices reﬂected a lack of criminal approach to domestic
violence. The result was a dearth of arrests, prosecutions, and criminal sanctions.
However, major changes in criminal justice response began to emerge in the early

19705.

Changes in Criminal Justice Responses to Intimate Violence

Pro-arrest policies.

Since the 19705, changes have occurred in the police response to domestic
violence. For example, the Training Manual issued by the International

Association of Chiefs of Police in 1976, which reﬂected a response to the

31

demand for change, recommended that police deal with domestic violence in the
same manner that all assaults were dealt with (IACP, cited in Zalman, 1992').
The new policy was justified as follows:
A policy of arrest, when the elements of the offense are present, promotes
the well being of the victim. Many battered wives who tolerate the
situation undoubtedly do so because they feel they are alone in coping with
the problem. The officer who starts legal action may give the wife the

courage she needs to realistically face and correct her situation (IACP,
cited in Zalman, 1992, p. 81).

Changes in the criminal justice response to domestic violence have been
attributed to a number of factors, including the women’s movement, law suits
against criminal justice agencies, research, and legislation. During the 19705, the
women’s movement challenged social indifference toward domestic violence and
brought the issue to the forefront of public attention (Hilton, 1989). Advocates
of battered women gathered and exposed the public to information about wife
abuse from various types of court records and agencies’ statistics to gain
recognition of wife assaults as a major social problem (Binder & Meeker, 1992).
Feminist groups and other advocates for battered women criticized the police
approach of mediation and counseling to domestic violence because the police
“put too much emphasis on the social work aspect and not enough on the
criminal” (Langley & Levy, 1977, p. 218).

Both the women’s and the victims’ rights movements were asserting that
women victims of domestic assault received less protection from the police than
their non-domestic assault counterparts. This assertion was supported by

research showing that the victim-offender relationship was more important than

32

the severity of crime in accounting for the likelihood of arrest (Black, 1978). The
feminist critiques were bolstered by a study showing that for 85 percent of
spousal homicides, police had intervened at least once in the preceding two years;
for 54 percent of the homicides, police had intervened ﬁve or more times but
made no arrests (Police Foundation, 1976, cited in Sherman & Berk, 1984).
Consequently, feminist advocates of battered women and victims’ right groups
were vocal in their support of a more punitive approach by the system.

The emergence of the domestic violence issue coincided with a period of
judicial activism and the expansion of rights, including victim’s rights, during the
19705 (Zalman, 1992). Amidst this atmosphere, women’s groups and victims of
domestic violence began to bring individual lawsuits and class action lawsuits
against police departments. The lawsuits alleged denial of equal protection under
the law when the police failed to respond vigorously to assaults perpetrated upon
women by husbands or intimate partners (e.g., Bruno v. Codd, 1976; Scott v.
Hurt, 1976; Thomas v. Los Angeles, 1979). Although two class action lawsuits,
Bruno v. Codd, 1976 and Scott v. Hurt, 1976, were settled out of the court, they
established the responsibility of police to provide protection to battered women
(cited in Ferraro, 1993).

Scholars also considered the 1984 Final Reports of the US Attorney
General ’5 Task Force on Family Violence as a major catalyst for more vigorous
actions dealing with domestic violence (Hirschel, Hutchinson, & Dean, 1992;
Jaffe et al., 1993; Zalman, 1992). The Report (US Department of Justice, 1984)

identiﬁed a potential ﬂaw in the mediation approach to domestic violence and

33

recommended a control and criminal approach to domestic violence. According
to the Report, mediation assumed some equal culpability between the parties to-a
dispute, and the assumption of equal culpability and the failure to hold the
offender accountable for his action gave him no incentive to reform. Thus, rather
than stopping the violence and providing protection for the victim, mediation may
inadvertently contribute to a dangerous escalation of violence (US Department of
Justice, 1984, p. 23). Concerned with the inability of the mediation approach to
end violence and with the arguments that the rights of victims were violated, the
Report advocated arrest as the appropriate police response to wife assault. As the
Report stated, “The legal response to family violence must be guided primarily by
the nature of the abusive act, not the relationship between the victim and the
abuser” (US Department of Justice, 1984, p. 4).

Successful public protest and lobbying also led to government funding for
research and the development of professional interests in studying the problem of
domestic violence (Hilton, 1993). The movement toward arrest as the preferred
policy for domestic violence cases, particularly cases of wife assault and violence
against intimate partners, was fueled by results of the Minneapolis Experiment
(Sherman & Berk, 1984). The study found that among men who had assaulted
their wives, those who had been arrested were less likely to assault their wives
again than those who had been separated from their wives for a brief period of
time or those who had received counseling, (Sherman & Berk, 1984). Although
the researchers themselves and others pointed out some problems with the study,

including inadequate sample size, inadequate controls over the treatments,

34

interview effects, and lack of generalizability (Binder & Meeker, 1988; Lempert,
1989; Sherman & Berk, 1984), the experiment signiﬁcantly changed the policies
of police departments nationwide (Sherman & Cohn, 1989). An investigation of
police policies in cities with populations of more than 100,000 found a fourfold
increase from 1984 to 1986 in theinumber of departments that had begun
adopting pro-arrest policies in response to misdemeanor domestic assaults. Many
of the surveyed departments indicated that their policies had been inﬂuenced by
the Minneapolis Study (Sherman & Cohn, 1989).

Warrantless-arrest policies.

Although many police departments had changed their responses to
domestic violence toward the pro-arrest policy, a pattern of under-enforcement
continued, and domestic violence was rarely treated as a crime except in the most
brutal cases (Feder, 1999). Besides individual police officers’ beliefs about
domestic violence and the status of women, two organizational factors were
found to be a major impediment to the enforcement of the pro-arrest policy. First,
police officers trying to climb the career ladder were more likely to get
recognition for arrests in high-proﬁle criminal cases, such as armed robbery or
homicides, but not for their efforts to eradicate wife assault (Langley & Levy,
1977). Therefore, a lack of priority given to domestic violence cases and the
system of rewards were seen as contributing to police ofﬁcers’ reluctance to
intervene in domestic violence cases (E. Buzawa & C. Buzawa, 1985; Langley &

Levy, 1977).

35

The second impediment to an arrest response was legal constraints on the
police. Unlike the law of felony arrest, the law of misdemeanor arrest allowed
the police to take a defendant into custody only when the officer had witnessed
the incident (Sherman, 1988). Lacking his or her actual observation, the ofﬁcer
needed to obtain an arrest warrant. Because most domestic violence incidents
were treated as misdemeanors, this necessarily meant that for most domestic
violence calls, the police did not have legal authority to make an immediate arrest
(Sherman, 1988). If the police relied solely on a victim’s report, they also had to
worry about civil liability if the victim later recanted her testimony (E. Buzawa &
C. Buzawa, 1985). To overcome this impediment to pro-arrest policies, new laws
were passed to allow the police to make warrantless-probable-cause arrests for
misdemeanor domestic assaults and to protect the police from civil liability when
handling domestic calls (E. Buzawa & C. Buzawa, 1985).

Mama-arrest policie .

Despite changes in state laws making it easier for police to arrest in
misdemeanor cases, there remained a widely held belief that the police were still
under-enforcing the law (Feder, 1999; Wanless, 1996). New mandatory-arrest
laws and policies were enacted to address the problem.

A number of factors have been viewed as contributing to the mandatory-
arrest policies. Advocates for battered women continued campaigning for the
enforcement of arrest policies in domestic violence cases through lawsuits and
pressures exerted on legislators (Wanless, 1996). Women’s groups were seen as

a driving force behind the enactment of mandatory arrest laws in many states,

36'

including Oregon, Iowa, Missouri, and New Jersey (Wanless, 1996). Litigation
against police departments throughout the country and the desire of states to
shield themselves from potential liability for not providing adequate police
protection to battered women also significantly changed laws and police practices
toward mandatory arrest policies in dealing with domestic violence cases (Jaffe
et al., 1993; Ferraro, 1993; Walsh, 1995; Wanless, 1996). In the mid-19805, the
court ruling in a highly publicized domestic violence case, Thurman v. the City of
T orrington, 1984, got attention from police departments nationwide. The court
ruled that police ofﬁcers “are under an affirmative duty to preserve law and
order, and to protect the personal safety of persons in the community.” This
afﬁrmative duty required a police ofﬁcer to protect the personal safety of all
persons in the community, and failure to do so was a denial of the victim’s
constitutional right to equal protection of the law (Thurman v. City of T orrington,
1984, p. 1526-1527). In this case, the Torrington Police Department was held
liable for injuries caused to a battered wife and was ordered to pay $2.3 million
to the victim for its failure to respond effectively to her requests for help.
Political and ﬁnancial pressures led to changes in training, policies, and
legislation throughout the country (Ferraro, 1993). As of 1987, 6 states had
mandatory arrest for domestic assaults, and 7 states had mandatory arrest for
violation of restraining orders (Ferraro & Pope, 1993). By 1990, about 110 cities
had domestic violence intervention programs that mandated arrest (Koss et al.,
1994); by 1995, 15 states and the District of Columbia had enacted mandatory

arrest laws for domestic violence cases (Wanless, 1996). Some states even

37

imposed additional responsibility on police officers, requiring them to ensure the
victim’s safety if an arrest was not made (Jaffe et al., 1993). In addition, in
response to the perception that there was an unabated epidemic of domestic
violence and other forms of violence against women, Congress also passed the
Violence Against Women Act that was part of the 1994 Federal Crime Bill signed
into law in September 1994. The Act contains a provision authorizing the
Attorney General to make grants available to state and local government to
implement mandatory or pro-arrest programs (Wanless, 1996).

Prosecutorial innovations.

The same vigor has been used in changing state laws to facilitate
prosecution and punishment. For example, the California legislature created a
separate section of the state’s Penal Code in 1977 devoted to abuse of a
cohabiting partner (Binder & Meeker, 1992). Following the recommendations of
the Attorney General’s Task Force on Domestic Violence in 1984, many states
began to change their laws to facilitate prosecution of wife assaulters and
increase punishment for repeat spouse assaulters.

Prosecutors’ disinterest in domestic violence has been well documented
(see Ford, 1983; R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979; Ford & Regoli, 1993).
Prosecutors often cited high rates of attrition caused by the victims as a principal
reason for their unwillingness to prosecute wife assaulters (Ford & Regoli, 1993).
Estimates were that the majority of battered women (50 percent to 80 percent)
would drop charges either by requesting dismissals or by failing to appear in

courts as witnesses (Ford, 1983). Literature on domestic violence has identified a

38

number of factors that accounted for the high attrition rates of such cases. First,
some critics contended that criminal justice personnel, including prosecutors,
lacked commitment to enforce domestic violence laws (E. Buzawa & C. Buzawa,
1990; Schmidt & Steury, 1989; Hart, 1993; McLeod, 1983). Because many
prosecutors questioned the wisdom of state intervention in familial relationships,
prosecutors’ attitudes and behavior tacitly and overtly discouraged victims from
pursuing criminal justice interventions in domestic violence (R. P. Dobash & R.
E. Dobash, 1979). Secondly, prosecutors often failed to understand the harm and
dynamics of women battering, thus lacking awareness of the intimidation by
batterers to deter their victims from pursuing charges and why battered women
wish to drOp charges (Eaton & Hyman, cited in Corsilles, 1994).

Organizational goals and incentives also inﬂuence decisions to forgo or
terminate prosecutions. Prosecutors often feared that scarce prosecutorial
resources would be stretched beyond limits and wasted in pursuit of unwinnable
cases due to victims’ non-cooperation and an unreceptive judicial audience for
wife assault cases, especially in sentencing deliberations (Fagan, Friedman,
Wexler & Lewis, 1984). While domestic abuse cases were not treated with the
same level of seriousness as other crimes, trying domestic cases without
favorable victims’ testimony hardly coincided with the bureaucratic goals of
achieving higher conviction rates (Corsilles, 1994). Critics believed that by not
rigorously pursuing domestic violence cases, prosecutors contributed to victims’
ambivalence about the criminal justice process (Cahn, 1992; Ford, 1983). On the

other hand, it was also found that victims often forgave or acceded to batterers’

39

demands, thereby failing to cooperate with the system (Goolkasian, 1986). The
interplay of these two factors was viewed as serving to perpetuate the problem of
aborted prosecutions (Corsilles, 1994).

In 1984, the US Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence
outlined several recommendations for prosecutors in response to problems
involved in the prosecution of domestic violence. These included organizing
prosecutorial activities to ensure an effective response to the complainants and
relieving victims of appearance in courts (Ford & Regoli, 1993). The
recommendation afﬁrmed the state interest in controlling domestic violence.
Underlying these recommendations were the assumption that prosecutions could
protect victims from repeated violence (Corsslles, 1994).

Following these recommendations, two prosecutorial innovations, the
prosecutor-filing-charge and the no-drop-charge policies, were created in an
attempt to provide more effective services for victims of domestic violence
(Cahn, 1992; Corsilles, 1994; Ford & Regoli, 1993). Under the prosecutor-ﬁling-
charge policy, prosecutors were required to ﬁle charges in place of the victim in
domestic violence cases in the same manner as in other criminal cases. It was
assumed that when prosecutors were responsible for signing charges, a strong
message would go to the abuser, making it clear that his action was a crime
against both society and the victim (Cahn, 1992). In contrast, the victim’s
decision to file charges would create an opportunity for the abuser to intimidate

her and keep her from pursuing the case (Cahn, 1992).

40

In response to high rates of attrition in domestic violence cases, the no-
drop-charge policy was established. The new policy aimed at regulating the use
of prosecutorial discretion in instances where the victim declined to participate
and emphasized the prosecutor’s decisions to charge and pursue charges by
ignoring the victim’s desire to drop charges (Cahn, 1992; Corsilles, 1994). In the
no-drop policy, victims were the witness for the state; even when victims
reconciled with the defendants, the state still pursued its case. By 1994, four
states (Utah, Wisconsin, Florida, and Minnesota) had passed legislation
encouraging the use of no-drop policies. Although the number of jurisdictions
applying new approaches is not known, research indicated that prosecutors across
the country have changed their practices to prosecute more domestic violence
cases (American Bar Association, 1997; American Prosecutors Research Institute,
1996). New approaches, including victim support and safety programs, and
protocols for case management, screening, and charging, have been applied in an
attempt to bring more domestic violence offenders to justice (American
Prosecutors Research Institute, 1996; Cahn, 1992).

Penalty enhancements.

Concerned over the failure of the criminal justice system to punish wife
abusers and protect victims of domestic violence, many states enacted new laws
in an effort to improve the court response to wife assault. By 1989, 8 states had
made domestic violence a speciﬁc criminal offense (Carlson & Nidey, 1995).
Several other states had cross-referenced their domestic violence statutes with

existing assault statutes to create a speciﬁc category of assault which could result

41

in court mandated treatment, jail terms, and penalty enhancement for repeated
offenders (Carlson & Nidey, 1995). In response to the devaluation of domestic
cases in mainstream courts, specialized courts have been created to ensure
consistent application of sanctions and relief in cases involving domestic
violence (Fagen, 1996).

Personal protection order.

State and federal domestic violence laws are premised on an understanding
that a two-pronged legal approach of concurrently pursuing the civil and criminal
processes is necessary to effectively curb domestic violence (Klein & Orloff,
1999). First, the civil form of legal relief, which is often referred to as a personal
protection order (or a restraining order), protects victims from ongoing violence
before the abuse comes to the attention of the police or prosecution. Second,
domestic violence incidents must be handled as a crime (Chaudhuri & Daly,
1992; Klein & Orloff, 1999). This two-pronged approach enables the state to
punish perpetrators of intimate violence in criminal courts, while simultaneously
allowing abuse victims to receive the civil relief they need by ﬁling for a
protection order in a civil or family court. Recently, most jurisdictions also
allow police ofﬁcers to contact a judge and issue emergency protection orders
when intimate violence has occurred (Klein & Orloff, 1999).

Protection orders and emergency protection orders have been considered as
playing an essential role in curbing domestic violence by allowing the courts to
intervene in violent relationships at an early stage, before the violence escalates

and becomes more dangerous. Protection orders have been also seen as a way to

42

empower victims by providing the protection they need to leave their abusers
(Klein & Orloff, 1999). Traditionally, civil protection orders were primarily
enforced by conducting a contempt hearing for any alleged violation. Recently, a
growing number of jurisdictions have made the violation of a protection order, or
an emergency protection order, a crime that is subject to arrest or mandatory
arrest, and can be prosecuted in criminal courts (Chaudhuri & Daly, 1992; Klein
& Orloff, 1999).

In summary, literature shows that substantial changes in criminal justice
policies and practices dealing with domestic violence have occurred during the
last 20 years. As mentioned in the previous section, there has been a lack of
uniformity in criminal justice policies. Although there has been a trend toward a
criminal approach to domestic violence consistent with the view that domestic
violence is a criminal behavior, police policies dealing with domestic violence
have ranged from pro-arrest to mandatory-arrest. Similarly, prosecution
innovations, which mostly depended on financial resources, varied from
prosecutor-ﬁling-charge to no-drop-charge approaches, and from using protocols
for screening and charging domestic violence cases to creating victim’s assistance
program aimed at facilitating prosecution. Sentencing policies also were
different from states to states, and can be any combinations of jail terms,
probation, and mandatory treatment. The next section will assess the effects of

these changes on criminal justice agencies, offenders and victims.

43

Effects of Changes in Criminal Justice Response to Intimate Violence

There has been a great deal of discussions and empirical studies about the
effectiveness of new criminal justice policies. These discussions and studies of
the effects of new policies have focused on three general areas: 1) effects on the
behavior of criminal justice agencies, 2) deterrent effects, and 3) effects on the
behavior of domestic violence victims with regard to their preference for using
the criminal justice system to end violence.

Effects on the behavior of criminal justice agencies.

Proponents of new enforcement policies have asserted that mandatory
arrest will clarify the role of police in domestic violence cases, help guarantee
each victim an appropriate response from the criminal justice system, and relieve
police officers from the role of family counselor (Wanless, 1996). Without
mandatory arrest, the assistance victims receive when they call the police will
depend upon the particular views and prejudices of the responding ofﬁcers.
Proponents of mandatory arrest policies have also argued that mandatory arrest
will prevent police prejudice from affecting the arrest decision (Wanless, 1996).
Under this view, the race or class of the abuser often inﬂuences the arrest
decision. Minorities are arrested in disproportionate numbers when police have
complete discretion; White or upper class abusers are less likely to be arrested.
Bias can prevent police ofﬁcers from making an objective arrest decision, leaving
the victim unprotected and the batterer unpunished (Wanless, 1966).

For proponents of new prosecutorial policies, the no-drop policy that

precludes victims from inﬂuencing the prosecution process will force prosecutors

44

to take cases seriously and establish that domestic violence is really a crime
against society (Corsilles, 1994). Prosecutors will no longer cite “victim non-
cooperation” as a legitimate reason to dismiss a case and will have to utilize
police investigation resources more fully and apply evidentiary rules to these
“victimless prosecution” cases more creatively (Corsilles, 1994).

Research found that warrantless-arrest and mandatory-arrest policies
substantially increased the arrests of wife assaulters. For example, the percentage
of reported wife assaults resulting in arrests doubled, from 24 percent in 1984 to
47 percent in 1986, after the implementation of pro-arrest policies in half of all
urban police departments (Cohn, 1987). After the State of Washington
implemented a mandatory arrest law in domestic violence cases in 1984, there
was a 520 percent increase in arrests in Seattle in the ﬁrst 6 months of 1985 over
the same period in 1984; in the 2 years following the institution of a mandatory-
arrest policy in Alexandria, Virginia, 83 percent of domestic violence incidents to
which police responded resulted in arrests (Cahn, 1992).

Similarly, new prosecution policies, prosecutor—ﬁling-charge and no-drop
policies, resulted in an increased number of charges against wife and intimate-
partner assaulters. For example, in San Francisco, after a new policy for
prosecution of felony domestic violence cases was implemented in 1983, ﬁling in
domestic violence cases increased by 136 percent; positive dispositions, in which
the court retained jurisdiction over the defendant, increased by 171 percent
(Cahn, 1992). In Indiana, case dismissal rates ranged from 10 to 35 percent

compared to 50 to 80 percent dismissal rates in jurisdictions that did not adopt a

45

no-drop approach (Ford & Regoli, 1993). In Milwaukee, after the state applied
the no-drop policy for misdemeanor domestic violence cases in 1995, the rates of
accepting domestic violence cases for prosecution jumped from 20 percent to 80
percent (Davis & Smith, 1995).

Policies aimed at enhancing penalties for domestic violence offenses had
complex results. Changes in penalty could include a mandatory jail term,
mandatory participation in a batterer’s education program, and penalty
enhancements for repeat offenders (Carlson & Nidey, 1995). These changes were
aimed at insuring that individuals convicted of domestic violence received
sentences commensurate with the seriousness of their offenses. Research showed
that while those convicted of domestic assault received greater penalties under
new policies, conviction rates, especially for aggravated assault cases, declined
considerably; cases also became more complex and time-consuming (Carlson &
Nidey, 1995).

In sum, research indicated that new policies did change the behavior of
criminal justice agencies. Changes were evident in the increases in number of
arrests, proportions of cases prosecuted, and more severe penalties imposed on
domestic violence offenders. However, evidence also showed that in some
instances, fewer cases could go to trials, and convictions became harder to obtain
due to victims’ uncooperative behavior. These outcomes were attributed to a
number of factors. First, under new policies, suspects of domestic violence cases
often chose to go to trial hoping to avoid conviction because if they plead guilty

they would automatically receive a mandatory harsh sentence. Secondly, the

46

cooperation of victims to secure convictions, which had been often difficult to
obtain, became harder to get under the mandatory penalty policies (Carlson &
Nidey, 1995). The decreasing certainty of conviction may send perpetrators and
victims’ of domestic violence a message opposite to that intended by those who
support mandatory penalties.

Effects on batterers’ behavior.

Mandatory arrest laws have been viewed by their proponents as an
effective weapon to ﬁght and to stop domestic violence and signify that society
ﬁnally recognizes that domestic violence is a crime (Walsh, 1995; Wanless,
1996; Stark, 1993). There has been, however, no consistent research ﬁndings
regarding the positive effect of arrests on batterers’ behavior. While a number of
studies found that arrests reduced battering (Sherman & Berk, 1984; Dutton et
al., 1992; Pate & Hamilton, 1992), other studies found that arrest was not
effective in deterring subsequent assaults (Hirschel et al., 1992; Berk et al., 1992;
'Dunford et al., 1990), or arrest had no long term effects (Sherman et al., 1992).
Moreover, some studies found that arrests may increase hostilities, especially
when offenders were quickly released from custody (Goolkasian, 1986). Research
also found that the effects of arrest were contingent on the offenders’
employment status, race, and marital status (Berk et a1, 1992; Sherman et al.,
1992). Short-term effects were found among men who were White, employed, or
married; but violence increased after arrest among those who were unemployed,

school dropouts, unmarried, or African Americans (Sherman et al., 1992). Berk

47

and colleagues (1992) found that arrest only had deterrent effects on employed
batterers.

Advocates of no-drop-charge policies also asserted that the no-drop-charge
policies would positively affect the batterers’ conduct toward their victims
(Corsilles, 1994). No-drop-charge policies would convey to batterers that their
behavior would no longer be tolerated by the state and would be prosecuted and
punished by law. In addition, when victims could no longer control the case
under the no-drop-charge policy, their batterers would cease to harass them
(Corsilles, 1994). Without the no-drop policy, abusers would be more likely to
intimidate their victims and control charge decisions (Cahn, 1992).

There has been evidence that prosecution does reduce subsequent violence.
Ford and Regoli (1993) found that prosecution reduced violence by almost 50
percent during a 6-month follow-up. Fagan, Friedman, Wexler and Lewis (1984)
also found that prosecuted batterers had lower re-arrest rates than those not
prosecuted, but there was a reduction of violence for cases involving low levels
of prior violence and injury. Contrary to the expectation of proponents of the no-
drop-charge policy, the policy did not have a greater deterrent effect than the
drop-permitted policy (Ford & Regoli, 1993). Research showed that a drop-
permitted policy reduced the chance of continuing violence more than the no-
drop option (Ford & Regoli, 1993). Ford & Regoli (1993) explained that under
the drop-permitted policy, women victims were empowered to take control of
events in the relationship with their partners. Some could use the possibility of

abandoning prosecution as a resource in bargaining for their security. Others

48

were empowered by the alliance they formed with more powerful individuals,
including the police, prosecutors, and judges.

Court-mandated treatment for domestic violence has become increasingly
prevalent, and mandatory treatment was found to be the most popular option
because it was consistent with battered women’s desire to see their spouses
getting help (Ford & Regoli, 1993). Despite its popularity, the effectiveness of
batterers’ treatment has not been examined in rigorous scientific studies (Chalk &
King, 1998; Davis & Taylor, 1999). The ﬁndings from the few studies completed
are inconclusive. Ford and Regoli (1993) found that the chance of a man
assaulting his partner in a short period of time was essentially unaffected by
whether he faced harsh punishment or rehabilitative treatment. On the other
hand, Davis & Taylor (1999) found evidence that treatment worked and that the
effects of treatment were substantial (see Davis & Taylor, 1999 for a review of
literature on batterers’ treatment programs). Dutton and colleagues (1992) also
found arrests combined with court-mandated treatment for assaultive behavior
signiﬁcantly reduced recidivism.

With regard to the effect of protection orders and emergency protective
orders, research found that the effectiveness of protective orders in controlling
male violence depended on the circumstances and men’s history of violence
(Chaudhuries & Daly, 1992; Grau, Fagan & Wexler, 1984). Protection orders did
not reduce verbal and emotional abuse but did reduce violence in cases where the
original violence was not severe; women who had been severely battered were not

effectively protected from future violence by protective orders (Grau et al.,

49

I984). Chaudhuries and Daly (1992) also found that obtaining these orders
increased police responsiveness to calls and decreased women’s chances of being
abused again. Studies, however, also showed that a majority of protection orders
(60 percent) were violated within a year of their issuance, and despite calls to
police to report the violations, arrests were rare (Harrell & Smith, 1995).

In sum, there is no consistent evidence of the deterrent effects of new
criminal justice responses to domestic violence. Depending on the characteristics
of the offenders and the context of violence, mandatory arrest, prosecution,
enhancement penalty, and protection orders have been found to reduce violent
behavior of some but not all men. Although a few studies have explored the
relationships between recidivism and employment and race (Berk et al, 1992;
Sherman et al., 1992), overall there has been a lack of analysis and discussion of
race, class, and gender dynamics that may affect both the enforcement of the law
and offenders’ violent behavior. Such research would dramatically improve
understandings of whether and how criminal justice policies dealing with
domestic violence are effective or have negative results.

Effects on victims’ behavior.

There has been a general agreement among activists for battered women
that a shift from the deﬁnition of domestic violence as a private problem to a
view of domestic violence as a criminal activity had taken place, and this shift
has been beneﬁcial to battered women (Bowman, 1992; Cahn, 1992; Ferraro,
1993; Wanless, 1996). With regard to law enforcement practices, the mandatory

arrest policy has been regarded as a positive feature because it removes the

50

decision to arrest from the victim’s control (Wanless, 1996). Under this view,
victims of domestic violence, who are dominated by their abusers due to inherent
imbalance of power in the relationship, should not bear the burden of indicating
their preference for arrest in front of their assailants (Wanless, 1996).

Research, however, showed that not all victims of domestic violence
embrace changes in criminal justice policies dealing with domestic violence.
Studies indicated that many victims did not call the police (Rimonte, 1989;
Hackler, 1991). For example, studies in the 19805 and early 19905 (Kantor &
Straus, 1990; Smith & Klein, 1984) estimated that only six or seven percent of
husband-wife assaults were even reported to the police, and only one in four or
five victims desired arrest. Recent statistics showed that women victims reported
the violence to the police half of the time when injury was involved, but they
were less likely to report when they did not sustain injury (Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 1995). Another estimate is that only 20 percent of domestic violence
cases are reported to the police by women victims (Dutton, 1995).

Scholars have also pointed out the problem of dual arrests in which the
victim is arrested along with her abuser (E. Buzawa & C. Buzawa, 1993; Walsh,
1995; Wanless, 1996). Some jurisdictions added the terms “primary physical
aggressor” or “self-defense” in their mandatory arrest laws, allowing ofﬁcers to
arrest only the individual determined to be the primary aggressor and disallowing
arrest of an individual who is determined to be acting in self-defense, but many
states did not incorporate these terms in their mandatory arrest laws (Walsh,

1995). Dual arrest was viewed as not only failing to deter abusers and protect

51

victims, but also revictimizing battered women by forcing them to undergo the
same arrest procedures as their abusers (Wanless, 1996). Consequently, battered
women subjected to arrest may be dissuaded from ever calling police in the future
(Wanless, 1996).

For a number of scholars, mandatory arrest policies are a simplistic
solution to a complex problem because they tend to ignore the victim’s needs for
counseling, protection, and support services as well as the offender’s needs for
rehabilitation (Armstrong, cited in Wanless, 1996; E. Buzawa & C. Buzawa,
1993). Some have also been concerned with unintended consequences of
mandatory arrest policies implemented in communities known for poor police-
community relations in which victims may be deterred from calling the police by
fear of racial discrimination (E. Buzawa & C. Buzawa, 1993).

Proponents of no-drop policies in prosecution argued that new policies
would be highly effective at reducing high case attrition rates and facilitating the
cooperation of victims (Corsilles, 1994). Data obtained from a number of
jurisdictions indicated that in jurisdictions with proactive prosecution programs,
including victim support services and no-drop policies, victims fully cooperate
with prosecutors in 65 percent to 95 percent of cases (McLeod, 1983).

There have been concerns, however, about the side effects of no-drop
policies for prosecution and enhanced penalty policies. Victim’s advocates, and
even some prosecutors, feared that the prosecution of some domestic violence
cases would expose battered women to retaliation by their abusers (Corsilles,

1994). Because prosecutors could not guarantee victims’ safety, no-drop policies

52

that used subpoenas to compel victims to testify could potentially subject the
victims to further victimization (Gwinn & O’Dell, cited in Corsilles, 1994).
Victims’ safety may be further endangered if no-drop policies inadvertently lead
to battered women refraining from calling the police (Buzawa & Buzawa, 1993).

Findings from research also suggest that no-drop policies might not be
successful in increasing victims’ cooperation with judicial processes. For
example, a study in Milwaukee showed that after the implementation of no-drop
policies for prosecution, cases ﬂooded court. However, few cases could'come to
trial due to lack of victims’ cooperation (Davis & Smith, 1995). Carlson and
Nidey’s (1995) study of penalty enhancement for domestic violence offenders
also found that convictions were difficult to get because of victims’
uncooperative behavior.

No-drop policies and enhanced penalties were also seen as undermining
battered women’s empowerment (Ford & Regoli, 1993). Many victims turn to the
criminal justice system for help in ending domestic abuse but still want to
continue the relationship with their partners (Lerman, 1986). Therefore, policies
that require the victim to testify against the defendant and a jail sentence for the
latter may produce results contrary to the wishes of the victim. By denying
victims of intimate violence the ability to make choices for themselves and their
children, no-drop and mandatory-penalty policies may revictimize them (Carlson
& Nidey, 1995).

In summary, proponents of new criminal justice responses dealing with

domestic violence, including mandatory arrest, no-drop charges, and mandatory

53

sentencing, believed that new policies would curb domestic violence and thereby
benefit women, but other scholars have questioned the effectiveness of new
policies in serving the needs of domestic violence victims. Research showed that
many victims, following contacts with the police, prosecutors and the court,
realized that the system had limited capacities and investments in helping them or
providing meaningful relief from their abusers (Erez & Belknap, 1998). Similar
to studies of the deterrent effect of new policies, research on the effects of new
policies on victims’ behavior, satisfaction and safety failed to take into account
women’s different locations in the hierarchies of race/ethnicity, class, and gender
to understand their reactions to violence.

Particularly, no study of the complex array of contemporary criminal
justice policies has focused on immigrant women in general and Vietnamese
immigrant women in particular. Besides language barriers, women’s migration
history, legal status, and unique cultural and family traditions may have a strong
impact on women’s experiences with the criminal justice system as victims or

offenders of intimate violence.
Gaps in the Literature of Domestic Violence

There has been a great deal of research on specific policy changes as well
as their effectiveness in dealing with intimate violence. New criminal justice
responses, which are intended to increase arrest, prosecution, conviction, and
sentencing, have been viewed by their proponents as providing victims of
domestic violence with improved protection and safety. The legal approach to

domestic violence depends not only on the action of criminal justice agencies but

54

also on the action of victims to report violent incidents to the police and
cooperate with the system as witnesses for successful prosecutions. Therefore,
changes have been made with an expectation that new policies would promote
victims’ use of the criminal justice approach and cooperation with the system.
More than one decade after new approaches to domestic violence were
implemented, evidence from research suggests that new policies might not be
successful in promoting domestic violence victims’ use of, and cooperation with,
the criminal justice system to end violence (Bureau of Justice Statistic, 1995;
Davis & Smith, 1995; Ford & Regoli, 1993; Carlson & Nidey, 1995). A sizable
body of literature has been devoted to the discussion of reasons leading to
victims’ lack of reliance on the criminal justice system (see E. Buzawa & C.
Buzawa, 1993; Wanless, 1996; Corsilles, 1994; Walsh, 1994; Mills, 1996; Hart,
1993; Ferraro & Pope, 1993; Davis & Smith, 1995). Scholars have recognized
that battered women are different from most crime victims because of their
relationship with the assailants (Ferraro, 1993; Mills, 1996; Corsilles, 1994;
Wanless, 1996). Not only is there a direct emotional bond between the woman
and her husband or lover, but they are also tied in a myriad of connections,
including children, ﬁnance, legal status, and community (E. Buzawa & C.
Buzawa, 1993; Ferraro & Pope, 1993). Therefore, the desires of victimized
women are complex, depending on their particular experiences, and treating
victimized women as a common group ignores their many differences and
situations (E. Buzawa & C. Buzawa, 1993; Mills, 1996). Radford and Stanko

(1991) even suggested that the current criminal justice response may be appealing

55

to White, middle-class women but does not address the concerns of intimate
violence victims who belong to different social classes and race/ethnic groups.

Although research has recognized a lack of reliance on new criminal
justice approaches among victims of domestic violence, few empirical studies
examined factors associated with women’s diverse help-seeking behaviors under
new criminal justice policies (e.g., Ferraro, 1993; Ferraro & Pope, 1993;
Fernandez et a1, 1997; Ford, 1983). In addition, scholars have been aware of an
unintended consequence of mandatory arrest policies that lead to the arrests of
abused women who use force for self-defense, but there is no research exploring
how the system treats women who have been arrested.

Studies of domestic violence have begun to shift away from the single-
risk-factor approach in favor of models that examine the interactions of factors
across individual, social, and cultural domains (Crowell & Burgess, 1996).
However, the ways in which cultural practices, race/ethnicity, social class,
economic opportunities, legal status and social networks interact with intimate
relationship and women’s response to intimate violence have received only scant
attention in the study of the dynamics of family violence (Chalk & King, 1998).

Scholars have long perceived that knowledge of women’s experiences is
incomplete if it does not include an understanding of women’s locations in the
hierarchies of class, race, and gender that shape women’s lives (Harding, 1991;
Baca-Zinn & Dill, 1994; Lamphere, Zavella & Gonzales, 1993; Spelman, 1988).
According to Baca-Zinn and Dill (1994), race, class and gender create a matrix of

domination that women of color experience and resist on three levels: 1) personal

56

biography; 2) the cultural context created by race, class, and gender; 3) the
systematic level of social institutions. For example, immigrant women may suffer
higher rates of battering than US citizens because they are not familiar with, and
have less access to, legal and social services, or because they may believe that the
protection of the US legal system do not apply to them (Orloff et al., 1995). In
addition, battered women who are not legal residents, or whose immigration
status depends on their partners, are isolated by cultural and power dynamics that
can prevent them from leaving or seeking assistance from the legal system (Orloff
et al., 1995). Undocumented women may fear being reported to immigration
authority by lawenforcement or social service personnel, and a lack of English
skills can prevent meaningful communications between a woman and social
service or criminal justice agencies (Orloff et al., 1995). Given special situations
of immigrant women, a failure to consider their experiences has created a gap in
domestic violence literature and made the knowledge of social phenomenon
incomplete.

During the last three decades, the number of immigrants to the US has
increased substantially as a result of the 1965 Immigration Act that dismantled
the national quota system and opened the door to renewed migration to the US
(Rumbaut, 1996). Among the major immigrant groups are Asian immigrants who
accounted for 45 percent of total immigrants to the US during the 19805 and early
19905 (Fix & Passel, 1994).

With a large increase in the number of Asian immigrants to the US,

intimate violence among Asian Americans began to get attention from the

57

research community. A number of studies have been conducted to examine the
prevalence, causes, and contexts of intimate violence in different Asian groups
(Dasgupta & Warrier, 1996; Rimonte, 1989; Merhotra, 1999; Singh & Unnithan,
1999; Abraham, 1999; Bui & Morash, 1999; Yoshihama, 1999). Literature on
domestic violence has also recognized the effects of peculiar social contexts,
including culture, languages, and ethnic community, on family dynamics, and
immigrant women’s experiences of and responses to abuse (Preisser, 1999,
Rimonte, 1989, Huisman, 1996; Dasgupta & Warrier, 1996). However, no study
has examined the experiences that immigrant women have with the criminal
justice system as victims and offenders of intimate violence.

To ﬁll the gap in the literature on domestic violence and women’s
experiences, this study examines the experiences of Vietnamese American women
with the criminal justice system. The study focuses on understanding the criminal
justice process in intimate violence cases and various conditions that facilitate or

impede women’s use of the criminal justice approach to avoid intimate violence.

58

CHAPTER 2: THEORY AND METHOD

Theoretical and Methodological Orientation

Theory and methodology are closely interrelated. Methodology refers to a
theory of how research should proceed, including accounts of how a general
structure of theory finds its application in particular scientific disciplines
(Harding, 1987). Research method is a technique for or a way of proceeding in
gathering evidence (Harding, 1987). Social scientists often select methodologies
aimed at guiding research processes in an attempt to either adequately answer the
questions arising from a theory, or to produce a body of knowledge consistent
with the theory (McCall & Becker, 1990). In this section, I discuss feminist
standpoint theory, the practice-based theory of gender relations, and the
qualitative-case-study method that I used to study the experiences of Vietnamese-

American women with the criminal justice system.
Feminist Standpoint

The feminist standpoint approach has become a defining characteristic of
feminist research. Standpoint theory, which is rooted in Marx’s view that social
being determines consciousness, places an emphasis on the locations of informant
groups relative to the social institutions and individuals involved in social
problems (Hartsock, 1983). The feminist standpoint approach focuses on gender
differences, as well as differences in social situations between men and women,
and uses women’s experiences as a starting point for the analysis of social

problems (Harding, 1991). Because the production of social knowledge has been

59

predicated on a universe grounded on men’s experiences and relationships, the
opening up of women’s experiences allows social scientists to access social
realities of women’s lives previously unavailable or repressed (D. Smith, 1990;
Harding, 1991). Dorothy Smith (1990) has asserted that feminist research should
be done from the standpoint of women, beginning from women’s ordinary,
everyday experiences. By taking up a standpoint in women’s original and
immediate knowledge of the world and by knowing a socially constructed world
from within, women’s standpoint discredits the claim that it is possible to
constitute an objective knowledge independent of the researcher’s situation (D.
Smith, 1990).

An important characteristic of the standpoint approach is to “give voice”
to the silenced group and facilitate their own discoveries (Gorelick, 1991).
“Giving voice” is rooted in the symbolic interactionist tradition that recognizes a
hierarchy of credibility in the creation and dissemination of knowledge. As such,
it emphasizes the actor’s interpretation and understanding of the situation
(Gorelick, 1991; McCall & Wittner, 1990). For symbolic interactionists,
subjectivity is central to the understanding of social actions because people
interpret their situations and act in terms of the meanings or perspectives they
develop within particular situations and from speciﬁc positions within
organizations or groups (McCall & Wittner, 1990). For feminists, women are
authoritative speakers of their own experiences, thus “giving voice” has been

seen as a progressive deve10pment of feminist theory (Gorelick, 1991).

60

However, the direct experience has its limitations, and therefore “giving
voice” has been seen as not enough (Gorelick, 1991). Because sexism is deeply
internalized and buried beneath the conscious level, and because experience itself
is shaped by social relations, there are hidden aspects of women’s oppression that
women may not be able to reveal by themselves (McKinnon, 1987; Maguire,
1987; Harding, 1991). A lack of cumulative knowledge on the part of women
research participants makes the role of the researcher different from that of the
research subject. Dorothy Smith (1987) has recognized the important role of
social scientists in producing knowledge of the sources of women’s experiences
because these do not lie within the scope of everyday practices.

In order to have a position count as a standpoint, rather than a claim, the
researcher must begin at an objective location, women’s lives, look at the world
from the perspective of women, and make use of observations and theory
(Harding, 1991). Because women are situated in different social hierarchies of
class, race, and gender, an analysis of racism must start from the standpoints of
members of minority groups; classism from the standpoint of lower class
members, and sexism from the standpoint of women (Gorelick, 1991). However,
knowledge production and theory making must go beyond the notion of a
fragmentary sciences and a hierarchy of standpoints (Harding, 1986, p. 473). The
differences of diverse groups of women and the processes of sexism, classism,
and racism creating these differences must be discovered to understand how they
connect to each other (Gorelick, 1991). As the structure of oppression is

multifaceted, knowledge of the conﬂicts constructed within the hidden

61

oppression must be based on both experience and theory (Gorelick, 1991). The
next section will discuss the practice-based theory of gender relations that I used
to understand the experiences of Vietnamese-American women with the criminal

justice system.
Practice-Based Theory of Gender Relations

Scholarship on gender suggests that women’s experiences are products of
social interactions and unequal gender relations (Scott, 1986). In a gender-
stratified society, women and men are assigned different kinds of activities and,
consequently, have different experiences. Therefore, in order to understand
women’s experiences, including their responses to victimization, there is a need
for analysis of both the individual subject and the structure of gender relations
that govern women’s lives. The distinctive feature of the feminist approach to
knowledge is the focus on women’s situations in a gender-stratiﬁed society
(Harding, 1991). Feminist research has used gender differences as resources and
women’s lives as a starting point for analysis to provide a gendered
understanding of all aspects of human lives.

Although concerns with gender as an analytic category had already
emerged in the late 20th century, gender viewed as a system of social practices
and sexual relations did not appear until recently (Connell, 1996; Scott, 1986).
Connell (1987, 1996) has observed that besides human beings, social
organizations and practices are also gendered. In other words, the structures and
operations of the economy and the labor market, the state, social and global

institutions as well as human patterns of emotional relationship (cathexis) have

62

been established based on the gendered division of labor and power. As a basis
for social practices and relations, gender is conceptualized as far more than an
individual trait somehow connected with bodily differences between men and
women. Rather, gender is a constitutive element of social practices and
relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes. As such, gender
provides a way to decode meanings and helps understand the complex
connections among various forms of human interactions (Connell, 1996; Scott,
1986).

As Connell (1987) has suggested, the practice-based theory of gender
relations consists of at least three interrelated basic elements: 1) the structure of
production, 2) the structure of social power, and 3) patterns of emotional
relationship between men and women (cathexis). The inclusion of these three
elements enables the framework to recognize the interweaving of personal life
and social structure.

With regard to production, the practice-based theory of gender relations
posits that in a gendered-stratiﬁed society, such as the US, production is
characterized by the gendered-division of labor and the exclusion of women from
opportunities for the accumulation of wealth (Connell, 1987). Women have been
traditionally assigned to unpaid housework and been ﬁnancially dependent on
men. When women work in the paid-labor market, they often work in low
paying-jobs and possess low occupational statuses relative to men’s.

The state and various social, political, and religious institutions form the

system of social power. These institutions have the authority to formulate ideals,

63

define morality, and establish policies in order to reinforce and sustain the power
of men and the subordination of women (Connell, 1987). The system of social
power, often imposed in and through culture, and the division of labor help create
and support a pattern of emotional attachment that emphasizes heterosexual
relationships (Connell, 1987).

The culturally constructed pattern of heterosexual attachment dictates
social norms that govern the roles of men and women. These social and cultural
norms deﬁne, within a given context, behaviors considered as appropriate and
socially acceptable for individuals in various social roles, such as husband and
wife, male/female partner, father, and mother (Raj et al., 1999).

Because gender is a way of structuring social practices in general, not a
special type of practice, it is often involved and interacts with other social
structures, such as class, race, and culture (Connell, 1996). Feminist scholars
have long recognized the interrelation between race, class, and gender (Spellman,
1988; Alexander & Mohanty, 1997; hooks, 1984). With racism, classism, and
compulsory heterosexuality in American society, the oppression faced by white
middle class women is not the same as that faced by women of different social
classes and races/ethnicities (Alexander & Mohanty, 1997). Lamphere and
colleagues ( 1993) have used the notion of “social locations” to specify the ways
in which economic structure and the labor market interact with class, ethnicity,
culture, and sexual preference to shape women’s different experiences. Harding
(1991, p. 179) has also stated, “There are no gender relations per se, but only

gender relations as constructed by and between classes, races, and cultures.” The

64

practice-based theory of gender relations is consistent with the feminist
standpoint approach in that it focuses on gendered practices embedded in social
interactions and processes to understand women’s experiences.

The practice-based theory of gender relations can help us understand the
experiences that women have as victims and offenders in the criminal justice
system. First, the gendered-division of labor can have an impact on women’s
response to domestic violence and their use of the criminal justice approach to
avoiding future violence. For women who depend on men ﬁnancially,
prosecution may lead to the imprisonment of their providers, thus eliminating or
reducing their ﬁnancial resources (Ferraro, 1993). Even when a battered woman
wants a prosecution but has few financial resources, she would ﬁnd the
participation in the prosecution of her abuser costly because of her absence from
work, the arrangement for child care, and transportation fees for multiple trips to
the courthouse (Hart, 1993). Women who depend on economic support from
their husbands or partners may not have ﬁnancial resources to ﬁght for justice
when they are involved in the criminal justice system as offenders. If convicted,
they may lose the custody of their children because of their financial inability to
support them.

Second, the system of social power, represented by the state and other
social, political and religious institutions, can also inﬂuence the ways battered
women cope with violence. Because gendered practices in other institutions
interfere with family life, women’s experiences of and responses to violence are

not solely based on the power dynamics within the family (Connell, 1987). For

65

example, some religious institutions assign a secondary status to women,
encourage women to obey their husbands and stay in family relationships, or
discourage women from testifying against their abusive husbands (Ferraro &
Pope, 1993). The normative definition of femininity, which is based on the
general inferior status of women, emphasizes women’s compliance with the
subordination and accommodation to the interests and desires of men (Connell,
1987). Therefore, may women may hesitate to take legal action against their
male partners.

As part of the system of social power, the practices of criminal justice
agencies that fail to protect women or take their needs seriously may discourage
women from using criminal justice services to deal with intimate abuse.
Research has shown that many women did not feel satisﬁed with criminal justice
practices because the system did not provide meaningful relief from their abusers
(Erez & Belknap, 1998). Literature on domestic violence indicates that battered
women are much more likely than other victims to be revictimized after the
assaults that gave rise to the intervention of the criminal justice system (Hart,
1993; Harrell & Smith, 1995). Pressure from abusers and fear of reprisal have
forced many battered women to drop the request for personal protection order.
Research also showed that a majority of protection orders were violated by the
abusers within a year following their issuance, and although calls to the police
because of violation were high, arrests were rare (Harrell & Smith, 1995).

Policies that do not take into account gender relations can also be

problematic for women. Under mandatory arrest policies, women who do not

66

want their partners to be arrested may refrain from calling the police when
violence occurs (Caputo, 1988). In addition, women who use force for self-
defense can be arrested. Because of the cultural image of women as docile and
submissive, women who use force may be seen as deviating from the gender
norms and may receive especially harsh treatment.

Public welfare and immigration policies can also have an impact on
women’s experiences of violence. Welfare has been seen as a main opportunity
for women to break their dependence on men and exercise power by relying on
the state (Piven, 1990). Changes in welfare policies that limit ﬁnancial support
for women may increase women’s dependence on their male partners as well as
the threat of harms caused by domestic violence (Pearson, Thoennes & Griswold,
1999). Similarly, strict immigration laws and policies regarding legal residency in
the US can affect the responses to violence among women without legal residency
in the US but married to a legal resident. In recent years, the government has
toughened immigration laws, making it more difﬁcult for these women to gain
permanent residency (Thompson, 1999). When women have to rely on men for
financial support and the completion of paperwork to acquire legal residency,
threats of abuse may become more potent, and the chance to leave an abusive
relationship may be reduced (Chin, 1994).

Additional effects on women’s response to violence are the norms of
heterosexuality and the ideology of romantic love. For many women,
relationships and family units are important because marrying and maintaining

intimacy are highly valued by the state and religious institutions, and because

67

divorce and separation are considered a failure that should be avoided (Ferraro &
Pople, 1993; Schechter, 1982; Corsilles, 1994). Thus, when violence occurs,
women may avoid leaving, but rather stay in the relationship. In addition,
inﬂuenced by a romantic ideology, many women embrace a cultural image of
intimate relationships as havens of shared love and commitment, especially when
their male partners fulﬁll some aspect of the image, adding to these women’s
hope for change (Ferraro & Pope, 1993). For women who do not want, or are not
ready, to leave their intimate partners, using the criminal justice approach to
domestic violence may be seen as a threat that can disrupt the relationship.
Finally, race and class relations as well as culture can also affect women’s
experiences. Although the family has been seen as an arena of patriarchal
oppression, the family is also seen as a site of resistance to the dominant society
(Dill, 1988; Glenn, 1986; hooks, 1984). Research found that immigrant women
shared an understanding of their cultural distinctiveness with men of similar class
and ethnic background and often viewed family ties as resources that support
ethnic solidarity (Gabaccia, 1994). For many immigrant women, in the midst of
changes resulting from migration, women’s traditional sources of support and
power (e.g., the support of the extended family and power over children) may be
lost (Kibria, 1993). Loneliness combined with racism may exacerbate a woman’s
fear of seeking help outside her community, thus promoting family and
community solidarity (Hart, 1993; Rasche, 1988; Huisman, 1996). A lack of
English skills also prevents women from learning about resources available for

them or from communicating with the formal system. The traditional cultures

68

that immigrants brought with them to the US can also prevent women from
seeking help from outside the family and the community (Rimonte, 1989; Rasche,
1988)

In this study, a feminist standpoint used within the theoretical framework
of gender relations helped facilitate a contextual understanding of the experiences
that Vietnamese-American women had with the criminal justice system. Women’s
voices and women’s interpretations of their own experiences were used to
understand how the gendered practices of various socioeconomic, political and
cultural institutions shaped women’s experiences with the criminal justice

system.
Oualitative-Case-Study Method

Literature has suggested that research methods on human beings can affect
how these persons will be viewed (Berg, 1998). When humans being are studies
in a statistical aggregated fashion, there is a danger that conclusions may not ﬁt
reality (Mills, 1959). Qualitative research is a form of inquiry that help explain
and understand human behavior and their meanings within their natural settings
(Merriam, 1998). Since meanings are constructed through personal experiences
and often difﬁcult to quantify, qualitative research technique provides a means of
accessing unquantiﬁable facts about people (Berg, 1998). This approach also
places social interactions, processes, and changes at the center of analysis,
emphasizing situational and structural contexts of social phenomena and human
behavior that the survey method of quantitative research may not be able to

capture (Strauss, 1987).

69

Rooted in symbolic interactionism that views meanings as constructed
through human interactions and personal experiences, thus mediated through the
investigator’s own perceptions, qualitative research emphasizes the importance of
relying on research participants’ perspectives to understand reality (Merriam,
1998; Strauss, 1987). According to Blumer (1969), meanings are derived from
the social process of human interactions and personal experiences, thus allowing
people to produce various realities. Because qualitative methods emphasize
meanings and subjective interpretations of social phenomena, they are highly
appropriate for dealing with multiple realities and able to construct a holistic
reality based on diverse experiences (Lincohn & Guba, 1985). The qualitative
method also recognizes the importance of relying on subjects’ own interpretations
of experiences; therefore, it is consistent with the principle of feminist standpoint
that recognizes the importance of the researched’s “voices.”

As a form of inquiry, qualitative research can be used for interpretive
research, ﬁeld study, grounded theory, or case study (Merriam, 1998). For the
purpose of the present study, case study method refers to an intensive description
and analysis of a single unit or bounded system (e.g., an individual, group, and
community), or a single issue that can provide a rich and holistic account of a
social phenomenon (Merriam, 1998; Reinharz, 1992). The case study method,
which emphasizes social processes and contexts, is used for studies of special
cases or groups that are seen as “outliners” and, thus, are often excluded in
quantitative research. Its scientific benefits lie in its ability to open the way for

discoveries and serve as the breaking ground for insights and hypotheses that may

70

be pursued in subsequent studies (Berg, 1998). Because data for case studies are
often rare, this method can help elucidate the upper and lower boundaries of
social phenomenon and allow for an understanding of a broader range of human
experiences that may not be included in research seeking generalization by using
hypothesis testing (Merriam, 1998).

Case studies are also important for understanding women’s various
experiences (Reinharz, 1992). Cases studies of women’s experiences are
particularly necessary both as models for future generalizations and as raw data
for future secondary analysis, comparative studies, and cross-cultural studies
(Reinharz, 1992). Although case studies cannot establish generalization, they
have great heuristic value and can be used to invalidate prior generalizations and
suggest new research directions.

A qualitative-case-study method is particularly appropriate for the present
study. The technique of in-depth interviewing has allowed for collecting rich
information on social interactions and social processes. Information, obtained
through in-depth interviews, on the effects of culture, social structures, and the
process of resettlement and adaptation on Vietnamese immigrant women’s
experiences with the criminal justice system as victims and offenders has
facilitated a contextual analysis of women’s experiences. Open-ended questions
have also help produce information needed to understand women’s behavior and
their meanings within their social settings on the basis of their own
interpretations. Furthermore, because the qualitative method emphasizes

processes and interactions, it has allowed for an understanding of the changing

71

power dynamics experienced by Vietnamese-American women and a view of
these women as agencies who made decisions according to their own judgment of
the situations.

The case study method is also appropriate for studying domestic violence
among Vietnamese Americans. As a young immigrant group, most Vietnamese
began to arrive in the US only during the last 25 years (Gold, 1992). While
domestic violence in the mainstream society has been an important topic for
social science research during the last 30 years, domestic violence among
Vietnamese Americans has not received much attention from the research
community. A lack of research on domestic violence in Vietnamese-American
families may be due to the dearth of criminal justice records attributed to the
group’s small population and low report rates among Vietnamese Americans. An
exploratory study of domestic violence in Vietnamese-American families (Bui &
Morash, 1999) suggested that the majority of victims did not call the police when
violence occurred. Because of rare contacts with the criminal justice system, thus
few criminal justice data, the inclusion of the Vietnamese-American group in
studies using the random sampling technique and seeking generalizations is very
unlikely. The case-study method has permitted the collection of rare data and
allowed for a contextual understanding of the experiences that Vietnamese-
American women have with the criminal justice system.

In summary, a case-study method that emphasizes social processes,
meanings, and contexts is consistent and complementary with a qualitatively

analytic approach and a feminist standpoint within the practice-based theory of

72

gender relations. A qualitative-case-study method has allowed for an in-depth and
contextual examination of the experiences that Vietnamese-American women
have with the criminal justice system. It is my hope that an understanding of
social, institutional, and cultural processes that shape the peculiar experiences of
Vietnamese women will contribute to the body of knowledge of women’s

experiences and allow for generalizations that are not ethnocentric.

Method for the Study

This study examined the experiences of Vietnamese-American women
with the criminal justice system when they were involved in intimate violence.l
Speciﬁcally, the study sought the answers to the following questions:

1. To what extent do Vietnamese-American women rely on the criminal justice
approach to. deal with violence by an intimate partner?

2. What are socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors affecting Vietnamese-
American women’s decision to use criminal justice services?

3. What are experiences that Vietnamese-American women have with the police,
prosecutors, judges, and defense lawyers when they are involved in intimate
violence as victims and offenders?

4. What are consequences of using the criminal justice approach to deal with

intimate violence?

 

1. In this study, the term “Vietnamese Americans” is used to indicate Vietnamese in the US,
regardless of their immigration status.

73

5. What are the perceived solutions to domestic violence among Vietnamese
Americans in general and Vietnamese-American women who are involved in

intimate violence in particular?

Concept Deﬁnitions

Intimate violence.

In this study, the terms “intimate violence” and “intimate abuse” were
used interchangeably to indicate physical abuse or the use of force or threats of
force by a person against his or her intimate partner, including husband/wife,
boy/girlfriend, ex-husband/wife, and ex-boy/girlfriend. This deﬁnition was used
to be consistent with criminal laws in the US dealing with physical abuse
(domestic assault and battery). In Michigan, for example, domestic assault is
defined as any willful attempt or threat to inﬂict injury and any intentional
display of force such as it would give the victim reason to fear or expect
immediate bodily harm; a battery is deﬁned as unlawful application or force to
another person (Glenn, 1994). The term “emotional abuse” was used when the
abuse did not involve the use of force.

The criminal justice approach to domestic violence.

For the purpose of the study, the criminal justice approach to domestic
violence was deﬁned as the use of arrest, prosecution, conviction, and
punishment. For example, victims of domestic violence who use the criminal
justice approach may call the police when violence occurs, provide information to
the police and prosecutors during the investigation, and appear in the criminal

court as witnesses. Depending on jurisdictions, victims of domestic violence may

74

fill out and sign a victim statement that describes physical attacks and injuries
they suffer and that may be used by the police, prosecutors, and the court as
evidence against the batterers. In addition, victims of domestic violence may
request a personal protection order (PPO) issued by the court to protect
themselves from future violence by their abusers. Theoretically, a PPO can
facilitate the monitoring of the abuser’s behavior by the criminal justice system
because the violation of a PPO can result in arrest and prosecution for contempt
of the court. Furthermore, some jurisdictions also organize victims’ assistance
programs afﬁliated with the police department and the prosecutor ofﬁce in an
.
attempt to encourage victims to participate in, and to assist them to go through,
the criminal justice process. Victims’ assistance programs may provide
interpreters for victims who do not speak English, explain criminal justice
process, provide emotional support, and assist victims who are in needs of

obtaining ﬁnancial relief and legal counsel fordivorce or child custody.
The Setting

Although there is no existing ofﬁcial information on characteristics of the
Vietnamese-American population at the state level, literature on immigration
resettlement suggests that socioeconomic conditions and the adaptation of
Vietnamese Americans differ across states, depending on available resettlement
programs and funding (Ofﬁce of Refugee Resettlement, 1993). In addition,
criminal justice policies dealing with domestic violence also vary across states
and police departments. In order to explore women’s diverse experiences with

abuse in different immigration resettlement and criminal justice contexts, I

75

collected data for the study in four different Vietnamese communities
representative of four geographical areas in the US. These included: 1) Orange
County, California (the West Coast); 2) Houston, Texas (the South); 3) Boston,
Massachusetts (the East Coast); 4) Lansing, Michigan (the Midwest).

The Vietnamese community in Orange County (California), with the
nickname “Little Saigon,” is the nation’s largest Vietnamese-American
community. It was estimated that one of every four Vietnamese immigrants to
California since the 1975 had headed for Orange County (Martell & M. Tran,
2000a). From 1990 to 1996 almost 45,000 legal immigrants from Vietnam
arrived in Orange County, adding to the last ofﬁcial count of 71,000 Vietnamese
in Orange County from the 1990 Census (Martell & M. Tran, 2000a). With more
than 100,000 Vietnamese residents and more than 2,000 small businesses
concentrating in four cities, including Westminster, Santa Ana, Garden Grove,
and Anaheim, Little Saigon has become the commercial and spiritual capital of
the Vietnamese-American community in Southern California.

Vietnamese Americans in Orange County have followed the traditional
path to resettlement and integration for new immigrants to the US. The pattern
begins with a core neighborhood in which businesses become surrounded by
homes occupied by new immigrants. As the community matures, and the
immigrants and their children prosper, they move out of the neighborhood and
integrate into the general community (DeWilde, cited in Martelle & M. Tran,

20003)

76

During the last 25 years, the profile of the population in Little Saigon has
changed. Many of the first-wave Vietnamese immigrants who came mostly from
South Vietnam’s privileged and military ranks expanded their residency from the
core neighborhood in Westminster to far more afﬂuent regions, including
Fountain Valley, Irvine, Fullerton, and Pomona, leaving the area for new arrivals
who often came from lower socioeconomic strata. From 1986 to 1996, nearly
two-thirds of Vietnamese immigrants in Orange County were students,
unemployed, or retired. Laborers and manufacturing workers made up the largest
single employment category, accounting for about 10 percent of immigrants
(Martell & M. Tran, 2000a).

Despite the traditional path of the community growth and an assimilation
pattern reﬂected in the abandonment of the Vietnamese language among children
of immigrants, Vietnamese Americans in Little Saigon, particularly the ﬁrst-
generation immigrants, still retain strong ties to the language and culture of their
homeland. A recent media poll showed that almost all Vietnamese in Little
Saigon (93 percent) viewed themselves as more Vietnamese than American, and
two thirds were more comfortable speaking Vietnamese than English (M. Tran,
2000). Because the assimilation to American culture may create changes that
strike at the heart of Vietnamese traditions of family and generational hierarchy,
Vietnamese Americans in Little Saigon considered assimilation a very serious
problem facing the community, only behind crime but above concerns about

discrimination and the job market (Martell & M. Tran, 2000b).

77

Vietnamese—language news and entertainment media are seen as the
greatest force conserving Vietnamese culture in Orange County. A recent survey
of Vietnamese American in Orange County showed that 80 percent of the
respondents said that they received some or all of their news from Vietnamese
newspapers or magazines; more than half listen to Vietnamese-language radio
every day, and three fourths of the young watched Vietnamese videos at least
once a week (Martell & M. Tran, 2000b).

Despite a large concentration of Vietnamese residents in four adjacent
cities (Westminster, Garden Grove, Anaheim, and Santa Ana), and numerous
social services for the general Vietnamese population in the area, services for
Vietnamese victims of domestic violence are scarce. There is no women’s shelter
that has Vietnamese staff located in or near Little Saigon. Although Little Saigon
has a large counseling program for Vietnamese batters, it has no program to help
Vietnamese battered women. Within the criminal justice system, many
Vietnamese Americans have worked for the police force in Orange County for
many years, but only one city (Garden Grove) has a Vietnamese male police
liaison whose responsibility includes providing assistance for all Vietnamese
victims, including victims of domestic violence. Although interpretation services
for those who cannot speak English are provided at different stages in the
criminal justice process (the police and the court), all Vietnamese interpreters,
including those who assist female victims of intimate violence, are male.
Furthermore, there is no‘ Vietnamese staff working in victims’ assistance

programs at Orange County courts.

78

The second site for my study is the Vietnamese community in Houston,
Texas. Located in a southern part of Texas, next to the Gulf Coast, Houston has
become the home for many Vietnamese immigrants since 1975. The Vietnamese
community in Houston experienced a rapid increase in population during the last
10 years with new immigrants from Vietnam and secondary migrants from other
states. At the time of the 1990 Census, about 32,500 Vietnamese immigrants had
resettled in Houston (US Bureau of Census, cited in H. Nguyen & Haines, 1996).
By 1999, the number of Vietnamese Americans in Houston had reached 52,500,
making the Vietnamese community in Houston the third largest in the nation
(Scott Gold & M. Tran, 2000). Besides an increase in population, Vietnamese
community in Houston also expanded geographically. With an initial
concentration around downtown Houston, Vietnamese businesses and residents
have moved outward to the southwest region of Houston to create a large
Vietnamese business center similar to the Little Saigon center in Orange County,
California.

Like those in Little Saigon, Vietnamese media in Houston with more than
a dozen of radio stations, newspapers and magazines, and a Cable TV network,
are a major part of the Vietnamese community life. However, unlike Orange
County’s tightly knitted enclave, Vietnamese residents and businesses in Houston
are less concentrated but more mingled with other ethnic groups in the local area.

Although smaller than Little Saigon in size, the Vietnamese community in
Houston has more services for Vietnamese victims of intimate violence. A large

women’s center with Vietnamese staff is located at the heart of downtown

79

Houston and near the Vietnamese business center. There are also many
Vietnamese in the police force, and Vietnamese police officers often provide
interpretation services in person or on the phone for those who have contacts with
the police but cannot speak English. Particularly, the Houston Police Department
has a Vietnamese woman police liaison whose responsibility is providing
assistance for Vietnamese victims of domestic violence. Vietnamese staff in the
police force and the women’s center also contact Vietnamese staff in other social
service agencies, including the court and social welfare ofﬁces, to coordinate
their services for Vietnamese victims of domestic violence.

Another site for my study is a small Vietnamese community in Lansing
(Michigan). Because of cold weather, few Vietnamese immigrants chose
Michigan to resettle. Although there are no available ofﬁcial statistics for the
Vietnamese-American population in Lansing, estimates by leaders in the local
Vietnamese community were that 3,000 to 4,000 Vietnamese immigrants have
resettled in Lansing since 1975.

Despite a small Vietnamese population, the Vietnamese community in
Lansing also has some resources to serve the special cultural needs of its
population. The community has its own Catholic church and Buddhist temple
where Vietnamese residents can meet together and participate in many cultural
activities. There are also a few services for Vietnamese victims of domestic
violence. Interpretation assistance for those who cannot speak English is

coordinated by the court and a local refugee service agency. In addition, a victim

80

assistance program also has a Vietnamese volunteer who often assists Vietnamese
victims who have language difficulties.

The fourth site of the study is the Vietnamese community in Boston,
Massachusetts. Located in the East Coast, Boston has cold weather similar to
that in Lansing. However, the Vietnamese community in Boston has experienced
an increase in population during the last ten years due to a good labor market in
the local area. By the time of the 1990 Census, almost 10,000 Vietnamese
immigrants had chosen Boston and its surrounding areas as their home. By 1999,
it was estimated that almost 12,000 Vietnamese had resettled in greater Boston,
an increase of 20 percent (Scott Gold & M. Tran, 2000). Most new Vietnamese
immigrants live and do their businesses in Dorchester, a small city located in the
outskirts of downtown Boston. Dorchester contains a small Vietnamese enclave
but Vietnamese Americans are often to mingle with the mainstream population.

Although the Vietnamese community in Boston is much smaller than Little
Saigon, its residents can access many more services for Vietnamese victims of
domestic violence. An Asian women’s shelter in Boston is a main service
provider for Vietnamese women who experience domestic violence. In addition,
other agencies, including the Boston Police Department, health care and refugee
resettlement agencies, also have domestic violence units staffed with Vietnamese
employees who provide counseling, interpretation and referral services for
Vietnamese victims of domestic violence. Similar to those in Houston,
Vietnamese staff in different agencies also coordinate their services to serve the

diverse needs of Vietnamese victims of domestic violence.

81

With regard to domestic violence policies, all four locations apply
mandatory arrest policies that require law enforcement ofﬁcials to make arrests
without warrants when there is evidence that domestic violence has happened.
However, there are differences in terms of the level of rigidity in the
implementation of mandatory arrest policies. For example, Orange County is
more likely to apply “zero-tolerance” under mandatory arrest policy while law
enforcement officers in Houston to some extent take into account women’s
preference for arrest.

There are also variances in court proceedings of domestic violence cases
as well as the levels of punishment for domestic violence offenders in these four
locations. Cases are processed more quickly in California and Lansing than in
Houston and Boston. Domestic violence offenders in Orange County also receive
harsher treatment. A sentence of three years on probation, one to three months of
community services, and 52 weeks on counseling for the least severe case (first-
time misdemeanor domestic violence cases) is typical. On the other hand,
punishment for a similar offense in Lansing and Houston is a combination of 6
months on probation and 15 weeks of counseling.

With regard to restraining orders, a trial judge in domestic violence cases
in Orange County can issue a restraining order against an intimate violence
offender on the basis of his or her judgment regardless of the victim’s request; if
the victim does not want the restraining order issued by the judge, he or she has
to request its removal. On the other hand, victims in Houston can obtain an

emergency restraining order via police officers who respond to the victims’ calls

82

and who will contact a judge on behalf of the victims. In Lansing and Boston,
victims must go to the family court to request a restraining order.

In summary, the four sites of the study have many differences in terms of
population sizes, degrees of ethnic integration, the salience of Vietnamese culture
in community life, criminal justice policies regarding domestic violence, and
services provided for Vietnamese victims of domestic abuse. As revealed in the
next chapters, these differences have an impact on the experiences that

Vietnamese-American women have with the American criminal justice system.

Sample and Data

Data for the study were drawn from two major sources: 1) in-depth
interviews with a core sample of Vietnamese-American women who were
involved in intimate violence as victims and offenders, and 2) surveys of a
sample randomly selected in the general Vietnamese-American population. In
addition, a third component of data collection process focused on social and legal
services for Vietnamese-American women involved in intimate violence.

Core sample and data.

Consistent with the feminist standpoint approach that emphasizes the
locations and the perspectives of study participants as essential for understanding
social phenomenon, a major source of data was interviews with Vietnamese-
American women who were involved in domestic violence with an intimate
partner, including husband, ex-husband, boyfriend, and ex-boyfriend. Given the
nature of the qualitative-case-study method that aimed at providing an in-depth

and comprehensive understanding of a social phenomenon, I used the purposive

83

sample technique to select a core sample for the study. In order to identify
factors associated with women’s decisions to use criminal justice services,II
selected both women who had contacts with the criminal justice system and those
who did not. Women who had contacts with the criminal justice system included
victims and offenders.

Different techniques were used to select women participants for the core
sample. The majority of women participants (23 women) were recruited through
referrals from victim service agencies, including a victim assistance program (in
Lansing), two women’s center (in Boston and Houston), a batterers’ counseling
program (in Orange County), and a public law center (in Orange County). The
rest of the women participants were recruited through referrals from my
acquaintances (4 women) and my requests for participants during two Vietnamese
radio talk shows in Houston and Orange County (7 women). These efforts yielded
a core sample of 34 Vietnamese-American women.

In-depth interviews with 34 women participants were guided by a semi-
structured questionnaire consisting of both closed- and open-ended questions.
Closed-ended questions were used to collect demographic information, and open-
ended questions for information related to the contexts of family lives, women’s
experiences of and responses to abuse, their perceptions of and experiences with
the criminal justice system as victims and offenders, their feelings about the
intimate relationship with their abusers, and perceived and actual consequences

of using criminal justice services to deal with violence.

84

Depending on the situation of each woman participant, interviews took
two to three hours. The majority of interviews (28 interviews) were conducted
face-to-face.2 I also conducted 6 interviews via telephone according to the
request of the women participants. All interviews, except one, were conducted in
the Vietnamese language. In one interview, Vietnamese was mingled with
English because the woman participant was not ﬂuent in Vietnamese but still
preferred to use Vietnamese in the conversation.3 The interviews were recorded in
writing in Vietnamese, and Vietnamese interview transcripts were translated into
English for data processing. Since there were Vietnamese terms and idioms that
could not be translated into English without losing some original meanings, both
the Vietnamese and English versions of interview transcripts were used for
analysis.

Survey sample and data.

Since a large number of Vietnamese immigrants came to the US after the
1990 Census, demographic information from the 1990 Census may not reﬂect
characteristics of the current Vietnamese-American population. Therefore,
surveys of a random sample of Vietnamese immigrants were conducted to obtain
up-to-date demographic information of Vietnamese Americans. At the same

time, the surveys were used to understand the perceptions of Vietnamese

 

2. I conducted 20 interviews in Lansing, Houston, and Orange County. Eight other interviews
were conducted in Boston by trained interviewers who worked for a project studying the
dynamics of wife abuse among Vietnamese Americans in Boston.

3. Many Vietnamese do not consider English as appropriate for conversations between
Vietnamese. A Vietnamese who use English to talk with other Vietnamese is seen as
arrogant.

85

Americans about domestic violence and criminal justice interventions into the
problem. These two types of information were used as a baseline to assess the
representativeness of the core sample.

The random sample of Vietnamese Americans was selected in the same
four locations where the core sample was selected (Orange County, Houston,
Boston, and Lansing). The number of survey participants in Orange County and
Houston were proportionate with the sizes of Vietnamese-American populations
in each location, but over-sampling was applied in Boston and Lansing to obtain
a sample size large enough for statistical analysis.4 A number of survey trials
were conducted to estimate response rates. Based on the estimated response
rates, potential participants in each area were randomly selected from a list of all
Vietnamese surnames found in each local telephone directory. The actual
response rate was highest in Houston (45 percent), followed by Orange County
(40 percent) and Boston (38 percent); the lowest response rate was in Lansing (36
percent).

The survey, which was guided by a questionnaire using mostly closed-
ended questions and one open-ended question, was conducted by telephone in
either Vietnamese or English, depending on the preference of the respondents.
For each household represented by a telephone number, one adult (over 18 years

old) was asked to participate in the survey. The questions were designed to

 

4. According to a recent estimate by the Los Angeles Time, more than 102,000 Vietnamese-
Americans live in Orange County, almost 53,000 in Houston, and 12,000 in Boston. The
Vietnamese population in Lansing was estimated by Vietnamese community leaders as being
between 3,000 and 4,000.

86

collect up-to—date information on respondents’ demographic characteristics (age,
gender, marital status, time spent in the US, immigrant status and generation,
education, employment, and income) and their perception of intimate violence
occurring in Vietnamese-American families and criminal justice approaches to
the problem. Each interview took 20 to 30 minutes. Overall, 440 surveys were
conducted with 224 participants in Orange County, 145 in Houston, 40 in Boston,
and 32 in Lansing. This sample size was large enough to produce results with a
margin of error of 5 points at the confidence level of 95 percent.5

Community sample and data.

Feminist scholars have emphasized the reliance on women subjects’
experiences to understand social phenomena (Gorelick, 1991; Harding, 1991;
Smith, 1990). However, the views of those who are knowledgeable of
community life and who have contacts with women involved in intimate domestic
as victims and offenders can provide additional understanding of the social and
cultural contexts in which battering and responses to abuse occur. Writing about
rape, R. Campbell (1996, p. 39) reasons that people who advocate for rape
victims can provide unique information because they stand with “one foot in the
world of the . . . victims and one foot in the world of community help systems,

and carry the responsibility of mutual translation.”

 

5. Assuming that the population is inﬁnite or larger than a couple of thousands, the formula for
the size of a survey sample representative of the studied population is as follows: it =
Z(ot/2)2 [(1t)(1-1t)]/B2 where o. is the level of conﬁdence; B is the margin of error; it is
population proportion. Given a margin of error at 5 points, a level of conﬁdence at 95
percent, and a conservative estimate of population proportion at .5 (50 percent), the sample

87

For the present study. inforztiazzon about the legal settings and social
services for \'ietnamese-.-\mer1can \\ omen \\ ho \\ ere in\ol\ed intimate \iolcncc
was important to understand women's experiences with the system as \ ictims and
offenders. This information was drawn from 11 interuews conducted \\ith
Vietnamese Americans who worked in social service agencies. the criminal
justice and legal systems, and the media. Most respondents participated in t‘ace~
to-face interviews each of which lasted about an hour. The interviews were
unstructured but oriented toward talking about the criminal justice process in
intimate violence cases, domestic violence policies. legal and social services for
victims and offenders of intimate violence in each local area. A majority of
participants also participated in one or two follow-up telephone interviews. I
also relied on information obtained through my volunteer work for a victinis'
service agency in Lansing, Michigan.

My ethnic background and my personal experience with immigration and
resettlement process actually facilitated and improved the data collection proceim~
and the quality of the information that I gathered. As a Vietnamese who grew up
in Vietnam, I could speak the language of the study participants and understand
their culture. Using Vietnamese, and sometimes a mix of Vietnameac and
English as it was commonly used among young Vietnamese Americans, and
understanding Vietnamese culture facilitated the interview process and helped me

understand the subtle nuance of the participants’ responses, capecially when they

 

size n = (1,96i7' [L5Hlo..‘5;j/(,0.‘.)2 =- 384 {Agreati 5t Inniay, 1926, Chapter 5, '."z.'.:.'.'.z.
Inference: Estimation).

0C
‘1‘

were related to issues considered as taboo in Vietnamese culture, such as
sexuality.

The rapport that I had with the study participants also resulted from my
personal experience with migration and resettlement. As a ﬁrst-generation
immigrant, I had experienced many difﬁculties faced by most Vietnamese
immigrants, including language barriers, cultural shock, economic hardship, and
isolation. Because most respondents also grew up in Vietnam and came to the
US as adults, my experience with migration and resettlement helped me quickly
develop a good rapport with the respondents, thus facilitating the interview

process.
Analytical Procedure

I used both quantitative and qualitative techniques to analyze data for the
study. When it was appropriate, information‘obtained from in-depth interviews
was quantified. Quantitative analysis was used to: I) examine demographic
characteristics of the survey sample and the core sample, 2) examine perceptions
of Vietnamese Americans about domestic violence and criminal justice
approaches to the problem, and 3) determine the representativeness of the core
sample.

For qualitative analysis, I used three different but related coding
techniques, including open coding, axial coding, and systematic coding, to
analyze qualitative data obtained from 34 interviews with women in the core
sample and 11 participants in the community sample (see Strauss, 1987). Open

coding was performed by thoroughly examining each interview transcript to

89

reveal concepts that seemed to fit the data. Both sociology codes and in vivo
codes were used. I used my knowledge of the field under study (domestic
violence and immigration) to create sociology codes. Based on the language of
the respondents, in vivo codes were created. To protect the anonymity of the
study participants, a pseudonym was assigned to each participant in the core
sample.

I performed axial coding by analyzing codes that had been previously
created in open coding to identify core categories and sub-categories of the main
axes of research questions. The main axes included: 1) the extent to which
Vietnamese-American women rely on the criminal justice system to deal with
domestic violence, 2) factors associated with women’s decision to use criminal
justice services, 3) women’s contacts with the criminal justice system as victims
and offender of intimate violence, 4) consequences of criminal justice
intervention, and 5) the perceptions about solution to the problem among
Vietnamese Americans and women who are involved in intimate violence.

While doing axial coding, I also performed systematic coding by analyzing
categories as well as sub-categories and relating them to the theoretical
framework of the study. The analysis of axial coding and systematic coding
focused on the relationships between categories as well as between categories and
sub-categories. I also included and analyzed categories and sub-categories that
were not related to the theoretical framework to assess its value in helping
explain social phenomena (see Appendix 1 for more explanations of data coding

and the list of coding categories and sub-categories).

90

Sample Characteristics

Core sample.

Thirty-four in-depth interviews were conducted with Vietnamese-
American women in four areas, including Orange County (10 women); Houston
(9 women); Boston (8 women); Lansing (7 women). By the time of the
interviews, all of the women had experienced physical and emotional abused by
an intimate partner, and 6 women had been also charged with a domestic offense.

All of the women were born in Vietnam, but they were all different in
many aspects. The age of the women ranged from 20 years to 58 years with the
median of 40 years. Eight women (23.5 percent) were in their twenties; another
eight (23.5 percent) were in their thirties, eleven (32.5 percent) were in their
forties, and seven (20.5 percent) were in their fifties.

The majority of the women came to the US as adults. Nineteen women
(56 percent) arrived in the US when they were in their twenties and thirties, and
seven (20.5 percent) came when they were over forty years old. Only eight (23.5
percent) came when they were less than 20 years old. With regard to ethnicity,
most of the women were Vietnamese. Only four were Amerasian, and one was

Chinese-Vietnamese (see Table 1).6

 

6. The term “Amerasian” is use to indicate a person whose mother was Asian and whose father
was an American who served in American missions in Asian countries.

91

Table 1.

Core Sample: Ethnicity, Actual Age, and Age at the Time of Resettlement

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actual Age at the Time Ethnicity Number (%)
Age of Resettlement
Median 40 years 27 years Vietnamese 29 (85%)
Age Group Number (%) Number (%) Amerasian 4 (12%)
Under 20 - 8 (32.5%) Chinese- 1 (3%)
Vietnamese
From 20 to 29 8 (23.5%) 10 (29.5%) Total 34 (100%)
From 30 to 39 8 (35.5%) 9 (26.5%)
From 40 to 49 11 (32.5%) 5 (14.5%)
50 and over 7 (20.5%) 2 (6%)
Total 34 (100%) 34 (100%)

 

Women participants came to the US in different situations and by different

means. Twelve women (35 percent) escaped Vietnam, either by themselves, with

their parents, or with their husbands, and arrived in a country in Southeast Asia

before being allowed to enter the US. Four women (12 percent) came to US

because they were Amerasian. Eleven women (32 percent) accompanied or were

sponsored by their husbands and six women (18 percent) accompanied or were

sponsored by their parents to the US. Only one woman (3 percent) came to the

US before 1975 as a student (see Table 2).

The time the women had lived in the US ranged from 1 to 28 years.

the majority (20 women or 59 percent), each had been in the US less than 10

92

 

For

years; for nine other women (26.5 percent), each spent from 10 to 20 years in the

US; for the last five women (14.5 percent), each had been in the US for more than

20 years (see Table 2). Of 34 women, 14 (or 41 percent) all ready obtained

American citizenship; 13 (or 38 percent) were US permanent residents, and 7 (or

21 percent) were legal aliens (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Core Sange: Types of Migrption, Time in the US, and Legal Status

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Type of Migration Time in the US Legal Status
Number (%) Number (%) Number (%)

Escape 12 (35%) Less than 10 20 (59%) US Citizen 14 (41%)
years

Amerasian 4 (12%) From 10 to 9 (26.5%) Permanent 13 (38%)
20 years Resident

Dependent 11 (32%) From 21 to 5 (14.5%) Legal Alien 7 (21%)

of Husband 30 years

Dependent 6 (18%) Total 34 (100%) Total 34 (100%)

of Parents

International 1 (3%)

Student

Total 34 (100%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was diversity among the women in terms of their relationships with

their abusers and length of relationships. A majority of the women (18 women or

53 percent) started their intimate relationships (marriage or living together) in the

US; 15 women were married in Vietnam (44 percent), and 1 woman got married

in a refugee camp. Most women had same-ethnic partners; ﬁve had partners who

 

were of different ethnic backgrounds, including Chinese-Vietnamese, Laotian,
Iraqi, and American.

The lengths of women’s relationships ranged from 1 year to 35 years.
Sixteen women (47 percent) had a relationship shorter than 10 years; for nine
other women (26.5 percent), each had a relationship that lasted between 10 to 20
years; nine other women (26.5 percent) had a relationship longer than 20 years.
At the time of the interviews, about half of the women (16 women or 47 percent)
were legally married or had a live-in boyfriend; 12 women (or 35 percent) were
separate from their partners, either legally or because of a restraining order; six
women (or 18 percent) were divorced (see Table 3).

With regard to children, most of the women (30 women or 88 percent)
had children. Of these women, 14 women had 1 child; 7 women had 2
children; 6 women had 3 children, and 3 women had more than 3 children.
The majority of these children (65 percent) were under 18 years old (see Table
3).

The level of educational achievement and English proficiency of the
core sample was lower than in the general Vietnamese-American population.
Only 9 percent of the core sample had a college degree (earned in the US)
compared to 23 percent of the survey sample (reported below) and 17.5
percent of the Vietnamese American population at the 1990 Census (reported

in Rumbaut, 1996).

94

Table 3.

Core szimple: Types of Relationship, Length of Relationship, and Children

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Type of Relationship Length of Relationship Children
Number (%) Number Number
(%) (%)

Husband/wife 14 (41%) Less than 10 16 (47%) No 4 (12%)
years children

Boy/girlfriend 2 (6%) From 10 to 20 9 (26.5%) 1 child 14 (41%)
years

Divorced 6 (18%) From 21 to 30 7 (20.5%) 2 children 7 (20.5%)
years

Separation 12 (35%) More than 30 2 (6%) 3 children 9 (26.5%)
years or more

Total 34 (100%) Total 34 (100%) Total 34 (100%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the women did not understand English very well.

Only three

women (or 9 percent) considered their English as good, and two thirds of the

women (62 percent) considered their English as weak. This proportions were

lower than those in the survey sample reported below (41 percent and 22 percent

respectively). However, the proportion of women in the core sample who had

English difﬁculties was similar to that in the general Vietnamese-American

population at the 1990 Census (61 percent) (see Table 4 and Table 7).

Despite their lack of language skills, the majority of the women worked

(24 women or 71 percent), and most of the working-women worked in manual

jobs ('18 women or 53 percent); only two women worked as professionals (6

percent). The employment rate of the core sample was also similar to that of the

95

 

survey sample reported below (69 percent), but the survey sample has a higher
proportion of professionals (22 percent) (see Table 4 and Table 8).

Table 4.
Core Sample: Education. English Proﬁciencygnd Occupation

 

 

 

 

 

Education English Proﬁciency Occupation
Number Number (%) Number
(%) (%)
ESL and Vocational 20 (59%) Good 3 (9%) Not working 10 (29%)
Didn’t ﬁnish HS 5 (14.5%) Average 10 (29%) Manual jobs 18 (53%)
High School 3 (9%) Weak 21 (62%) Clerical 1 (3%)

 

College, no degree 2 (6%) Total 34 (100%) Technician 1 (3%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Associate degree 1 (3%) Professional 2 (6%)
Bachelor 3 (9%) Business 2 (6%)
Total 34 (100%) Total 34 (100%)

 

Survey sample.

Telephone surveys were conducted with 440 participants including 246
women (56 percent) and 194 men (44 percent). Most of the participants were born
in Vietnam (97 percent); only 11 participants (3 percent) were born in the US.
The majority of respondents (56 percent) were married; 33 percent were single;
9.5 percent were separate or divorced, and 2.5 percent were widows (see Table
5). The age of the participants ranged from 18 years to 75 years with a mean of
40 years. Their age at the time of resettlement in the US ranged from 0 year

(those who were born in the US) to 69 years with a mean of 29 years. The time

96

 

they had lived in the US ranged from 1 year to 30 years with a mean of 11 years

(see Table 6).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 5.
Survey Sample: Place Birth, Sex,and Marital Sta_tu_s_
Place of Birth Sex Marital Status
Number (%) Number (%) Number (%)
Vietnam 429 (97.5%) Male 194 (44%) Single 145 (33%)
US 11 (2.5%) Female 246 (56%) Married 243 (55%)
Total 440 (100%) Total 440 (56%) Other 52 (12%)
Total 440 (100%)
Table 6.
Survey Sjarmile: Age and Time in the US
Actual Age Age At the Time of Time in the US
Resettlement
Range 18 to 75 years 0 to 69 years 1 to 30 years
Mean 40 years 29 years 11 years

 

 

 

 

As for educational attainment, employment, and occupation, 11
respondents (2.5 percent) were born in the US and did not have formal education
in Vietnam. One hundred respondents (24 percent) had not ﬁnished and 176
respondents (42.5 percent) had completed high school in Vietnam; only 40
respondents (1 percent) had a college degree or higher degree earned in Vietnam.
Less than half of all respondents (49 percent) had some formal education in the

US, including 100 respondents (24 percent) who had a college degree or higher,

97

 

 

77 respondents (19 percent) who had some college education, and 19 respondents
(5 percent) who had finished, and 8 respondents (2 percent) who had not
completed, a high school education (see Table 7).

With regard to English proﬁciency, one third of all respondents (137
respondents) said that they had an average level of English proﬁciency; less than
one third (127 respondents) considered their English as good, and only 41
respondents (10 percent) said that their English was very good. On the other
hand, a quarter of all respondents (92 respondents or 22 percent) considered their
English as weak, and 16 respondents (4 percent) said that they did not understand

any English at all (see Table 7).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 7.
Survey Sapiple: Education and Language Proficiency
Education (N = 414) Language Proﬁciency
(N = 413)

In Vietnam In the US English Number (%)

Number (%) Number (%) Proﬁciency
No formal education ‘ 10 (2.5%) 210 (51%) Very Good 41 (10%)
Didn’t ﬁnish HS 100 (24%) 8 (2%) Good 127 (31%)
High School 176 (42.5%) 19 (5%) Average 137 (32%)
College, no degree 58 (14%) 48 (12%) Weak 92 (22%)
Associate degree 30 (7.5%) 29 (7%) Not at all 16 (4%)
Bachelor and higher 40 (10%) 100 (24%) Total 413 (100%)
Total 414 (100%) 414 ( 100%)

 

 

 

 

 

98

 

About employment and occupation, 97 respondents (23.5 percent) were
professionals; 40 respondents (10 percent) were technicians; 122 respondents (30
percent) were manual workers; 15 respondents (3.5 percent) worked in clerical
jobs; 31 respondents (7.5 percents) were self-employed; 65 respondents (16
percent) were students; 13 respondents (3 percent) were retirees; only 27

respondents (6.5 percent) were unemployed (see Table 8).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 8.
Survey Sample: Occupation and Income

Occupation (N = 410) Income (N = 396)
Types of Occupation Number (%) Groups of Income Number (%)
Professional 97 (23.5%) Over 35,000 106 (27%)
Technician 40 (10%) 25,001-35,000 50 (12.5%)
Clerical 15 (3.5%) 15,000 - 25,000 78 (20%)
Manual laborer 122 (30%) Under $15,000 93 (23%)
Self-employed 31 (7.5%) No income 69 (17.5%)
Student 65' (16%) Total 396 ( 100%)
Retired 13 (3%)
Unemployed 27 (6.5%)
Total 410 (100%)

 

 

 

 

Community sample.

The community sample consisted of 11 Vietnamese Americans,
including 7 women and 5 men, who worked in different occupations, but all

had some contacts with either victims or offenders of intimate violence. Of

99

 

11 participants, two were hosts of two Vietnamese radio talk shows, one in

Houston and one in Little Saigon; three were counselors for batterers’

counseling programs in Boston and Orange County; two were coordinators of

two victim service agencies in Houston and Boston; two were police liaisons

in Boston and Houston; one was a social worker in Orange County, and one

was defense lawyer in Orange County (see Table 9).

Table 9.

Communig/ Sample: Occupation, Sex,and Location

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Occupation Sex Location
Male Female Orange County Houston Boston

Talk Show Host - 2 1 1 -
Police Liaison 1 1 1 l -
Defense Lawyer l - l

Batterers’ Program 2 1 2 - l
Victims’ Services - 2 - 1 1
Social Worker - 1 1 - -
Total 4 7 6 3 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

100

 

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS

For Vietnamese-American women, law prohibiting domestic violence in
the US is a new resource to deal with intimate violence. Calling the police when
violence occurs, working with the criminal justice system during the criminal
justice process, and obtaining a restraining order to prevent future attacks from
husbands/partners are a few ways that women can use to respond to violence at
home. However, literature on domestic violence suggests that Asian-American
women in general and Vietnamese-American women in particular do not often
rely on the criminal justice approach to deal with intimate violence (Rasche,
1989; Bui & Morash, 1999).

As people are expected to conform to the group’s norms, a lack of reliance
on the criminal justice system on the part of Vietnamese-American women to
avoid abuse may reﬂect the general view of the group toward intimate abuse and
the criminal justice approach to the problem. Because Vietnamese family
traditions and traditional gender practices emphasized women’ subordination to
men, Vietnamese Americans may not see intimate violence as a real crime, thus
they may not consider the criminal justice approach to wife abuse as appropriate.
On the other hand, women’s behavior, including their help-seeking behavior, can
be a product of social interactions that affect women’s choice of approaches to
deal with violence. In order to understand help-seeking behavior among
Vietnamese-American women, it is important to explore attitudes of Vietnamese

Americans toward the criminal justice approach to intimate violence as well as

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various structural and cultural forces that may affect women’s reliance on the

criminal justice system to avoid abuse.

Perceptions of Vietnamese Americans about
the Criminal Justice Approach to Intimate Violence

During the last two decades, there have been substantial changes in
criminal laws dealing with domestic violence. Under the consensus approach,
crimes are actions that violate social norms about appropriate behavior, and
criminal laws reﬂect social values and are created to reinforce them (Stalans &
Lurigio, 1995). Many of the changes in legal norms and practices regarding wife
assaults during the last 20 years or so were initiated by efforts of the women’s
movement and feminist groups that campaigned for a criminal justice approach to
wife assault (Corsilles, 1994; Hilton, 1989; Pleck, 1987, Wanless, 1996). For
many Vietnamese Americans, laws and policies dealing with intimate abuse in
the US are new features of American life that may not consistent with
Vietnamese family traditions and gender practices that emphasized conciliation
and women’s subordination to men. Yet, the process of adaptation can change
attitudes of. Vietnamese Americans toward violence in the family and their
approaches to the problem.

A survey was conducted with a sample of 440 Vietnamese Americans to
understand their perceptions about intimate violence and criminal justice
approaches toward the problem in the US (see Chapter 2 for the description of the
survey and sample characteristics). In the survey, intimate violence was deﬁned

as the use of force or threat of force by a person against his or her intimate

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partner, including husband/wife, girl/boyfriend, ex-husband/wife, and ex-
girl/boyfriend. Respondents were asked about their perceptions of intimate
violence in their communities and their awareness of law and policies dealing
with the problem. The survey also obtained information about their attitudes
towards government interventions into intimate violence and various criminal
justice approaches to the problem, including arrest, prosecution, and different
forms of punishment applied to intimate violence offenders.

Results of the survey showed that Vietnamese Americans had a positive
attitude toward government interventions into intimate violence. A majority of
respondents (72 percent) viewed intimate violence as a problem in their
communities; 41 percent considered the problem as serious or very serious, and
31 percent considered the problem as not serious. Most respondents (97 percent),
regardless of their gender, were aware of the illegality of intimate violence in the
US. With regard to their awareness of criminal justice approaches to intimate
violence, 80 percent of respondents were aware of arrest policies, but a smaller
proportion of respondents understood that those who committed domestic
violence would be prosecuted (64 percent) and would receive criminal
convictions (49 percent).

Despite differences in perceptions of the seriousness of the problem and in
their awareness of criminal justice approaches, a substantial majority of
respondents favored government interventions to stop domestic violence (mean =

4.5 on a 5 point scale where 5 indicated the highest level of support); women had

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a significantly higher mean score than men (4.6 and 4.4 respectively).7 In
addition, most respondents agreed that police should be called when domestic
violence occurred (mean = 4.4), with no difference between men and women.8
With regard to specific approaches to deal with the problem, court mandated
counseling received the highest support (mean = 4.4), followed by arrest (mean =
4.0), ﬁnes and probation (mean = 3.8), and criminal prosecution (mean = 3.5); a
jail term received the lowest support from respondents (mean = 3.3).

In summary, although Vietnamese Americans came from a country with
different cultural values regarding family relations, they had favorable attitudes
toward the view that intimate violence is a social problem, and they supported
criminal justice approaches in majorities of situations. The degree to which these
positive attitudes were consistent with abused women’s help-seeking behavior,

and what factors affect women’s reliance on criminal justice approaches to avoid

abuse will be examined in next sections.

Vietnamese-American Women’s Experience with
the Criminal Justice System as Victims

For many Vietnamese-American women, the process of resettlement in the
United States has opened new possibilities that had been previously unavailable

or traditionally suppressed in their country of origin. Educational and

 

7. In a 5 point scale, 1 = strongly disagree (in all situations); 2 = disagree (in most situations);
3 = somewhat agree (in some situations); 4 = agree (in most situations); 5 = strongly agree
(in all situations).

8. Sixty-two percent of respondents strongly agreed, and twenty-six percent agreed, with the
statement, “Do you agree that the government should intervene to stop domestic violence?”
Sixty percents of respondents strongly agreed, and twenty-four percent agreed, with the
statement, “Do you agree that the police should be called when domestic violence occurs?”

104

employment opportunities can help Vietnamese-American women increase their
economic power. Gender practices that emphasize the principle of gender
equality can also help. improve women’s status in the family. Particularly,
domestic violence laws and policies have been created to help women avoid
violence at home. However, many Vietnamese-American women still experience
physically abused by their husbands/partners. This section examines how
Vietnamese American women rely on the Criminal Justice to avoid intimate

violence.
Women Victims’ Experiences of Intimate Violence

As expected, given the purposive sample, all 34 women who participated
in the study experienced many forms of abuse by their husbands/partners, but
their experiences of abuse varied. Most of the women suffered both physical and
emotional abuse; one woman experienced only emotional abuse. The majority of
women who began their married lives in Vietnam experienced abuse in both
countries, and even in refugee camps where they were waiting to be accepted as
immigrants to the US. For two women, physical abuse stopped when they came
to the US, but emotional abuse increased.

Physical and emotional abuse by husbands/partners took many forms.
Physical abuse could range from throwing and destroying things in the home or
things belonging to wives/partners, to threats of physical attacks (threats to hit
and to kill wives/partners or wives/partners’ relatives), and actual physical
attacks (slapping, kicking, choking, punching, whipping, pushing, and forcing

wives/partners to have sex). In some situations, weapons, including a gun, knife,

105

hammer, wooden stick, and electric cord, were also involved. The most frequent
forms of emotional abuse by husbands/partners included swearing and yelling at
wives/partners, calling their names and calling wives/partners stupid and crazy in
front of others. Some men hurt themselves or threatened to commit suicide to
force their wives/partners to satisfy their demands. Some women also
experienced harassment and stalking by their ex-husbands/partners after
separation and divorce.

Many women also fought back against their husbands/partners’ physical
attacks. While only a few women resorted to physical force to ﬁght back, many
other women used words. The most common forms of verbal ﬁghts were
swearing and yelling, using bad words, or calling name.

A majority of the women suffered physical injuries resulting from abuse.
The most common forms of injury were bruises, scratches, black eyes and
swellings, but many women also had more severe injuries, including dislocated
joints, broken teeth, bleeding, and internal injuries. In many situations, severely
injured women did not to get medical attention because they did not want other
people know about the problems. Two women in the study were beaten so
severely that they couldn’t walk for several days but did not go to the hospital to
see doctors. Abused women were taken to the hospital or the emergency room
only in extreme cases where they passed out or had heavy bleeding.

Most women also experienced stress and depressive symptoms resulting
from physical and emotional abuse, including 1055 of appetite, insomnia and

constant headaches. For some women, abuse caused unbearable stress that led to

106

attempts to commit suicide. As one woman, whose husband often destroyed
things in the home when the couple had conﬂicts, explained:

I didn’t get physical injuries, but my mental health became deteriorated. . .

I attempted to commit suicide several times. I told him [her husband], “If

you want me to die to satisfy you, I will die, but do not make the home

look like hell like this.” (TXl)

Migration to the US has changed women’s experiences of abuse in some
ways. For a few women participants, physical abuse got worse, or only began,
when the couples came to the US. However, many other women who had been
abused in Vietnam experienced less physical abuse, and more emotional or verbal
abuse, once they arrived in the US. They attributed these changes to the domestic
violence law in the US. As these women explained,

He [her husband] began to physically abuse me after he was released from

the re-education camp. Once we arrived in the US, he did not physically

abuse as much as he had done to me in Vietnam. Probably he learned from

his friends that wife beating was illegal in the US. (BS104)

His physical abuse stopped because he was afraid of the law in the US, but
threats and emotional abuse became worse. (BSlOl)

Awareness of the prohibition of domestic violence in the .US also caused
many husbands to change their attack strategies to prevent outsiders from
knowing about the abuse. For example, instead of slapping into the face of their
wives/partners where injuries could be seen by outsiders (the third party), many
men hit their wives/partners in parts of the body where signs of injuries could be
covered by clothes. As these woman explained,

He used to slapped and punched into my face. One time he kicked into my

mouth and caused me two broken teeth and bleeding lips. This happened

in the street. One passenger saw the incident, stopped his car and came to
rescue me. The passenger attempted to call the police but I asked him not

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to call. . . . After that incident, my husband didn’t hit me in the face.

Instead, he punched me in my chest and my back, or used a stick to hit me

at my legs. (CA9)

He tied me on the bed and whipped me with an electric cord. He whipped

me in the buttock, so that no signs of injuries could be seen by others. . . I

got bleeding. He whipped me the next day, and the next day until I

couldn’t walk. (TX3)

In short, women who participated in the study experienced many forms of
abuse, and many suffered severe abuse over years. However, most of them did

not seek help from the police when violence began to occur, as it will be revealed

in the following section.
Contacts with Law Enforcement

As expected, given the purposive sample, a majority of the women
participants in the core sample had contacts with the police as victims of intimate
violence. Of 34 women participants, 24 (70 percent) had contact with the police
as victims. Nineteen women called the police to report violent incidents; two
women asked their neighbors to call the police, and one woman went to the police
station to ask for help. In two other cases, heath care workers who learned about
the incident from the victim and a store-owner who witnessed the abuse called
the police to report the abuse despite the oppositions of the women.

Due to the nature of a purposive sample, a high report rate among abused
women in this study may not reﬂect the report rate among women in the
Vietnamese-American population. Data drawn from interviews with Vietnamese
service providers and law enforcement officials suggest that report rates of

domestic abuse among the Vietnamese-American population were much lower

108

than the rates among Vietnamese-American women in this study. Estimates by
social service providers were that about 10 to 15 percent of intimate abuse
incidents among Vietnamese Americans were reported to the police (H. Nguyen,
personal communication, March 19, 2000).

Police arrest reports suggested even lower report rate of domestic violence
among Vietnamese—Americans. For example, each year in Houston, a city of
1,750,000, including 60,000 Vietnamese Americans, the police made an average
of 24,000 reports on domestic violence, of which 180 reports were made on
domestic violence among Vietnamese Americans. In addition, there were 3,600
to 4,800 walk-in reports by abused women, of which three to ﬁve walk-in reports
were made by Vietnamese-American women, who did not call the police when
violence occurred but wanted to press charges later. Compared to the number of
reports in the general Houston population, it appeared that the number of reports
among Vietnamese Americans were disproportionately low. Vietnamese
Americans in Houston were 5 times less likely to call 911, and 40 times less
likely to make walk-in reports than their American counterparts. Given the report
rates of 50 percent among the general population (Bureau of Justice Statistic,
1995), the report rates among Vietnamese Americans in Houston were minuscule.
In Lansing, a city with 4,000 Vietnamese, police made less than 10 reports on

intimate violence among Vietnamese Americans in the entire year of 1999.

109

Factors Affecting Women Victims’ Decision to Seek Help from the
Police

Data for the study suggests that women’s decisions to seek, or not to seek,
help from the police are not affected by a single factor. Instead, a combination of
socioeconomic conditions, immigration status, cultural values, and emotional
attachment interact with each other on different levels to inﬂuence women’s
help-seeking behavior. Because women possessed different social locations and
resources, and experienced different levels of abuse, the salience of each factor in
women’s experiences with the police varies accordingly with their life’s
circumstances.

Economic conditions.

There has been a consistent agreement among scholars that women’s
economic dependency can have a strong impact on battered women’s decisions to
leave an abusive relationship or to rely on the criminal justice system for
protection from future violence (R. E. Dobash.& R. P. Dobash, 1979; Ferraro,
1993; Hart, 1993; Okun, 1988; Schecter, 1982; Strube & Barbour, 1983, 1984).
Traditionally, economic dependency has been seen as a result of women’s
unemployment that causes women to depend on their husbands/partners’ incomes
to survive. Thus, women who are afraid that the arrest or imprisonment of their
husbands/partners can cause a loss of income to their families may be reluctant to
use the criminal justice approach to deal with abuse (Ferraro, 1993; Hart, 1993).

Recent studies, however, did not ﬁnd the effects of unemployment on

abused women’s decisions to use the criminal justice system (Bui, forthcoming;

O

110

Fernandez et al., 1997; Johnson, 1990). Fernandez and colleagues (1997) have
suggested using the concept of absolute and relative economic dependency to
better understand women’s help- seeking behavior. Absolute dependency occurs
when a women is unemployed and totally dependent on her husband for ﬁnancial
support. On the other hand, relative economic dependency can happen when a
woman is employed but her husband/partner may earn more and be able to
provide her with a higher living standard. It can also exist when a combination
of a woman’s income and the income of her husband/partner provide her a better
financial situation.

My interviews with the women participants suggest that both absolute and
relative economic dependency can negatively affect Vietnamese—American
women’s decisions to call the police for help when intimate violence happens. A
number of women in the present study could not ﬁnd suitable jobs because of
language barriers, low levels of education, and a lack of vocational skills and,
consequently, had to depend on their husbands/partners’ ﬁnancial support. For
these women, the decision not to seek help from the police resulted from their
fear that their husbands/partners would be arrested and their family incomes
would be lost, as illustrated in the following cases:

I didn’t want him to be in trouble with the law; I didn’t want him to be
arrested; I needed him to work to support the family. (B8107)

Since the new law [mandatory arrest], I didn’t call [the police] because I
didn’t want him to be arrested. I depended on him [ﬁnancially]. . . After I
gave birth to my son, I got fat and couldn’t work in the coffee shop any
more. . . They only wanted to hire women with slim bodies . . . they looked
more attractive, you know. I didn’t have any vocational skills. . . I didn’t

lll

want to work in assembly line production because pay was low, and day
care costs for my son would consume all of my earnings. (CA5)

After I had children with him I didn’t try to call the police [when he beat
me] because I thought that nothing could be solved. I had to depend on
him to survive. Some of my friends told me to forget about his violence
and not to call the police because it would be a shame when I called the
police and continued to sleep with him. (TX7)

Women who worked and who had high levels of education were also
reluctant to call the police to deal with intimate abuse. They were concerned
with the negative consequence of the criminal justice intervention that could lead
to family breakup and a loss of their current living. For some women, their
dependence on husbands/partners can be a temporary strategy to pursue a higher
education and professional career to improve their lives. As these women
explained,

Without his income, I can still survive because I have my own [manicurist]

business. However, things will be different. I will not be able to live in

the house like this; I will probably have to share an apartment with other
people, and this will be very inconvenient. (CAIO)

Although I work, I still think that the ﬁnancial situation of a family with

two incomes would be more stable than that with only one income. If I left

him, things would become very complicated because we had to divide
properties, such as cars, houses, and other things. (CA1)

Although I work and can support myself, my ﬁnancial situation will be

worse without his income. When we share, costs of housing and food for

each person will be cheaper. If we had a divorce, we would have to sell the
house, and I wouldn’t be able to buy another one. (CA3)

I have a [college] degree and I can support myself. However, I have a

small child, and I am pursuing a professional degree [MBA]. It will be

harder for me if I don’t have his income during this time and have to work
to support my child and myself. (L82)

112

I didn’t want him to be in jail when he just arrived in the US. I was afraid
that if he were involved in the criminal justice system, he would have
difficulties in finding jobs. (B8107)

Although economic dependency could affect the decisions to seek help
from the police among women who wanted to stay with their abusers, it also had
a negative impact on help-seeking behavior among women who already left the
relationships. Because they still needed child support from their ex-
husbands/partners to raise their children, many women did not want their ex-
husbands/partners to be arrested.

For many Vietnamese-American women, a lack of ability to drive also
caused them to become dependent on their husbands/partners to get around.
Some women could not pass driving tests becauseof language barriers. Others,
especially old women, could not drive because they were not familiar with the US
highway system and driving in heavy trafﬁc. Many women did not want their
husbands/partners to be involved with the law and be arrested because they
needed their help with transportation. As two women put it,

I couldn’t drive. I had to depend on him when I had appointments with

doctors whose offices were far away from my apartment, or when I didn’t

know the directions. (B8101)

Because I didn’t understand English, I couldn’t pass the driving test, and I

had to depend on him. . . He took me to and from work. Without him, I

don’t know how I could go to work. (L85)

In short, because of economic dependency, either absolute or relative,

many women were reluctant to seek help from the police to avoid abuse.

However, economic dependency could also interact with other factors, including

113

women’s safety and the seriousness of abuse, and the effect of these interactions

will be examined later in this chapter.

Abuser’s prevention and fear of retaLliatian.

 

As a main purpose of the police is to enforce the law and protect the safety
of citizens, victims of crime are expected to call the police to report criminal
incidents to reduce the risk of further injury. However, there are victims who
consider calling the police to report crime as a dangerous response to their
victimization (Singer, 1988). Research suggests that because of perceived and
actual physical and psychological vulnerabilities, victims of domestic violence
are more likely than victims of other crimes to have a sense of danger and fear of
reprisal by a spouse or other family member if the incident is reported (Berk et
al., 1984).

For women in the present study, prevention by the abusers and fear of
reprisal were among reasons for not calling the police for help. Some men
prevented their wives/partners from calling the police by keeping them from
using the phone or getting out of the house. Other threatened to use more severe
forms of abuse against their wives/partners and/or wives/partners’ relatives. Fear
for their own safety and the safety of their relatives made many women reluctant
to seek help from law enforcement. As these women explained,

When I attempted to call the police, his girlfriend held me back and didn’t

allow me to pick up the phone while he closed the door to prevent me from

running outside. Later on, be disconnected the phone before he hit me.
(CA2)

He told me that I would be in big trouble ifI told other people about him
beating me. If I tried to leave him or escape, he would kill me. (TX3)

114

I’m afraid of him and his revenge. He said that he would kill my brother
because my brother had talked me into leaving him. (LS4)

Language barriers.

Literature on immigration resettlement in the US suggests that initial
language barriers can affect most new immigrants from the least educated peasant
to the most educated professional (Portes & Rumbaut, 1996). Learning English
can have a strong impact on the process of adaptation to life in the new society
because it is a basic step to enable new immigrants to participate in the new life,
get an education, ﬁnd a job, and obtain access to health care or other social
services (Portes & Rumbaut, 1996; Roberts & Starr, 1989).

However, the abilities and the opportunities to learn English to overcome
initial language barriers are not the same for all immigrants. Among women
participants in this study, those who came to the US in their school years had
more opportunities to study the new language in their basic education programs.
Many other women did not learn English because of a variety of reasons. The
most common reason for not studying English was a lack of time. As new
immigrants who came to the US with no ﬁnancial resources and little support
from the government, many women had to work to support their families in the

US and help relatives they left behind.9

 

9. Immigrants who came to the US under the sponsorship of their relatives do not qualify for
government assistance. Resettlement assistance for Vietnamese refugees who came to the
US in the 19905 was reduced substantially. The maximum time of government assistance
applied for refugees who came in the 19905 was eight months, compared to three years for
refugees who came in the late 19705 and early 19805.

115

Women’s traditional domestic responsibilities within the household in the
US also took away from many women opportunities for self-improvement. Many
women worked outside the home to contribute to their families but also had to
fulﬁll their traditional role of homemaker. For women who did not work,
housework and care of small children often consumed all of their time.

A lack of convenient transportation also discouraged many women from
going to school to study English. Many new immigrants did not have money to
buy cars. Because Vietnamese Americans used to live in a tropical climate,
walking in snow and waiting for buses during the winter were truly ordeals.
Although the weather in Houston and Orange County was similar to the weather
in Vietnam, these two cities had limited public transportation services. As one
woman in Houston explained, “You cannot do anything if you don’t have a car
here. It’s just like you lose your legs, and you become cripple.”

For a number of women, their mental health problems and lack of
minimum basic education also prevented them from learning the new language.
Immigration literature suggests that migration can produce profound
psychological distress. The mental health of refugees and immigrants is often
affected not only by their experiences of cultural shock in the new environment
but also by the circumstances of their exit from the home country (Portes &
Rumbaut, 1996). For many women participants, their routes to the US were often
made through dangerous escapes involving pirates’ violence and violent storms at
open sea. Those who came to the US through ofﬁcial programs also experienced

stress caused by the lengthy paperwork process and the uncertainty of getting exit

116

approvals. Upon arriving to the US, many felt overwhelmed by difficulties in the
new environment. As one woman said, “I was worried about so many things that
I couldn’t study. Words couldn’t stay in my head. They came through my right
ear, then they left through my left ear.” In addition, women who had no
opportunities to go to school in Vietnam could not attend an ESL (English as a
Second Language) class that often required a minimum basic education in their
native language and handwriting skills.

Language barriers can prevent abused women from learning about
resources available for them and constrain their willingness to become involved
with the American criminal justice and legal system (Berk-Seligson, 1990;
Rasche, 1988; Rimonte, 1989). In the present study, English proﬁciency
appeared to have a major impact on women’s decision to seek help from the
police. Women who considered their English proﬁciency as good or very good
were more likely than others to report abuse to the police (100 percent and 61
percent respectively). On the other hand, many women did not call the police
simply because they could not speak English and because they lack knowledge
about law in the US. As one woman explained,

I didn’t call [the police] because I couldn’t speak English. . . I didn’t

know the law and didn’t know what would happen should I call the police.

(L81)

Language barriers also caused many more difﬁculties with negative consequences
during women’s interactions with the police and the court, as it will be discussed

later in this chapter.

117

Immigration status.

Besides language barriers, immigration status has been a barrier to the use
of the criminal justice system to avoid abuse among women who came to the US
under the sponsorship of their husbands. Since the 19305, US immigration
policies have allowed US citizens to marry persons of foreign nationalities and
sponsor their spouses to the US (Houston, Kramer & Barrett, 1984). However, the
process of obtaining a U8 permanent residency through marriage has become
harder and more complicated after the enactment of the Immigration Marriage
Fraud Amendments in 1989. Under the new law, aliens married to US citizens
will receive a conditional residency for two years and must ﬁle another petition
with their US citizen partners at the end of the two-year period to gain lawful
permanent resident status (Chin, 1994).

Although the main purpose of the Immigration Marriage Fraud
Amendments is to prevent marriage for the sole purpose of immigration, the new
law has inadvertently become a power tool for abusive spouses to use against
their alien partners and children. Despite the fact that the law has changed to
provide relief for battered spouses by creating a special “waiver” for battered
immigrants and allowing them to finish the process of gaining a permanent
resident status without their abusers’ help, many women are still intimidated by
their abusers’ threat due their lack of understanding of the law (Chin, 1994).

Because of the requirement of the husband’s participation in the wife’s
petition for permanent residency, Vietnamese women who were married to and

sponsored by American citizens were often very reluctant to leave their abusive

118

husbands, or they did not seek help from the police. These women were afraid
that they would be deported should their husbands refuse to file a petition for
them to obtain a permanent U8 residency, as illustrated by the following cases,

I was afraid that he would retaliate [ifI called the police] and no one could
help me obtain a green card. (CA9)

I was afraid that he would divorce me and wouldn’t help me with the
paperwork to get a green card . . . He had told me that if he was arrested
and jailed, I would be deported to Vietnam and would lose custody of my
son. The lawyer [whom her sister had hired to help her] advised me to call
the police when he beat me to have evidence for a divorce without being
deported, but I couldn’t call because be prevented me from reaching the
phone. . . I felt very scared because I didn’t know whether my sister and
the lawyer could help me. (TX8)

Related to immigration status is the time immigrants have spent in the US
Literature has suggested that time is a factor helping immigrants adapt to and
become familiar with American culture (Gordon, 1964). Data from the present
study, however, showed that the length of U8 residency had no impact on
women’s help-seeking behavior. Women who had been in the US for less than 10
years were as likely as others to call the police to report abuse.

Emotional attachment.

In a gender-stratiﬁed society, social structure and culture create social
norms that govern the roles of women and men, and define, within a given
context, behaviors deemed appropriate for individuals in various social roles
including husband/wife, male/female partner, and parents/child. As I have
discussed earlier, Vietnamese family traditions were modeled on Confucian

teachings that emphasized close family ties, as well as hierarchy and order in

interpersonal relationships. Although Vietnamese culture and traditions have

119

undergone tremendous changes, the legacy still remains to affect women’s help-
seeking behavior.

Data analysis showed that, culturally appropriate behaviors for women,
women’s domestic responsibilities, and the traditional authority of parents over
children made many Vietnamese-American women feel reluctant to seek help
from the police. These women were concerned that the intervention of law
enforcement into family matters and the arrest of their husbands/partners would
diminish the authority of fathers over children. Some women also tried to avoid
making their family problems become public because they were afraid of being
criticized for not observing the cultural norms of family privacy. As these
women explained,

I didn’t call [the police] because I was afraid of reaction from friends and

families on both sides. . . I didn’t want other people to know about the

problem. Under our [Vietnamese] family traditions, husband and‘ wife
should protect each other, and family matters should be solved by family
members, not outsiders . . . Also, because of the Three Obediences and

Four Virtues traditions, I was afraid that other people would criticize me

for stepping out of the norms of women’s appropriate behavior.(CA1)

When I talked with my mother [about the abuse], she told me not to call

[the police]. She was afraid that when the police came, everybody in the

neighborhood would know about the problem. She told me that a woman’s

life belonged to her husband, and that a woman should accept her fate and
be patient to avoid family conﬂicts. (L83)

1 was a devoted Catholic and wanted to keep Vietnamese family traditions.

I didn’t want my children to live with separate parents, and I didn’t want

other people to criticize me for learning the American way [of life]. (TXI)

Under the inﬂuence of the ideology of romantic love and heterosexuality,

Vietnamese-American women, either growing up in Vietnam or in the U8, often

expect to have an intimate relationship with men. Women who felt loved by their

120

husbands/partners were more patient and often maintained hope for changes in
their husbands/partners’ behavior, thus delaying reporting abuse incidents to the
police. In addition, women who wanted to maintain the relationship and were
concerned that police intervention could cause family break-up also avoided
using the criminal justice approach to deal with abuse. As these women
explained,

I didn’t want to have a divorce. Other people would look at me and say
that I was a “husbandless” woman. (TX2)

I didn’t want a divorce or separation. I loved him, and I didn’t want him to

be in trouble with the law. After he hit me, he felt remorse. He kneeled in

front of me, apologized and asked me to forgive him. I thought that he
truly felt remorse and I didn’t want to make him unhappy [by calling the
police]. (CA9)

Many women in the study also experienced feelings of loneliness created
by language barriers, culture differences, and a lack of family ties. Because of
the dangerous nature of their escape to the US, many women had to leave behind
in Vietnam their support network of close relatives, including parents, siblings,
and children. For many women, a need for emotional support and avoiding
loneliness was a major factor behind their decisions to seek and maintain an
intimate relationship, as illustrated by one woman participant,

I married him because within an unfamiliar society, I need support from a

man who can speak the same language as I do, and understand my culture

to help me during crisis . . . I want to continue staying with him because I
don’t have any relatives here in the US, and I often feel lonely.

Safety and agency.

Literature on domestic violence has suggested that battered women’s use

of the criminal justice services increased with assault severity (Bui, forthcoming;

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Gelles, 1976; Kantor & Strauss, 1990). Estimate was that two thirds of victims
who experienced severe family violence would seek help at least once
(Wauchope, cited in Hutchinson & Hirschel, 1998). Research also found that half
of domestic violence victims who suffered injuries reported the abuse to the
police, but the report rate was lower among abused women who did not sustain
injuries (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995). Wauchope (cited in Hutchinson &
Hirschel, 1998) also reported that it required over 10 episodes of serious assault
before help-seeking behavior could exceed 50 percent.

An examination of data for the present study revealed that safety issues
were a major factor affecting women’s decision to call the police to deal with
abuse. Most of the women who sought help from the police, except one, did not
call the police when abuse began to occur. However, as abuse continued and
escalated, in terms of severity and frequency, fear for their safety, and the safety
of their children and sometimes of close relatives, caused these women to call the
police to stop the violence. A majority of women who ever sought help from law
enforcement (14 women or 64 percent) only reported one abuse incident, but
other women called the police more than one time. Five women reported two
incidents, three women called the police three times, and two other women
reported four or five incidents. Some of these women were dependent on their
husband for economic support. As these women explained,

I called the police to order him out of the house for my safety. (88203)

Because I was so scared, I wanted the police to stop him from beating me
and harming the children. (TX6)

122

He came home from work and talked with my 4-year-old son. He
suspected that someone had come home the night before and he began
yelling at me, and threatening to kill me and an imagined enemy . . . He
put a knife at my neck as if he was going to cut my throat. I was terriﬁed.
When I got loose from him, I reached the phone and called 911. I had
experienced his violence so many times, and for so long . . . since the time
we got married [5 years ago]. I knew that my financial situation would be
worse without his income, but I was not afraid of poverty as much as of
being abused. After I called the police I went to work and made money.
(LS3)

For many women, calling the police was initially not a practical approach
to deal with domestic violence, but it was the last resort when other forms of
assistance failed to solve the problem. As I have discussed earlier, a variety of
factors, including economic dependency, fear of reprisal, language barriers,
immigration status, and emotional attachment can make the use of the police to
deal with domestic abuse an undesirable option for many women. Therefore, they
may have tried other forms of assistance deemed more appropriate for their
situations before turning to the police. As these women explained,

I didn’t know whom in the families on both sides I could ask for help. I

called my parents in Canada, but my mother said that I was a married

woman, and I should belong to my husband’s family. People in his family
viewed wife beating as normal, and nothing was wrong with it. Because
no one else could help, I had to call the police. (CA1)

I called and asked the police to take me out of this situation. I was so

scared of him. I called the shelter ﬁrst, but its staff told me that they

couldn’t come to take me. They advised me to call the police and ask
them to take me to the shelter. . . [2 years later] He threatened to kill me

and my whole family. I wanted to leave the relationship, so I went to the
police station to ask for the protection of my family and myself. (TX3)

Interviews with women participants also revealed that, besides safety
concerns, a desire to express agency or assertiveness was also a factor in their

decisions to report abuse incidents to the police. Literature has suggested that

123

women, as members of the oppressed group because of their gender, do not
always passively accept male domination (Kandiyoti, 1991). Rather, they often
use different strategies, within a set of concrete constraints, to manage their lives
in the face of their oppressions. Depending on different situations, Vietnamese-
American women might have tried different coping mechanisms other than the
criminal justice approach. They might have strategically accepted certain levels
of oppression in exchange for emotional support, economic security, or a legal
status in the U8. When other mechanisms failed, or when they felt that coping
strategies needed to be changed, government interventions became a resource for
Vietnamese-American women to cope with intimate violence and assert their
agency. Because the police represent power, many women took alliance with the
police to empower themselves. As these women explained,

I called [the police] to warn him that I did not tolerate his violent
behavior, and the police would protect me. (CA3)

I called the police to let him know that I could get him arrested. (TX2)

I was fed up with his unreasonable jealousy and violence, and I wanted the
police to come and arrest him to teach him a lesson. (L83)

When he beat me up, he also dared me to call the police. He told me that
the police couldn’t keep him in jail for long, but two or three days at most,
then he would be released . . . I called the police to teach him a lesson, but
he ﬂed before the police came . . . The next time, when he threatened to
kill me, I called 911 again. This time, I hid the [car] key, and he couldn’t
ﬂee. He was arrested. (L85)

He used to hit me in Vietnam and continued to hit me in the US Because
he didn’t change, 1 had to call [the police] to warn him. I called [the
police] to let him know that he could not hit me as he used to in Vietnam
(LS6).

124

Women Victims’ Interactions with the Police

 

Literature has suggested that police performance in domestic violence
cases can have important implications for the victims in terms of safety; it can
also have an impact on victims’ decisions to access other services in the system,
or continue to use police services in the future (Fischer & Rose, 1995; Brown,
1994). For example, police encouragement and explanations of victims’ legal
rights can be a factor that motivates battered women to access other legal and
social services to protect themselves from further violence. Victims’ perceptions
of police performance are also determined by the consistency between victims’
expectation and what the police have done to address women’s needs and desires
(Erez & Belknap, 1998). For Vietnamese-American women, language barriers
and an immigrant and minority status can have a negative impact on their
interactions with the police as victims of intimate violence.

Victims’ preference for arrest.

Although mandatory arrest policies have been designed to provide more
protection for battered women, many women victims of domestic violence still do
not want their abusers to be arrested. Literature indicated that only about 20
percent to 25 percent of women who had reported abuse by husbands/partners to
the police desired arrest (Kantor & Straus, 1990; Smith & Klein, 1984).

Data from the present study suggest that most Vietnamese-American
women do not want the police to arrest their abusers. Of 24 women who had
contacts with the police as victims, only 2 women wanted their husbands/partners

to be arrested (8 percent). On the other hand, a majority of these women (17

125

women or 71 percent) only wanted the police to stop the violence, order their
abusers to move out of the house for their safety, or calm their abusers down and
explain to their abusers that they should not use force. Because the police
represented power, some women only needed the presence of police at their
homes at the time of the incidents with a hope that the presence of the police
would deter their husbands/partners from doing harms. As one woman explained,

I expected that the presence of the police would deter him. I wanted the

police to ﬁle a report and keep it in the ﬁle. I hope if he knew that his

name was in police record, he would not use violence any more. (CA3)

Five other women (21 percent) felt confused about their preference for
arrest. Although they thought that their abusive husbands/partners should receive
some sort of punishment, they were also worried about the negative consequences
of the arrests, including husbands/partners’ losing employment and “losing face”
with other family members and friends, and the possibility of increasing strain in
the relationship. One woman wanted her husband to be arrested, but said “no” to
the police when they asked about her preference for arrest.

To help husbands/partners avoid arrest, many women explicitly asked the
police not to make the arrest. Other women changed the story, denied the abuse,
and even lied to the police that they had used force, but not their
husbands/partners, as illustrated in the following case,

After listening to my story, the ofﬁcers asked my husband to stand facing

the wall and handcuffed him immediately. I begged the police three times

not to arrest my husband, but they didn’t agree. Finally, I told them that I

had hit my husband, but he hadn’t hit me. At that point, the officers gave

my husband two options: either leaving the apartment that night, or being
arrested. Obviously, my husband agreed to leave home. (TX5)

126

A counselor for a batterers’ counseling program reported that some women even
intervened with the arrest by holding back their husbands/partners while the
police attempted to take them out.10 Besides economic and emotional reasons,
fear of racial dis'crimination was a major factor in women’s efforts to keep their
husbands/partners from being arrested.

Despite women’s non—preference for arrest, the police arrested abusive
husbands/partners in more than half of the cases (14 cases or 58 percent). It is
also necessary to note that some of the incidents that did not result in arrests
happened more than five years ago when mandatory arrest policies were not
rigorously applied.

Communication difficulties.

Literature has recognized that there are communication problems in the
contacts between limited-English speakers and law enforcement in the U8
(Shusta, Levine, Harris & Wong, 1995). A lack of language skills often makes it
difﬁcult or impossible for the victim to communicate effectively and provide
necessary information that helps law enforcement ofﬁcials understand the
situation (Davis, 1985). The trauma caused by victimization further affects the
victim’s ability to speak English (Shusta et al, 1995). On the part of law
enforcement ofﬁcers, some may modify their English so that they will be better
understood, but most ofﬁcers often feel frustrated by language barriers and fail to
slow down their speech and listen carefully (Shusta et a1, 1995). A recent study

showed that for immigrants with limited English, the language posed a greatest

 

10. The information provided by the counselor was drawn from police reports on police

127

hardship in their contacts with the criminal justice system (Davis, Erez &
Avitabile, 1998).

Data from the study revealed that Vietnamese-American women shared
with other immigrants language difficulties in their contacts with the police. Of
24 women participants who had contacts with the police, only 8 women had no
language difficulties in their communications with police officers who responded
to their calls. Although translation and interpretation could ease many
difficulties in communication, only four women among those who bad language
difﬁculties received translation assistance, either in-person or via-telephone, by
law enforcement agencies. The rest of these women had to depend on neighbors
or relatives for help with translation or interpretation, or they had to manage the
problem by themselves.

Poor communication and misunderstanding caused by language barriers
often affected police performance,,victims’ perceptions of police work, and their
help-seeking behavior in the future. Women with limited English proﬁciency
were not able to explain clearly to the authorities their complicated situations as
well as their expectations. Some women felt discriminated against because
police ofﬁcers did not pay attention to their family situations. Others thought that
the police discriminated against them because they could not speak English well.
As one woman explained,

Two weeks ago, one of his friends [her husband’s friend] called and asked

him to go gambling. I hated that. So, I called this man and swore at him
on the phone. . . He then caused me troubles by calling the police, saying

 

responses to domestic calls.

128

that my husband needed to go to the emergency room. When the police
came, they were angry and accused me of lying to the police. I tried to
explain the situation, but 1 was so nervous that I couldn’t know what to say
. . . I tried to ask the police to advise my husband not to gamble, but they
didn’t do it. It seemed to me that they didn’t support me. I felt they
thought that people who could not speak English well did not deserve
police protection. (TX7)

Although translation assistance can reduce communication difficulties for
non-English-speaking people in their contacts with the authorities, it can create
other kinds of problems. When a woman relies on an interpreter to communicate,
there is no guarantee that what she says in her native language will be accurately
translated into English without losing its original meanings. In addition, the
interpreter can consciously change the story according to his or her perception of
the situation and people involved. For many women in this study, relatives,
neighbors, or friends often altered the stories to help abusive husbands/partners
avoid involvement with the law. As these women explained,

I had called [the police] several times before. . . Because I couldn’t speak
English, I dialed 911 and said, “Help! Help!” When the police came, his
children [with his former wife] helped with the translation. . . They told
the police that I was crazy and nothing had happened. After listening to
the children, the police left. Through this experience, I learned that
because I couldn’t speak English, I couldn’t do anything [with his abuse].
(TX7)
Before the police took him [her husband] out of the house, he angrily
looked at me and said that when he was released, he would kill me. One
police ofﬁcer asked my neighbor to translate what my husband just said to
me. She [her neighbor] later told me that she was concerned with the
possibility that my husband would be in deeper trouble with the law should
she report exactly his statement. 80, she told the ofﬁcer that my husband
said he hated me. (LS6).

Women who had to rely on other people for communications sometimes

received unwanted results, as illustrated in the following case,

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I could understand English but I did not speak English very well. So, I
asked my friend to go with me [to a women’s center] and help me with
translation. My friend was a social worker and she said more things than
what I wanted her to tell the center staff. On the basis of her report, the
center staff found out that my husband had sexually abused my children,
and later threatened to kill them when he was drunk. The center staff ﬁled
the report with the police, and my husband was arrested for child abuse.

Since that time, I didn’t see my friend again. (TX6)

Police referrals.

Domestic violence is a social problem that requires intervention from both
social service and criminal justice agencies, each of which has individualized
responsibilities. However, the diverse needs of victims and abusers require some
cooperative efforts from different agencies in coordinating their responses to
domestic violence cases (Johnson, Sigler & Crowley, 1994). The police have
been viewed as a critical linkage between the victim and other social services
deemed necessary for battered women to escape abuse, and police referrals to
persons in battering relationship have become an importance element of police
response to domestic violence (Ferraro, 1989; Belknap & McCall, 1994). A study
of abused women in domestic violence shelters showed that almost half of
respondents were informed of shelter services by the police, and a majority of
respondents who were informed of shelter services indicated that police
frequently provided transportation to the local shelter or gave them the shelter’s
phone number (Coulter et al., 1999).

Data from the present study suggested that police referrals could help

Vietnamese-American women get needed services. Police ofﬁcers who

responded to domestic calls often helped women contact with victim assistance

130

agencies. My interviews with two victim service agents revealed that about 20
to 30 percent of their clients were referred to the agencies by the police (Q. Dang,
personal communication, November 12, 1999; H. Nguyen, personal
communication, March 20, 2000). However, in many other situations, police
referrals seemed to be a routine but ineffective. This happened when police
officers who responded to domestic calls gave non-English-speaking victims
information materials written in English. In other situations, responding ofﬁcers
referred non-English—speaking victims to social service agencies where nobody
could speak Vietnamese. One woman complained that the police had failed to
take her to a refuge place she had requested.

When the police came, my husband had already ﬂed the scene. I asked the

police to take me to a women’s shelter, but they took me and the children

to a homeless shelter instead. . . I felt humiliated. . . Because I didn’t feel

comfortable staying at the homeless shelter, 1 left [the shelter] the next day

and found a women’s shelter nearby where I came to ask for help. (TX6)

In summary, data for the study showed that Vietnamese American women
did not often contact the police to report intimate abuse. Those who did seek
help from law enforcement only contacted the police after being abused many
times. Economic conditions, education, English proﬁciency, emotional
attachment, fear of reprisal, and severity of abuse interacted to affect
Vietnamese-American women’s decisions to report abuse to the police. The
effects of these factors changed over time, accordingly to the progress of abuse.
Generally, many women decided to seek help from law enforcement when other

approaches to deal with abuse did not work, and when fear for their safety

outweighed other concerns. Beside concerns for their safety, the desire to

131

express their agency was also a reason behind many women’s decisions to call the

police.

When Vietnamese-American women finally called the police for help, they
also faced other problems as well. Many of them did not want their
husbands/partners to be arrested, but the police made arrests in the majority of
cases. Language barriers also created problems. A small number of women got
interpretation assistance from law enforcement agencies, but many others had to
depend on their relatives, friends or neighbors who often distorted details of the
incidents. Difﬁculties in communication often caused misunderstanding about
women’s'expectations on the part of the police and about police performance on
the part of the women’s victims. In addition, many women did not beneﬁt much

from police referrals because they did not appropriately respond to their needs.

Contacts with the Judicial System

Since the implement of new criminal justice responses to domestic
violence, research has been conducted to understand how new policies are
supported by the public and victims of domestic violence. In Stalan and
Lurigio’s study (1995), respondents wanted to hold abusive spouses legally
responsible with guilty decisions when injuries were involved. When responding
to a hypothetical case involving their spouses/partners, both men and women
wanted counseling for their spouses more than they wanted probation or jail, but

men were more likely than women to wanted jail for their spouses.

132

Studies of victims of domestic violence showed different patterns of
responses. According to Davis and Smith (1995) and Ferraro (1993), the majority
of abused women (from 65 percent to 80 percent) wanted charges dropped. In
Ferraro’ study (1993), only 16 percent of intimate victims cooperated with the
prosecution but specifically stated that they desired help for their abusers rather
than prison. In Erez and Belknap’s study (1998), the overwhelming majority of
the intimate victims claimed that they cooperated with the police requests for
information and accurately presented to the police the abusive behavior of their
abusers. In addition, about half of the victims appeared in court to testify for the
cases. However, about two thirds of the victims thought that victims of domestic
violence should be allowed to drop charges in order to improve their relationships
(Erez & Belknap, 1998).

Data for the study indicated with Vietnamese Americans did not support
the judicial approach to intimate violence cases as much as they supported police
intervention. A substantial majority of respondents agreed that police should be
called (83 percent and a mean score of 4.4 on a 5 point scale where 5 denoted
strongly agreed), and arrests should be made (72 percent; mean = 4.0) in most
domestic violence cases. On the other hand, a marginal majority (59 percent)
respondents agreed with the prosecution approach to most domestic violence
cases with a mean score of 3.5. In addition, a prison sentence received even a
lowest support from respondents with a mean score of 3.3.

The lesser degree of support for the judicial approach may reﬂect a

negative attitude among Vietnamese toward the legal approach for solving

133

problems in general and intimate violence in particular. Vietnamese traditional
culture emphasized social harmony through mediation and conciliation. The
avoidance of confrontation and litigation was evidenced in the old saying “Di hoa
vi quy” (Conciliation is the best policy) (Ta, 1999). In addition, the Vietnamese
have long suffered all kinds of judicial oppressions, including French colonial,
feudalist, militarist, and communist. Throughout history, there were very few
legal safeguards for those who were involved in the criminal justice system, and
coerced confessions often led to a guilty verdict in the court with severe
consequences for not only the convicts but also the convicts’ families. That
historical legacy has resulted in the fact that most Vietnamese avoid being
involved in the judicial process, as reﬂected in the old saying “V0 phuc dao tung
dinh” (woe fall on those who have to go to courts) (Ta, 1999).

Although Vietnamese-American women share a common cultural legacy,
they have different court experiences. As Vietnamese-American woman begin
their journeys in the judicial process as victims of intimate abuse, various
economic, emotional, organizational and immigration-related factors affect their
reluctance or their determination to follow through with the case. This section
examines women’s experiences with criminal court proceedings as victims of
intimate abuse. I also included women’s experiences with the family court for
custody, child support, and restraining order cases because such cases are

relevant to many battered women.

134

Factors AffectingWomen Victims’ Desires to Drop Charges

Women’s cooperation with prosecution can be affected by many factors.
Research showed that fear of the batterers, ineffectiveness of the system, concern
for the children, and distrust of the criminal justice system have negative impacts
on women’s willingness to cooperate (Erez & Belknap, 1998). On the other hand,
the safety and welfare of themselves and their family were factors that helped
them to follow through with their cases (Erez & Belknap, 1998).

Data analysis revealed that a substantial majority of women in the present
study wanted to drop charges against their husbands/partners. Of 14 women
whose husbands were arrested and charged with a domestic offense, 11 did not
want their husbands/partners to be prosecuted (79 percent). Some women asked
the police not to press charges against their husbands/partners. Other went to
ofﬁces of the district attorney to ask the prosecutors to drop the charges. Some
women used economic reasons to justify their requests, but most of the women
who wanted to drop charge denied the abuse or minimized the severity of abuse.
One woman even tried to obtain a medical evaluation of her husband’s mental
illness to back-up her demand. Pressures from abusers and abusers’ families, as
well as economic and emotional dependency often caused Vietnamese- American
abused women to request that charges against their abusers be dropped.

Pressure from abusers and families.

For women in the mainstream, fear of reprisal has been found as the most
important factor that affects women’s unwillingness to cooperate with

prosecutors (Erez & Belknap, 1998). Data for the study indicated that besides

135

pressures from their abusers, pressure from other family members also have an
important effect on Vietnamese-American women’s decisions to drop charges.
Growing up in a cultural tradition that emphasizes collectivism, many
Vietnamese-American women often act not only in their own interests but also in
the interests of other family members, including parents, siblings and children.
Some abusive men threatened to harm their wives/partners’ parents or siblings if
their wives/partners didn’t drop charges. Some parents also urged daughters to
drop charges because they were concerned that interventions from the court
would lead to the breakup of their daughters’ families, make their grandchildren
fatherless, and bring shame to the whole family. Fear of loneliness in the new
country also forced many women to defer to the desires of their children or their
abusers’ families in exchange for emotional, and sometimes, ﬁnancial support.
As these women explained,
I requested that charges against him be dropped [her boyfriend] in two
different incidents. For the ﬁrst incident . . . because I loved him and also
because I was afraid of him. I didn’t want him to hurt anyone in my
family. For the second incident . . . . because I was afraid that he would
kill my whole family. (TX3)
I only wanted him [her husband] to leave me alone, not to yell at me, not
to caused family conﬂicts, not to hit me. After I realized that he couldn’t
change, I call the police to request a PPO to separate. I didn’t want him to
be prosecuted and go to court. . . His family already hated me and was
alienated from me because I had called the police . . . I didn’t want to
suffer from his abuse, but I didn’t want other people to hate me and blame
me. Therefore, when his family asked me to drop charge against him, I
agreed. . . But the judge didn’t approve [my request]. . . He was sentenced
to two years and a half in prison. His lawyer appealed the conviction and

sentence decisions, and I went to the second trial to ask the judge to acquit
him. This time, the judge agreed. . . (B8207)

136

My children wanted the charges against their father dropped, and I went to
the court to do what they wanted. (LS6)

My mother urged me to pay for his bail and take him home. She said, “He
is the father of your son, and you cannot leave him in jail.” My mother
was also worried about my husband being convicted and sentenced to
prison, and my son would become fatherless. My husband also asked me

to go to the court and request that the charge be dropped. 1 made the
request to make my mother feel comfortable. (LS3)

Ecoﬁnpmic and emotional dependency.

The ideology of the marriage and romantic love has served a barrier that
prevents women from leaving an abusive relationship (Ferraro & Pope, 1993).
Research has shown that many battered women often say that they love their
partners and their help-seeking behavior may reﬂect a desire to end violence but
not the relationship (Ferraro & Pope, 1993). For women who do not want to leave
their husbands/partners, prosecution can be seen as a threat that can disrupt the
relationship.

For many Vietnamese-American women, besides a desire to maintain the
relationship with their husbands/partners, being grateful or feeling indebted to
husbands who had spOnsored them to the US caused many of these women to
request that charges be dropped. As these women explained their situations,

We just bought a house to prepare for our marriage, and I didn’t want to
do anything that would destroy our plan. (L82)

Because we just got married two months ago, I didn’t want him to be in
trouble with the law. That would make our relationship worse. (L81)

I asked the judge [prosecutor] to drop the charge because I loved him. He
told me that if I loved him, I should ask the judge [prosecutor] to drop the
charge. Therefore I denied the abuse when the judge [prosecutor] asked me
about it. (LS7)

137

I didn’t want him to be prosecuted and convicted. He had sponsored me to
the US, and I didn’t want to be ungrateful to what he had done to bring me
here. (B8207)

Besides emotional reasons, many abused women were also afraid that a
prosecution could lead to a loss of their family incomes resulting from the
conviction and imprisonment of their the family providers. Even women who
were already separated or divorced also need their abusers to work and pay for
child support.

Immigration status.

Immigrants who are not US citizens may receive more negative
consequences from their involvement with the criminal justice system than their
American-citizen counterparts. Since the late nineteenth century, immigration
laws have allowed the deportation of immigrants who commit heinous crimes
(Kim, 1996). Recently, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of
1996, Section 350, includes domestic violence offenses into the list of crimes that
can be grounds for deportation of aliens. In the present study, women whose
husbands/partners were not US permanent residents or US citizens were
concerned with negative consequences of a criminal conviction that could cause
their husbands/partners to be deported or denied American citizenship, as
illustrated in the following case,11

He [her husband] had applied for [American] citizenship and received the

notice for an interview. He was afraid that the INS would be informed

about his involvement with the law, and he would be denied American
citizenship. So, he asked me to talk with the prosecutor to drop the charge.

 

11. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of 1996, Section 350, provides that
domestic violence is a ground for deportation of aliens.

138

I also had the same concerns as he did. So, I went to the court and asked
that his charge be dropped, but the judge [prosecutor] did not approve my
request. (LS3)

Women Victims’ Cooperation with the Judicial Process

In the present study, husbands/partners of 12 women were prosecuted
despite the fact that most women wanted to drop charges. Most of the women
whose husbands/partners were prosecuted appeared at the pretrial hearings, partly
because they wanted to ask that charges be dropped, and partly because they
thought that they had to appear. Of 12 women whose husbands were presecuted,
only 5 attended the trials of their husbands/partners.

Reasons for not attending trials.

An examination of the data for the study suggest that, contrary to the
population notion of non-cooperative victims, many women did not attend trials
because the court did not ask them to appear. Of seven women who did not attend
court hearings, only two failed to appear because they did not want to testify for
the court. Three other women did not appear because they were told by court
officials that they did not have to testify. One woman had attempted to attend the
trial of her husband, but because the case were delayed many times, she could not
continue going to court, and therefore she missed the trial. Another woman was
not informed about the trial because her husband kept all court correspondence.
As these women explained,

My acquaintances told me that if I appeared in court, I would have to

testify against him [her boyfriend], and he would receive more severe
sentences. Therefore, I stayed home. (L85)

139

I didn’t attend his trial because 1 had decided to come back with him.
(TX3).

I didn’t know that I had to appear in court. He kept all letters sent to me
from the court and didn’t let me know. (B8601)

I went to the court two times, but the case was postponed. On the third
court schedule, I didn’t show up because I had to work. (TX6)

Economic resources can relieve women from a burden of confronting their
abuser at the trials. Although in principle, prosecutors represent victims at trial
courts, victims whose interests are not consistent with the interests of the
prosecutors are not truly represented. A woman who wants her husband to be
punished for his violent behavior but does not want to confront him at the court,
can have a lawyer who represents her at the court, as illustrated by the following
case,

I didn’t want to confront him at the court. I hired a lawyer to represent

me. I loved him, but I also wanted him to understand that I didn’t accept

his violent behavior, and he was responsible for it. . . . I also didn’t want

people to recognize me at the court because I was a well-known
businesswoman in the community. (CA5)

1113 roles of social, victim, and legal service agencies.

 

Domestic violence literature has suggested that, regardless of the wisdom
of “no-drop” policies, the ways battered women are treated by court ofﬁcials and
victim advocates who inform battered women about resources and services are
pivotal for successful prosecutions (Cahn, 1992; Ford & Regoli, 1992). Positive
and encouraging responses by court ofﬁcials also play a considerably important
role in women’s decision to participate in the process (Erez & Belknap, 1998).

Because of the unique situation of victims of domestic violence crimes, many

140

prosecutors often work closely with outside victim advocacy programs or have
created such programs internally. The goal of these programs is to provide
support for victims, encourage victim cooperation with the prosecution, and
enhance case survival rates (Cahn, 1992). Victim advocates may help
prosecutors by getting additional information on the history of abuse and the
nature of the violence. They also provide support and counseling and explain the
criminal justice system to the victim (Cahn, 1992).

My interviews with women in the core sample suggest that'both social,
victim and legal service agencies can have an important impact on Vietnamese-
American abused women’s participation in criminal proceedings by encouraging
them to participate and providing them with resources that addressed their needs.
Most of the women in this study who attended the trials of their
husbands/partners followed the advice of victim advocates and legal counsel. As I
have discussed earlier, Vietnamese—American women faced many difficulties with
language barriers and lacks of understanding of the law that often made them feel
confused, intimidated, and lost in the system. Many women also faced economic
hardship and had to depend on their” abusers’ ﬁnancial support. Those who felt
confused about the consequences of their participation in the criminal
proceedings were often reluctant to cooperate with the criminal court.

However, abused women who learned from victim advocates and legal
counsels the benefits of attending trials were often willing to appear in court.
Contrary to the common wisdom that only women who wanted to testify against

their husbands/partners would attend trials, many women in my study appeared in

141

court to help their husbands/partners. They also saw their helping acts as a way
to empower themselves by building an alliance with the court. Some women
were willing to participate after they understood the benefits of their attendance.
As these women explained,

I attended the pretrial and the ﬁnal trial to help him by saying good things

about him . . . A victim’ advocate advised me to attend his trial to have my

say in the case, and I wanted him to understand that my say would affect
his life. (L82)

A victims’ advocate encouraged me to go to the court and tell the judge

what I wanted. She told me that my opinion may have some effect on the

court decision . . . I wanted‘my husband to understand that I could have my
say in the cases. 80; I appeared in the pretrial and asked the judge for
leniency on his behalf. (L83)

I appeared in the court because my lawyer advised me to do so. I had ﬁled

for custody and child support, and he [the lawyer] said that my testimony

against him would strengthen.the custody and the child support cases.

Also, because be [her husband] harassed me, and his girlfriend threatened

to harm my family, my lawyer advised meto appear in court to give the

judge enough information, so that he can make a right decision to protect
me and my family. (LS7)

Public ﬁnancial assistance can also have a positive impact on women’s
cooperation with the court. Welfare assistance has been seen as an opportunity
for women to exercise power by relying on the state to break their dependency on
men (Piven, 1990). In my study, many women avoided criminal justice
interventions because they were afraid of negative economic consequences
resulting from the arrest of their economic providers. However, many women felt

comfortable with the criminal justice intervention and were not afraid of leaving

their abusive husbands/partners after social service agencies helped them obtain

142

public assistance. As an abused woman who had a disabled child (paralyzed)
explained,

Myifinancial situation became worse after my daughter and I moved out. I
had a lot of difﬁculties and was always worried about how to have money
to survive. But enduring his abuse was even more difficult . . . Now I’m
not worried very much. I have support fromthe government, 881 for my
child, and assistance from other agencies. Now, I’m applying for housing,
and I hope things would be better in the future. (TXS)
I’m receiving welfare beneﬁts (881) now, but I’m worried about changes
in welfare policies. IfI didn’t get welfare, I would have to. depend on him
financially. (B8107)
When I moved out, I had lots of [ﬁnancial] difﬁculties. I had to pay rent
and bills, andl had to work. However, I had more freedom and no longer
lived in fear. Now, I don’t have to worry so much about money because
welfare beneﬁts, child support, and earnings from my part-time job are
enough to support my three children and myself. I also learned that the
court had ordered child support money to be taken directly from his
paycheck, so I don’t have to worry about his failure to pay. (LS7)

Despite the positive impact of support from victim advocates and other
social service agencies, only few women in the study received this important
assistance. This was partly because victims’ advocate programs did not reach out
to serve the needs of this group of clients, and partly because they did not have

staff members who could speak and communicate with Vietnamese-American

clients.
Women Victims’ Experiences of Court Proceedinga

Data for the study indicated that Vietnamese-American women who
participate in court proceeding also faced many difficulties caused by language

barriers, including the lack of interpretation assistance and problems of

143

inaccurate interpretations. In addition, many women also experienced indifferent
and insensitive treatment by court officials.

Lack of interpreter and problems with ipterpretatiop.

Literature has indicated that language barriers and lack of knowledge
about court proceeding are among the most difficulties that immigrants often face
in the court (Davis et al., 1998). Because court language is much more difﬁcult
than conversational language, immigrants who want to understand as much of the
proceedings as an English speaker would must possess the same familiarity with
English legal terms as a native English speaker (Moore & Mamiya, 1999). In
addition, cultural differences in concepts of justice also cause difficulties for
immigrants even when they are translated in the immigrants’ native language
(Davis et al., 1998). In order to help immigrants participate in court proceedings,
the Court Interpreters Act was enacted in 1978 to provide interpreters to non-
English-speaking defendants, litigants, and witnesses in federal courts, and by
1988, many states had initiated similar measures-in state and municipal courts
(Berg-Seligson, l990,-Moore & Mamiya, 1998).

Despite the importance of court interpreters, not all court participants who
needed interpretation get assistance. Of 12 women in this study who went to
pretrial hearings, 10 women (84 percent) had limited English proﬁciency, ’but
only 1 received translation assistance provided by the court at the pretrial
hearing. Among ﬁve women who attend trials, two received court interpretation

assistance.

144

Besides a lack of resources, organizational views of how domestic
violence cases should proceed affected the probability that an abused woman
could get interpretation assistance. More often the'court was not active in its task
of providing court interpreters for non—English-speaking witnesses. Instead,
victim advocate agencies often had to ask the court for translation assistance on
behalf of abused women. However, requests for interpreters were not always
honored due to a lack of resources. In addition, because the organizational goal
was to seek prosecutions, victim advocates often refused to help women who
wanted to drop charges against their abusive husbands/partners.

Those who did not have translation assistance had to depend on their
relatives or manage the problem themselves. As a result, most of them did not
understand much about what had happened at court hearings, and what the
prosecutors or court employees had said to them. Even when they had questions,
they did not know how to communicate with the prosecutors and other court
officials. Some of the. women explained their situations as follows,

The court didn’t provide a translator for me. My 20 years old daughter

helped me in the court with translation. I had asked the victims’ advocate

agency for help but they told me that they couldn’t help me with the
request to drop the charge. They could only help me to testify against him,
to ﬁle for divorce or child custody. (LS6)

On the day of the pretrial, the victim advocate agency couldn’t ﬁnd a

translator for me, and I had to ask my neighbor to help me in the court. . .

My husband accepted his fault [pleaded guilty] and wanted me to ask for

leniency on his behalf. I had planned to say good things about him, but at

the court the judge didn’t ask me or say anything to me. He asked my
husband to return two weeks later. He didn’t ask me to return and I didn’t

know why. I wanted to ask, but a woman working at the court told me that
the hearing was over, and I didn’t need to return . .- . I didn’t understand

145

English and the law, and my neighbor didn’t either. 80, both of us didn’t
understand much of what was going on at the hearing. (L83)

Although interpretation assistance can ease language difficulties, other
problems can arise. Because no one in the courtroom, other than the court
interpreter, is able to speak both languages, the court interpreter is put in a
position where he or she can choose between upholding the standards of ethics or
undermining them, knowing that no one is able to learn about that. Therefore,
inaccurate interpretation of testimony, and distortion of court materials have been
the most frequent phenomenon in bilingual courtrooms (Moore & Mamiya, 1999).
Conﬂicts of interest can pose another problem. When friends and relatives are
interpreters, the court hears not what the party is saying but what the interpreters
think the facts should be. ~ A

In domestic violence cases, gender of the interpreter can inﬂuence his or
her task. A male interpreter may take the side with the male abuser and become
biased against the female victim. A woman in the study reported that a court-
assigned male interpreter in her case insisted that she should contact her abuser to
notify him about the restraining order hearing. After the case was over, she
learned that what the interpreter had told her was not what the law required her to
do. As she explained,

After I ﬁled a request for a restraining order, a [male] interpreter asked me

to contact my ex-husband and tell him to appear at the restraining order

hearing. Although I explained that I didn’t want to contact him because I

was afraid of his harassment and stalking, the interpreter repeated several

times that I had to contact my ex-husband, or there would be no hearing.

Finally, I had to ask a friend to call him and let him know about the

hearing. Later, I learned from other people at the court that I should not
have been asked to contact my ex-husband. (CA2)

I46

Lack of kjnrowledge abourt the law aﬂ court proceeding.

Besides language barriers, a lack of knowledge about the law and court
proceeding creates further difficulties for Vietnamese-American women who
have contacts with the American court system. Even when they do understand
English, court objectives, procedures and proceedings may differ radically from
the workings of the criminal justice system in their country of origin. Because
both procedural and substantive laws are anchored in American social reality and
culture, they may not be easily understood by Vietnamese Americans who came
from a different culture.

A lack of knowledge of the law often has negative consequences in child
custody and child support in relations to divorce. and separation cases following
intimate abuse incidents. Because abusive men often .threaten to take away
women’s custody rights or refuse to pay child support as part of their control
tactics, fear of losing custody and child support often causes abused women to
defer to the demands from the abusive party. Lacking knowledge of the law can
cause serious consequences, including losing custody. and having to pay child
support, as illustrated in the following case,

After I left, my husband ﬁled for divorce. Before I received notiﬁcation

about the case, I was asked by the court to take a blood test, but I didn’t

understand why . . . No one explained this for me. At the divorce hearing,

a Vietnamese man who appeared to be a court ofﬁcial asked me if I agreed

to sign the divorce paper or not. I asked him whether I could see my son

[whom she had left behind in Vietnam and was waiting to reunite with],

after the divorce, but he didn’t respond to my question. Instead, he told

me ﬁrmly that I had to say “yes” or “no.” I was confused and felt
intimidated. So, I said “yes.” Later, I learned that this man was a lawyer

hired by my husband. I also learned that my husband didn’t let me know
that my 10-year-old son had come to the US and stayed with him, and that

147

the blood test was used to establish the proof of maternity that my husband
used to ask me to pay for child support . . . I was not informed to attend
the child custody case. Therefore, I lost the custody and didn’t have legal
visitation. I also had to pay for child support. Because the amount of child
support was too high, I went to a refugee service agency and asked for
help. They referred me to a public law center where one young lawyer
worked with me in the child support case. Because I didn’t understand her
questions, I gave her wrong information that in turn didn’t help reduce
much of the amount of money I had to pay. I felt totally helpless. All bad
things happened to me just because I didn’t know English and the law.

(CA2).

Eteractiops with courrt officials.

Besides being alienated by language barriers, some women also felt
excluded from the system by the prosecutor’s demeanor. Literature has long
documented, prosecutor indifference and unresponsiveness to women’s complaints
of domestic violence (Cahn, 1992; Ford, 1983; Ford & Regoli, 1993; Lerman,
1986). To address the problem of prosecutors’ disinterest in domestic violence
cases, the no-drop charge policy has been established to regulate prosecution
discretion in cases where the women wanted to drop charges and declined to
participate. After the implementation of no-drop policies, prosecutors have been
found to be more active in prosecuting domestic violence cases (Davis & Smith,
1995; Ford & Regoli, 1993).

Data for the study showed that Vietnamese women who tried to help their
husbands avoid prosecution by actively making contacts with the prosecutors and
other court ofﬁcials often felt alienated by the behavior of prosecutors and other
court officials. Because the goal of the no-drop policy was to bring more

domestic violence offenders into the court system, many prosecutors became

indifferent and insensitive to the needs of intimate violence victims who

148

contacted them to ask that charges against their assailants be dropped. Many
women felt that they were not welcome to the court. As one woman explained her
case,

Although I didn’t have problem with the language, I didn’t understand
much of the procedure because I didn’t understand the law . . . When the
prosecutor learned that I wanted to drop charge, he didn’t want to talk with
me. I tried to explain my situation but the prosecutor told me that it didn’t
matter whether I provided him information or went to the court to testify
because he would prosecute and the court would try on the basis of the
police report. (L82)

Most women participants did not have much interaction with the court
officials, including judges. Language barriers might be part of the reason, but it
also might be due to the preconception of court ofﬁcials that an abused woman
who had wanted to drop charge could not be a useful witness and did not need to
be part of the case and to appear at preetrials and trials. Even women who had
interpretation assistance did not have much communication with court ofﬁcials
through their interpreters. Most women did not understand the progress of the
case, and several women even did not understand sentencing decisions. A few
woman did not know that their husbands had been sentenced to probation until

several months later when they were contacted by counselors from the treatment

programs that their husbands/partners attended.
Women Victims and Restraining Order

In recent years, the restraining order has been used extensively in domestic

violence cases because it is considered as playing an essential role in protecting

149

abused women from further violence.l2 Although a restraining order is a form of
civil protection, its violation can result in mandatory arrest and criminal
contempt punishable by imprisonment (Klein & Orloff, 1999). A recent study
(Erez & Belknap, 1998) found that a majority of abused women requested a
restraining order, but more than half of those who had obtained one thought that
the order was not helpful in guaranteeing their safety.

Depending on the jurisdiction, a restraining order can be obtained in a
civil or criminal court. The four jurisdictions where I conducted the study also
have different restraining order policies. In Orange County, judges can grant a
restraining order in a domestic violence case at pretrial and trial hearings
regardless of the victim’s request. On the other hand, abused women in Lansing
and Boston must go to the family court to request a restraining order. In
Houston, abused women can obtain emergency restraining orders through police
ofﬁcers who respond to domestic calls and who will contact a judge and ask him
or her to issue an emergency restraining order.

Of 31 women participants who experienced physical abuse in the US, 10
requested restraining orders, and 17 did not. For another four women, the trial
judges automatically issued restraining orders against their abusive

husbands/partners, although these women did not request them.

 

12. Depending to different jurisdictions, a restraining order is also called personal protection
order or PPO.

150

Factors AffectingWomen’s Decisions to Request or Terminate a
Restraining Order

An examination of data for the study showed that the most common reason
for not requesting a restraining order was a lack of understanding among
Vietnamese American women about the availability of this service. Among 17
women who did not request restraining order, 10 women did not know what. it
was. Language barriers were part of the problem because many women could not
understand materials written in English that law enforcement ofﬁcers often gave
them when they responded to their calls. In addition, information in materials
given by the police might be too broad, and these women might need to have
someone who could explain in more details the concrete beneﬁts and
consequences of restraining order.

Economic dependency, pressure from the family and the abuser, a desire to
keep the family intact for the beneﬁts of children, and fear of public knowledge
about their family problems also prevented many women from requesting a
restraining order or caused them to terminate an existing order. Because
restraining orders created a separation between abused women and their abusive
husbands/partners, women who did not want, or could not have, a separation were
not likely to request one. Other women were afraid that the absence of their
husbands at home would make other people aware of their family problems. As
these women explained,

I wanted a PPO [personal protective order], but I didn’t request it. My

mother asked me to let him [her husband] go back home, and she didn’t

want me to stay in her home. If I left my husband, 1 had no place to live.
(LS3)

151

I didn’t request PPO because I need him to stay with me to take care of the
baby when I go to work. I also need him to share the living cost. (L85)

When the court asked me to appear for a permanent restraining order, he
insisted that I shouldn’t go. So, we lived together again. (3810])

After I called the police, I requested a restraining order . . . Shortly after
that, he asked me to terminate it. So, I went to the court and asked the

judge to lift the order, and the judge agreed. (88205)

I felt pity for him, and I felt regret. He sent letters and asked me to forgive

him . . . he also cried. I felt sad and lonely, and I was afraid that my
friends and his family would criticize me for kicking him out of the home.
(BSlOl) ‘

Some women did not want to deprave their children of emotional relationships
with their fathers, as illustrated in the following case,
I didn’t request a PPO. I need him to take the children to school because I
cannot drive . . . The children also like him . . . Sometimes, he took them

out to the restaurant or the park on weekends. If he was not home, the
children couldn’t enjoy these things. (TX7)

The Roles of Police Referral, Victim Services, and the Coar_t

Data for the study showed that law enforcement, victim service agencies,
and the court could have a major impact on Vietnamese-American women’s use
of a restraining order to prevent future violence. Most of the women who
requested a restraining order received information about this service and its
beneﬁts from legal counsel and victim advocates who also provided assistance
during the process of obtaining the order. One woman talked about her case as
follows,

When he hit me and gave me bruises all over my chest, I didn’t call the

police because I didn’t want him to be in jail. I told my co-workers and

they took me to see health care staff at the company. Staff members at the
health care center helped me obtain a restraining order . . . (B8101)

152

Judges, on the basis of their judgment of the case, could issue no-contact bonds
(a form of emergency restraining order) at arraignment hearings and restraining
orders against the abusive partners at pretrial hearings and trials. Women who
» learned about the restraining order and how it worked often used it to protect
their own and their family’s security, especially when they wanted to end the
relationship. Asthese women explained,
After I realized that he couldn’t change, I called the police to request a
PPO to be separate. 1 only wanted him to leave me alone but didn’t want
him to be arrested. (88207)
A victims’ advocate explained to me about the purposes of the PPO and
helped me obtain one. I didn’t want to live with him any more, and I didn’t
want him to go to my home and my work to harass me. I also wanted to
protect my mother and my siblings from his threats. (LS7)
Some women used restraining order as a way to empower themselves by making

alliance with the court to transform the relationship.

I hoped that he would be afraid of the judge and stopped hitting me. I
wanted to teach him a lesson. (88101)

I didn’t request a restraining order. The judge granted it as part of the no-
contact bond, but I didn’t. request to remove it. I planned to keep the order
for one year. If he felt remorse and learned the lesson, I would ask the
judge to remove it. (CA5)

Half of husbands/partners (ﬁve husbands/partners) who had a restraining
order issued against them violated the order. However, only one woman reported
the violation. Another woman who was in a divorce case thought that the
violation was mild (called to talk but did not threaten) and did not want to be

involved in anther court case against her husband. One woman was afraid of the

retaliation by her abuser. Two other women violated the order themselves; one

153

let her husband return home, and the other continued to contact her husband
through the phone and mails, but did not legally terminate the order. These
women used the restraining order as a safeguard for their security while
continuing to maintain the relationship. They explained their situations as
follows,

He threatened to blow out my father’s house if I reported [his violation] to

the police. He told me that the police couldn’t keep him in jail for long

and for that reason I should not report his violation. (TX3)

Both of us violated the order because I allowed him to return home. . . He

had no relatives in the area; he stayed with his friend and had a very

difficult time. He was depressed, got sick and couldn’t work. When the
children learned that he was sick, they asked me to let their father stay in
therhouse, so they were able to take care of him. I felt pity for him and
agreed to let him in. However, I didn’t ask the judge to remove the PPO.

I wanted to use it as a warning to prevent him from hitting me again. I

told him that if he hit me, I would call the police and he would be charged

with a more severe offense. (LS6)

He called and sent me letters. . I didn’t report his violation because I

wanted to talk with him. I didn’t terminate the PPO because my lawyer

told me to keep it, so that 1 could be qualiﬁed for a green card as an
abused wife. ' ' ' :

In summary, data for the study showed that as intimate violence cases
moved into the judicial process, Vietnamese American women had both positive
and negative experiences with the court. Although most Vietnamese-American
women who had called the police to report abuse incident wanted to drop
charges, many women received support from social and legal services to

participate in pretrial hearings and trials. Because most Vietnamese-American

women were not aware of the availability of a restraining order, information

154

provided by victim advocates and legal counsels also had an important impact on
women’s decisions to request a restraining order to prevent future violence.
Assistance from social and legal services also mediated the effects of
socioeconomic conditions on women’s participation in criminal proceedings.
Welfare could provide low-income women resources necessary to break their
dependence on their abusers, and legal and interpretation assistance could help
women victims understand the criminal justice process and the beneﬁts of
participation. However, many Vietnamese-American women still faced problems
created by language barriers and a lack of knowledge about the law. Inadequate
interpretation services and insensitive and indifferent treatment by court ofﬁcials

made many women feel alienated and excluded from the process.

Vietnamese-American Women’s Experiences with
the Criminal Justice System as Offenders of Inmate Violence

After the implementation-of mandatory arrest policy, scholars have pointed
out the problem of dual arrests in which the victim is arrested along with her
abusers (E. Buzawa & C. Buzawa, 1993; Walsh, 1995; Wanless, 1996). Under
the mandatory arrest policy,-police ofﬁcers often take injury to the abuser as
evidence of a “mutual combat,” thus arresting and charging both the man and the
woman. Although little is known about the trends in dual arrests since the
implementation of mandatory arrest policies, a recent study indicated that dual
arrest accounted for almost 30 percent of all arrests for intimate violence (Bui,

forthcoming).

155

My interviews with women participants in the core sample indicated that 6
women were arrested, prosecuted, and convicted after their husbands/partners
called the police to report the incidents. This section examines the criminal
justice process experienced by Vietnamese-American women who were charged
with a domestic offense. My analysis focuses on the interaction of a variety of
structural, cultural, and political factors that affect the arrest, prosecution, and
sentencing of abused women.

Women Offenders’ Experiences of Intimate Abuse

Of 34 abused women participants, 6 were charged with a domestic offense.
All of these women had experienced physical abuse by their husbands/partners
before the incidents that led to their arrests. For two women who came to the U8
recently (less than three years), physical abuse happened only in Vietnam but did
not occurin the US. . For four other women who spent a longer time in the US
(from 15 to 25 years), one experienced abuse in both countries, and three were
abused after they started their relationships in the US. All six women
experienced emotional abuse, which included neglect, threat to abandon, and
denigrating.

These women did not report violent incidents to the police because of a
variety of reasons. One woman fought back against her abuser, and one said that
her husband only threatened her, but physical attacks did not actually occur.
Another women did not report abUse because she depended on her husband to
obtain a green card. One woman sought help from the police during the time

when police’s arrest decisions were often made on the basis of victims’ request,

156

but she stopped calling the police after a mandatory arrest policy was

implemented (in California) because she did not want her husband to be arrested.

Contacts with the Police

Police Arrest and Charge Decisions

My interviews with women in the core sample indicated that while most
women who called the police to stop the abuse did not want their
husbands/partners to be arrested (92 percent), most men called the police to arrest
their wives/partners. Most women were arrested when police responded to theit
husbands/partners’ complaints (83 percent), but only more than half of men were
arrested when police responded to their wives/partners calls (58 percent).

Men’s desire for wives/partners’ arrests was reﬂected in their inaccurate
reports about the incidents to the police and their fabrications of evidence to
convince the police to arrest their wives/partners. Husbands’ preferences for
arrest were supported by police practices that made decisions to arrest and press
charges on the basis of visible injuries and information provided by
husbands/partners without further investigations. The parties who had visible
injuries were considered victims, regardless of their contributions to the violent
incidents. These women explained their situation as follows,

He asked me to move out after we had an argument . . . I prepared my

luggage but he refused to give me the [car] key . . . I tried to take the key

that he ﬁrmly held in his hand, but he pushed me back so hard that I fell
on the ﬂoor. I got up and tried again but he raised his hand and grasped my
arm. When I was able to take the key and tried to break my arm from him,

I accidentally hit his eyebrow with the key and caused it to bleed. He

became enraged, and yelled at me, ‘You dare to hit me. I will call the

police to arrest you and put you in jail.’. . . When the police came, they
talked with each of us separately, took the picture of his injury and

157

arrested me. I was only aware that I got a big bruise in my upper arm
once I was in jail. (CA8)

Because the police did not investigate to verify information given by the
husbands/partners, some women could be arrested and charged on the basis of

husbands’ exaggerations and lies about details of the incidents.

After we arrived in the US, we often had conﬂicts and arguments. It
seemed to me that he didn’t care about me and my son . . . He often went
to his parents’ and siblings’ party to drink and play games. Because I was
afraid that he would abandon me and my son, I tried to keep him with me.
One day, I invited his parents to have lunch at home. Before we started
lunch, his sister called him to her house to play games. I asked him to stay
home, but he didn’t care. Very disappointed, I held a kitchen knife,
pointed it to my stomach, and told him that if he left, I would commit
suicide . . . His parents and other relatives intervened, took away the knife
and left my home; he also left with them . . . Two hours later, when I stood
in front of the house with my son, the police came, took away the child
from my arms, arrested me and put me in the suicide watch section in the
city jail . . . They did see ~a scratch on my stomach skin caused by the
knife. Once in jail, I learned that my mother-in-law had called the police
to report the incident. I was charged with a felony, that was “threatening a
family member with a weapon [a knife].” CA6 .

He went out, drank, returned home, caused troubles . . . We argued against
each other. . . He swore and yelled at me, and I threw a TV remote control
at him but it failed to hit him. He then grasped my arms and tried to bang
me to the wall. When I struggle to get away from him, my ﬁngernails
caused several scratches on his neck. He called the police to report the
incident. He also told me that he would ask the police to arrest me and
“would let you die in jail.” I felt scared because I didn’t have immigration
paper with me. I asked him to let me ﬂee beforethe police came, but he
refused. He locked the door to prevent me from escaping while waiting
for the police to come . . . One police ofﬁcer talked with me in the
bedroom, and the other ofﬁcer talked with my husband in the living room.
When the ofﬁcer took me back to the living room, I saw two more ofﬁcers.
They told me that I was under arrest for attacking my husband with a
weapon . . . When I asked, them what kind of weapon they were talking
about, my husband then opened a cabinet, took out a knife and said that I
attempted to stab him with that knife . . . The ofﬁcers didn’t listen to my
explanation; I was arrested and was charged with a felony. (CA9)

This happened because of his involvement in day-trading . . . That day, he
blamed me for causing him to lose [money] while I was preparing dinner .

158

. . Tired of his blaming, I used a kitchen knife to tap several times on the
door frame to express my anger and I told him to shut up. He saw my
behavior as provocative, and he threatened to call the police to put me in
jail. I dared him to call, and he did. When the police came, he reported
that I attempted to attack him with a knife . . . I was arrested and charged
with a felony [domestic assault with a weapon]. (CAIO)

A lack of investigation also provided a context for husbands to retaliate against

wives.

about’

03888.

Some women were arrested because of their husbands’ lies to the police

injuries that these women had not caused, as illustrated by the following

I suspected that he had committed incest with his daughter . . . On that
day, we had an argument after I discovered that someone had entered my
room and stolen my jewelry . . . At one point, I grasped a loaf of bread on
the dinner table and threw it at him. Because I missed, 1 took one ﬂat shoe
and threw at him again. This time, the shoe hit his shoulder. He then
went outside, and I went to my bedroom up stairs . . . About two hours
later while I was sleeping, a policeofﬁcer knocked the door and asked me
to come down to talk . . . I learned from the ofﬁcer that my husband had
called the police and reported that I had beaten him and caused scratches
and bleeding on his arm. I look around the dinning room and realized that
all furniture was disturbed as if a big ﬁght had happened here . . . I didn’t

- understand why . . . AfterI told my version of the story, the ofﬁcer

examined'the shoe, gave my husband an information package, and told him
to contact the city court if he wanted to ﬁle a complaint. However, my
husband was not satisﬁed with the ofﬁcer’s decision. 80, another police
ofﬁcer was called. The new ofﬁcer, after talking privately with my
husband, said that I was under arrest for domestic assault . . . He didn’t
talk with me and didn’t allow me to explain, but he ordered the other
ofﬁcer to handcuff me and take me to the police car without allowing me
to change my nightgown. (TX4)

He [her husband] left and did not return home after we had an argument.
Four days later, I received a phone call from the police asking me to
contact them about an assault complaint against me. . . I learned that my
husband had reported to the police that 1 had attacked him and caused him
injuries, bleeding and scratches on his face. The police didn’t listen to my
explanation, and didn’t ask me to the police station. They only talked with
me on the phone. They pressed charge against me without talking with
other witnesses . . . (CA7)

159

Women Offenders’ Experiences with Police Process

Data for the study indicated that police practices regarding mandatory
arrest policies and women’s economic condition and support networks had an
important impact on Vietnamese-American women experienced with police
process as offenders of intimate violence. A majority of the women who were
arrested had no difficulties in communication with the police. Two thirds of
these women had spent more than 10 years in the US and could understand and
speak English. Interpretation assistance was provided for two other women who
had difficulties in speaking and understanding English.

Most of these women, however, felt that they were not treated fairly
because the police did not listen to their versions of the story and did not conduct
thorough investigations to verify information provided by their
husbands/partners. Three women said that they were wrongly arrested and
charged for offenses that they did not commit because their husbands/partners
lied about the cause of the injuries or' changed details of the stories. Three other
women thought police decisions were unfair because they did not consider the
contributions of their husbands/partners to the problems. In additions, many
women also felt humiliated during the arrest process, especially when their needs
were ignored. As one woman explained her situation as follows,

The police adjusted the handcuff so tightly that it caused scratches and

bleeding at my wrists. When I asked them to loose the handcuff, they

ignored my request . . . Once I was in jail, I needed hygiene tampons, but

they also ignored my request. I felt that when I was arrested, 1 ceased to be
a human being under their eyes. (CA9)

160

Women’s economic condition and their support network could impact their
experience of detention in unpleasant crowed jails. Because most of the arrested
women could not depend on their husbands/partners to post bail for them, women
who did not have financial resources or relatives and friends could not obtain
pretrial release. Of five women who were arrested and detained in city or county
jails, only one woman was released on bail posted by her husband. Relatives and
friends posted bail for two other women. One woman was detained until the ﬁrst
pretrial hearing when she pleaded guilty and was released on probation; one
woman could not obtain release pending trial because her husband did not pay for
her bail, and she had no relatives or friends whom she could ask for help. As
these women explained,

My husband didn’t pay for my bail. Probably because he didn’t have

money and his parents didn’t want .to help. They didn’t like me and they

wanted him to divorce me. (CA6)

When I was in jail, I called to ask him to post bail for me, but he refused

to talk with me . . . My brother had to ﬁnd money to help me. I was

detained three days and charged with a misdemeanor domestic offense.

(CA8)

Both my sister and my husband contributed money to pay for my bail . . . I
was detained two days and was released on bond. (CA9)

Two hours later [after the arrest], my husband came to the police station,
admitted that he had lied to the police about my attempt to stab him with a
knife and asked the police to release me, but he didn’t post bail for me.
Because the police did not agree, I was detained three days then was
released after pleading guilty to the charge and being sentenced to
probation . . . (CAIO)

I called him from jail to ask him pay for my bail, but he didn’t respond to
my call. I had to ask my friend to help me. (TX4)

161

Women Offenders’ Experiences with the Judicial Process

An examination of data indicated that a variety of structural and
organizational factors affected the experiences of Vietnamese-American women
with the judicial process as offenders of intimate violence. These included
husbands/partners’ desires for control, lack of economic resources, police and

judicial practices, and inadequate due process protection.
Prosecution Decisions

My interviews with women in the core sample revealed that women who
were arrested for domestic abuse were as likely or even more likely than their
male counterparts to be prosecuted. All six women, ﬁve in Orange County
(California) and one in Houston (Texas), who had been arrested and charged,
were prosecuted. Data analysis also revealed that men were less likely than
women to request that charges against their spouses be dropped. While 80
percent of women (11 cases out of 14) wanted to drop charges against their
husbands/partners, less than 20 percent of men (1 out of 6 cases) wanted charge
be dropped. Because in some locations, the application of the no-drop-charge
policy was not rigidly applied, some prosecutors still had some leeway to dismiss
charges when victims’ requests deemed appropriate. The interaction between
victims’ desire to drop charges and the application of the no-drop-charge policy
had an impact on the likelihood of prosecution of abusive spouses/partners. Of
11 cases in which the women victims requested that charges be dropped, two
women’s requests (one in Houston and one in Boston) were approved. On the

other hand, the request by a husband (in Orange County) was not approved.

162

In addition, women who wanted to drop charges often recanted what they
had told the police and mitigated the seriousness of the incidents to help their
abusive husbands/partners. This was in sharp contrast to the situations where
husbands lied or exaggerated about the seriousness of the problem to have wives
arrested. More important was the practices of prosecutors that relied heavily on
police reports to make prosecution decisions and did not take into consideration
other information about the cases. Because police reports only reﬂected
husbands’/partners’ narratives of the incidents and causes of injuries, this
practice was particularly harmful for women whose husbands/partners had lied to
the police

Defense Counsel and Plea Bapgaining

As intimate violence cases moved into the judicial process, Vietnamese-
American women offenders often experienced inadequate due process protection.
Although the right to legal. counsel is one of the constitutional rights to a fair
trial, not all womenhad legal counsels when they needed it. Because of a lack of
understanding about the US legal system, many women were unaware of their
right to legal counsel. However, when accused women were aware of their right
and asked for it, legal counseling services often came too late and could not help.
Of six women who were prosecuted, three women hired private lawyers; two had
counsels provided by the state, and one did not have legal counsel because she
was not aware of her right. As she said, “I didn’t have a lawyer; I didn’t know

that I had a right to have one. No one told me about this.” (CA8)

I63

Women who had legal counsel also had problems. with unqualified
counsel, or inadequate legal counsel. One woman did not have defense counsel at
two pretrial hearings in which she pleaded not guilty, and she was only provided
counsel at the third hearing where she gave up efforts to defend her innocence
because of emotional exhaustion caused by imprisonment and lack of counsel.
This woman explained her situation as follows,

I had to appear in court [pretrial hearings] three times; At the ﬁrst
appearance, I asked for, but was not provided, a defense lawyer . . . The
judge told me that if I pleaded guilty, I would be sentenced to one month
in prison, three years on probation, and 300 hours of community services,
and one year on counseling. Because I didn’t attempt to stab my husband,
I pleaded not guilty . . . I was taken back to jail. One week later, they took
me to the second pretrial, and I still didn’t have a lawyer . . . I continued
pleading not guilty. At the third pretrial, I felt very depressed and
emotionally tired because I had been in jail for 16 days. So, I pleaded
guilty to get out ofjail. This time, I had a lawyer but he could not help
because he only met me 15 minutes before the hearing. (CA6)

Generally, most women were not satisfied with their legal counsels. They
felt that their lawyers were interested more in making money than in helping
them because they spent too little time on the cases. One woman hired a private
lawyer who was late on the pretrial. Another woman complained that her lawyer
did not help her understand what happened in the court. Still another woman
hired a Vietnamese lawyer who happened to be an acquaintance of her husband
and finally took his side. As these women explained,

I hired a private lawyer, but he was late on the day of pretrial and couldn’t

help me. I hired another lawyer who only examined the cases two days

before the trial. I was supposed to have a jury trial, but by what ever

reason I didn’t know, it was not a jury trial, and he didn’t explain to me
why this had happened. (TX4)

164

I hired a Vietnamese lawyer. However, he knew my husband and he took
the side of my husband . . . He advised me to plead guilty, but I didn’t
agree and I chose to go to trial. (CA7)

Overall, defense counsels, either private or public, tended to assumed that
their clients were guilty. Most women reported that their lawyer were interested
in bargaining with prosecutors for a lesser offense and sentence, and not in
challenging evidence used by the court. One woman was advised by her lawyer
to attend a counseling program for batterers while waiting for the appeal of her
conviction and sentence. Fear of being sent back to jail waiting for trials and a
lack of confidence in the ability of defense counsels to defend their innocence
forced many women to plead guilty while maintaining their innocence. As these
women explained,

They [court ofﬁcials] told me that I would be sent back to jail waiting trial

and would receive a more severe sentence ifI didn’t plead guilty. Because

I didn’t want to stay in jail longer and because I was also afraid that I

would be sentenced to ajail term at trial, I pleaded guilty. (CA8)

My lawyer worked with the court. He advised me to plead guilty to a

misdemeanor‘to receive a less severesentence. I was told that if I didn’t

plead guilty, I would be taken back to jail. Because I wanted to avoid

going back to jail and other troubles, I pleaded guilty to an offense that I

never committed. The judge sentenced me to 3 years on supervision

[probation], 30 days of community services, and 52 weeks on counseling

for batterers. (CAIO)

That Vietnamese lawyer couldn’t help because he took the site of my

husband, 50 I hired an American lawyer to help me appeal the conviction

and sentence. He advised me to attend counseling for batterers while
waiting for appeal decision . . . but in fact, I’m not a batterer . . . I never
hit him [her husband]. I don’t know why I have to do that. (CA7)

Problems in translation and a lack of understanding about the meanings

and consequences of court decisions also inﬂuenced women who maintained that

165

they were innocent to see pleading guilty as an acceptable alternative for jail
detention. The mistranslation of the term “probation” into the Vietnamese term
“quan che” (supervision) created a misperception about the meaning and

consequences of probation.'3 Many women simply understood “probation” as

,9

“supervision,” or “a little bit inconvenience of life, without understanding its
consequence in term of criminal record. They were not even aware that a
violation of the probation conditions would bring them back to prison to serve the

whole term. Therefore, they accepted the guilty pleas to receive probation and

get out of unpleasant jails.
TriaL Conviction, and Sentencing

Data for the study suggest that the practices of the courts, and the quality
of police investigation and defense counsel had an important impact on women’s
conviction and sentence. Of six women who were prosecuted, four women
pleaded guilty for a misdemeanor domestic assault, and two other women chose
to go to trial. At ‘ the pretrial or at the trial, these women did not have
opportunities ‘to present their versions of the story because cases were processed
very fast. In addition, prosecutors and judges heavily relied onppolice reports of
the incidents and other criminal records, but did not consider other information,
to make decisions on the case. As these women explained,

My lawyer advised me to plead guilty . . . I told the judge that I had been

abused for many years, I had put up with his abuse, and I had to defend

myself. But the judge said that because I hadn’t called the police before,
there was no record about his abuse that could be used for my case. CA9

 

‘13. Ofﬁcial court materials and materials used in a counseling program for batterers also used the term
“quan che” or supervision to indicate probation.

166

The pretrial was very short and brief. The judge didn’t spend enough time
to listen to all the details about the case. He only looked at police reports
on that day [the date of the incident]. They didn’t take into account all of
his emotional abuse of me during the last three or four years. CA10
Literature has showed that that the police often collect evidence for
prosecution in domestic violence cases by talking with victims and taking
pictures of injuries (Erez & Belknap, 1998). Similarly, in the present study,
visible injuries and false information provided by complaining husbands/partners
were taken as face values and were admitted as evidence for the charges.
Defense counsels often spent very little time with their clients to know more
details about the case, so that they could challenge evidence provided by the
court. Court delays also discouraged witnesses from continuing their efforts to
testify on behalf of the accused. One woman had two witnesses who could
support her alibi, but they had to give up their effort to testify on her behalf after
repeated court delays. The woman explained her case as follows,
I had two witnesses: one was my boss and one was the baby-sitter who
agreed to testify that I was at work at the time of the incident that caused
my husband’ injuries. However, none of them appeared at the trial because
the case was postponed and because they were tired of going back and
forth to the court several times and ﬁnally gave up. I was convicted of
domestic assault, sentenced to one month in prison, three years on
supervision [probation], and 52 weeks on counseling for batterers. (CA7)
My lawyer only discussed the case with me two days before the trial. . . I
didn’t have any opportunity to tell my story at the court. . . I was convicted
of a misdemeanor domestic offense and sentenced to six months on
probation for the offense that I did not commit . . . The judge also issued a
restraining order against me on my husband’s behalf . . . (TX4)

All of the women were sentenced to probation terms that ranged from six months

to three years, ordered to attend batterers’ counseling programs that lasted from

167

six months to one year, and required to do 200 hours to 300 hours community
services. Two women also received an additional one-month jail term.'4 Judges
also issued a restraining order against most of the women regardless of the
request of their husbands/partners. Of six husbands, only two requested the
judges remove the order, and only one request was approved.

In summary, data for the study indicated that women’s experiences with
the court as offenders of intimate violence were affected by police and judicial
practices, inadequate due process protection, husbands’ desires to use arrest as a
means of control, and women’s economic resources. Because the police often
limited their investigations of domestic violence cases to information provided by
the complainants and complainants’ injuries, and because the court relied heavily
on police reports to make decisions, many women were prosecuted, convicted,
and sentenced solely on the basis of their husbands/partners’ complaints.
Inadequate legal counsel and lack of conﬁdence in the ability of legal counsel to

help also forced many women to plead guilty to‘the offense they did not commit.

Effects and Consequences of Criminal Justice Interventions
Research on domestic violence policies often focuses on their
effectiveness in terms of victims’ safety based on the reduction of violence by
abusers, women’s cooperation with the criminal justice system to have successful
prosecution and women’s satisfaction with the system (see Literature Review).

One area that has been neglected by research is the effect of criminal justice

 

14. At the time of the interview, one woman was still working to appeal her conviction and sentence.

168

intervention into the family lives of women involved in intimate abuse. Scholars
have recognized that many women call the police to end the violence but do not
want to end the relationship. Therefore, knowledge of the effects of the criminal
justice approach to intimate violence is incomplete without understanding how
this approach affects the family relationships of those who use it, especially
women who came from a culture that places high values on the family. This
section examines the effects and consequences of criminal justice interventions to

intimate violence in terms of women’s satisfaction, safety, and family lives.

Women’s Satisfaction

Satisfaction with the Police

Literature on domestic violence has indicated that victims’ satisfaction
with police performance reﬂects the quality of police work to enforce domestic
violence laws and serve victims’ needs (Erez & Belknap, 1998). Victims who are
not satisfied with police performance often feel disappointed and frustrated with
the system that is supposed to meet their needs. Failure to arrest, to listen, or to
provide encouragement, reassurance, or material aid were seen as insensitivity to
the needs of victims (Bowker, 1982). On the other hand, Buzawa and Austin
(1993) found that victims’ approval ratings of the police increased when victim
preferences with regard to arrest were followed, or when victims perceived that
their victimizations were not trivialized, and that they were not belittled by the
police.

With regard to the present study, data analysis revealed that a majority of

women who had contacts with the police as victims had positive perceptions

169

about police performance. Most of the women whose preferences for arrest were
followed by the police felt protected and supported. They also perceived police
as courteous, fair, and understanding. As these women put it,
I think the police were fair with him [her husband], and they treated me
with courtesy. They tried to understand the story on the basis of my
daughter’s explanation. (38104)

The police were nice with me; they supported my decision. (CA1)

I felt very scared [when I contacted the police], but I though that they did
protect me. (L84)

The police did what I wanted. When I saw the police ofﬁcer arresting and
taking him [her husband] away, I felt satisﬁed. I wanted him to be
punished for what he had done to me. I believed that the police supported
me. (LS3)
In some cases, women’s preference that there not be an arrest was not followed,
the women did not have negative perceptions about police performance because
they perceived that the police only enforced the law, and because they somehow
felt protected by the police. As one woman explained,
The police ofﬁcers listened to my explanation of what had happened.
They appeared to believe my story and support me. They explained the law
and what would happened to my husband and gave me materials in
Vietnamese about social service agencies that I could go to get help. Then,
they arrested my husband. I felt sad, but they only did what the law
required. (B8207)
However, some women also had negative opinions about police
performance because their desired solutions for the problem could not be
realized. Women who strongly opposed police intervention at the ﬁrst place often

felt dissatisfied with police performance when their preference that there be no

arrest was not followed. Dissatisfaction with police work increased when these

170

women felt that the police were insensitive to their needs, and showed disrespect
toward them and their husbands/partners. A woman, whose partner was arrested
because employees at the emergency room called the police, explained her
situation as follows,

I didn’t need police intervention L . . They treated him unfairly. He was a

well-educated man who felt responsible for his mistake [by taking her to

the hospital], but they treated him like a burglar or a robber . . . I couldn’t
forget the image of him being handcuffed and taken away by the police. It

was a trauma for both of us . . . They were not nice with me either. When I

asked them who would drive me home if they arrested my husband, they

told me, “Yourself. You can drive.” It was rude. They knew that I had a

back pain. They said they helped me, but in fact they took him away and

left me alone. I don’t think they supported me. (L82)

Language barriers could affect women’s perceptions of police performance
in different ways. Some women who did not understand English at all or very
well might not be able to detect subtle. negative tones and nuances in the words
used by police officers or the demeanor of police ofﬁcers. On the other hand,
language barriers and lack of understanding about the law could cause
misunderstandings leading to women’s dissatisfaction. As a woman, whose
husband had been in and out. of prison several times because of offenses other
than domestic violence, put it,

I wanted the police to order my husband to stop drinking and gambling and
to attend counseling, but they disregarded my request. They said that
drinking and gambling were my family problem and they couldn’t
intervene. I don’t think that they supported me. The law is only in the
paper. . . When people have power, they can do anything they want to do,
regardless of the law. (TX2)

Data analysis also revealed that most women offenders were dissatisfied

with police performance. Obviously, it is unrealistic to expect that women

171

offenders would be satisfied with their arrests. However, women offenders’
dissatisfaction was related less to police arrest per se but more to what they saw
as police unfair treatment. Three women complained that police arrest decisions
in their cases were totally based on husbands/partners false reports that police did
not verify. Similarly, three other women thought that police arrest decisions were
unfair because the police did not take into account their explanations. Instead,
their arrests were made based on injuries suffered by their husbands/partners who
exaggerated and distorted the whole stories. Some women also felt that police
performance during their arrests and jail detentions was rude and insensitive to

their legitimate needs.
Satisfaction with the Court

Although most of the women whose husbands were arrested wanted to
drop charges, the majority of them felt satisﬁed with court decisions. Of 12
husbands/partners who were prosecuted, one was acquitted, and eleven were
found guilty of a domestic offense. One husband was given a deferred sentence;
two were sentenced to a jail term; ﬁVe got probation, and~ three women did not
know 'what kind of punishment their husbands got because they were separate
before the end of their cases. For Some women, the court decisions were
consistent with what they wanted for their husbands, either an acquittal, or a
dismissal. As these women explained,

I felt relieved when he was acquitted . . . I didn’t have to worry about his

family blaming me for his involvement with the law. They already hated

me. If he had been convicted, I would have suffered more because they
would have retaliated against me. (88207)

172

The court dismissed the case after he completed his counseling program. I
felt very satisfied with the court decision. (L82)

He was sentenced to one-year probation and ordered to attend counseling,
and I agreed with the course decision. I wanted him to attend counseling,
so that he would understand that using force was wrong and would know
how to control his anger . . . (L85)
Other women considered the decisions as fair and agreed that their
husbands deserved the punishment.
He was sentenced to a prison term . . . I only wanted him to leave me alone
and stop beating me. However, he was very violent, and he also
committed other offenses as well. So, he deserved to be in jail. (88203)
He was sentenced to six months on probation and ordered to attend
counseling. I felt satisﬁed with the court decision; he should learn from
this lesson. However, the children didn’t want their father to have a
criminal record. (LS6)
Besides the sentence itself, expression of sympathy by court ofﬁcials also
increased abused women’s satisfaction with the judicial intervention. As a
woman described her experience with the judge in her child custody case,
The judge was a woman, and she appeared to be touched by my situation. I
saw she cried silently. She granted me the custody of my son and issued a
restraining order against my former. husband. I felt very satisﬁed with the
court decision. I believedthe judge was fair . . . She was a very good
woman. In previous hearings, the judge was not fair because he let my
former husband and his lawyer cheat on me. (CA2)
However, many women, especially those who did not want the criminal
justice intervention, also felt dissatisﬁed with court interventions. Women who
did not request. a restraining order but had to accept a no-contact bond as a

condition for their husbands/partners’ release considered the restraining order as

disruptive to their family lives. As a woman explained her situation,

173

I didn’t request a restraining order. He was not a dangerous person. I

wanted him to go back home and live with me like nothing had happened.

The no-contact bond only caused more trouble to my family life . . . He

had to stay in his office, and everybody knew about the problem. (L82)

On the other hand, women who were unable to obtain protection from the
court because of rigid rules of evidence also felt dissatisfied. One woman had
been abused by her husband in Vietnam and continued suffering the abuse in the
US but did not know how and Where to seek help until she talked with a doctor in
the hospital. After she was released from the hospital, she contacted the police to
report her case and request afrestraining order. She was extremely disappointed
and felt helpless when she was told that she could not request a restraining order
because there was no physical evidence of the abuse.

Most women offenders also felt dissatisﬁed with court proceedings. Their
dissatisfaction resulted from their perceptions about the court’s unfair treatment,
inadequate due process protection, and unqualiﬁed defense counsel. Most
women complained that prosecutors and judges did not consider their
husbands/partners’ contribution to the events. Instead, prosecution and conViction
decisions were made on the basis of police reports that depended heavily on
husbands/partners’ complaints. Women who relied on public counsel also felt
that the court did not respond to their needs. Even women who paid for a private
attorney did not have conﬁdence in their lawyers who they believed were only
interested in making money. Women’s dissatisfaction with the judicial process

were translated into their negative feelings toward the system. Many women

openly said that they distrusted the system that had done injustice to them.

174

Women’s Safeta,y

For Vietnamese-American women, the criminal justice approach to
intimate abuse is a new resource to combat wife abuse that was not available in
their home country. Results of the survey indicated that the majority of
respondents who still recalled lives in Vietnam (55 percent) said that there was
virtually no law that prohibited wife abuse. and punished wife abusers in Vietnam;
the rest 45 percent indicated that the police only intervened when victims
suffered severe injuries. All women in the core sample saw a major difference
between law in Vietnam and law in the US in that the police in Vietnam only
intervened in life threatening abuse cases, while the police in the US could
intervene even when no physical injuries were involved.

Interviews with abused women showed that criminal justice interventions
had positive effects on women’s safety, but the effects varied, depending on
approaches used by the women, abusers.’ characteristics, and power dynamics
between the women and their abusers. For some women, a threat to call the
police could be effective enough to deter their husbands/partners from using force
in the future. For other women, police interventions gave them protection because
police officers could stop their husbands/partner from attacking them or
destroying things in the home, and order the violent husbands/partners out of the
home. As these women explained,

I only threatened to call [the police] by picking up the phone but I didn’t

actually call. That was enough to make him feel scared and stop hurting
me. (88103)

175

The police stopped him from destroying things and order him out of the
house. He stopped cursing me and yelling at me, and stopped destroying
my belongings. (88205) -

In a majority of cases, however, police interventions alone did not have
long term effects. When abusive husbands/partners were not arrested, or when
the police did not press charges according to the request of the abused wives,
violence continued, as illustrated in the following cases,

The first time when I called the police, he appeared to be afraid. When he

knew that I didn’t want him to be arrested, he wasn’t afraid any more. He

still acted violently . . . nothing changed. (CA8)

The ﬁrst time when I called the police, he seemed to be afraid a little bit.

After 1 bailed him out, he promised to change, but nothing happened. The

second time when I called the police, he .wasn’t afraid. He thought that he

could get away with it like the ﬁrst time. (L85)

After the police liaison talked with my husband, the situation of my family

became better for a short period of time, about ﬁve or six months, then he

continued to make trouble again as usual. (TXl)

He left, and then he returned [to abuse me]. Police interventions had no
effect on him. (TX2)

He was not arrested because I begged the police to not arresting him . . .
Later, he raised his head and told everybody that the police could not

arrest him because he hadn’t done anything wrong . . . But he didn’t
change. He talked bad about me with other people and continued abusing
me or threatening to hit me. So, I decided to divorce . . . After I contacted

the police liaison and ﬁled a divorce, he didn’t come to harass me, and I
felt safe. (TXS)

However, arrests combined with prosecutions and punishment appeared to
be more effective than arrests alone in terms of women’s safety. Some abusive
husbands/partners stopped using force after they were prosecuted and sentenced
to probation and counseling treatments. On the other hand, some women

continued experiencing abuse after charges against their husbands were dropped.

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Although most women whose husbands/partners were arrested wanted to drop
charges, data analysis suggested that women who requested that charges be
dropped because they wanted to help their abusive husbands/partners, but not
because they were dependent on their husbands/partners, experienced less
violence and had improved family relationships. On the otherhand, women who
wanted charges be dropped because they were emotionally and ﬁnancially
dependent on their abusive husbands/partners did not experienced much reduction
in violence after criminal justice interventions. As these women explained,
I wanted my husband to understand that Icould have my say in the cases.
80, I appeared in the pretrial and asked the judge for leniency on his behalf
. . . [After court interventions] He made good progress. He stopped
abusing me, and he treated me with more respect. He stopped bringing his
friends home to drink or hanging with his friends outside all night as much
as before. He began working two jobs to buy a new car. I also urged him
- to go back to college to ﬁnish his degree . . . He was very good now. (L83)
I’m not happy with my life, but I don’t know how to make it better. If he
doesn’t ask me for money [to spend on gambling], everything will be all
right. There will be no conﬂicts, no ﬁghts . . . Since the time he was
sentenced to probation, he didn’t ask me for money. (L85)
I asked the judge [prosecutor] to drop the charge because I loved him. He
told me that if I loved him, I should ask the judge [prosecutor] to drop the
charge. Therefore, I denied the abuse . . . He appeared to be deterred by
' the law for a while, but after I asked the judge to drop the charge against
.him, he didn’t change. I felt disappointed because he didn’t keep his
promise. (LS7)
In other cases, however, positive effects of the court interventions only
occurred during the probation period, and violence resumed after the abusive
husbands/partners finished their probation terms. Also, criminal justice

interventions appeared to have no effects on men who had been involved with the

law because of other offenses. As these women explained,

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During his probation, he was all right. After he finished his probation,
nothing changed. (TX6)

He got in and out of prisons several times. He probably was not afraid of
the law. The law in the US was not effective. (TX2)

It seemed to me that he didn’t change even with the intervention of the
law. He got one-year probation for the first incident and was ordered to
attend counseling, but he didn’t attend. For the second incident, he was in
jail for a while. After he was released, he continued threatening me and my
family. Now, I know that I made a big mistake when I came back with
him, but I was so afraid of his reprisal. The law couldn’t keep him from
my father’s home. (TX3)

In addition, abused women often had to suffer more emotional abuse in
exchange for a reduction of physical abuse. When the criminal justice approach
focused mainly on intervention in physical abuse, other forms of abuse that did
not rely on force could be used by abusive husbands/partners. Of 24 women
victims who had contacts with the criminal justice system, five were divorced and
seven were separate because of restraining orders. Of 12 women who stayed in
the relationship, three reported improved family relationships; ﬁve said that
violence was reduced but their husbands/abusers cursed and yelled at them more
often; two reported that nothing changed, and two said that while violence
continued they also suffered additional emotional abuse.

Restraining orders also had positive effects on women’s safety, even when
the abusive husbands/partners did not change. Because the effects of a
restraining order lay mainly in its requirement of a physical separation between
abused women and their abusers, this approach could eliminate the opportunities

for the abusers to use force against their victims, even when abusive

husbands/partners did not change their attitudes toward gender relationships.

178

Most of the women who requested restraining orders felt safe during the time
they maintained the order because their abusive husbands/partners could not get
into their houses/apartments or approached them elsewhere to attack them. As
these women explained,
He didn’t change, but because of the PPO, he couldn’t come to my home
to hit me . . . It helped me feel safe. I’m no longer worried about him
coming to my home, and I didn’t have to suffer his swearing and yelling . .
. I had more freedom to move around, and I could sleep in peace at night,
but I’m also worried about my children who now don’t have a father like

other children. (88203)

He couldn’t come to my house to swear at me and destroy things belonging
to me. (88205)

Because of the PPO, he couldn’t go to my apartment and I didn’t have to
live in fear. I felt safe and relieved. (LS7)

In some situations, restraining orders also had a deterrent effect that went
beyond its original intended purposes. Some Vietnamese-American women used
it as a power tool to bargain for their safety, especially when their
husbands/partners felt-deterred by the orders. One woman experienced less
violence after she terminated the order. Two other women did not experience
violence after they and their husbands/partners violated the order. One woman
allowed her husband to return home and stay with her; the other maintained
contacts with her husband through telephone or mails. Both women did not
terminate the orders but used them as a warning to prevent their husbands’ attack.
As these women explained,

With the restraining order, I felt safe. However, I felt worried because he

was ordered out of the house and other people would learned about the

problem . . . After the intervention of the criminal justice system
[restraining order], violence in my family reduced substantially, even after

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I terminated the order. If violence happens, I will request a restraining
order again, but I may not call the police. (88101)

Both of us violated the order because I allowed him to return home . . .

However, I didn’t ask [the judge] to remove the order. I wanted to use it as

a warning to prevent him from hitting me again. I told him that if he hit

me, I would call thepolice and he would be charged with a more severe

offense. (LS6)

For abused women who were also labeled as offenders of intimate violence
by the criminal justice system, their convictions had important safety
implications. Because the criminal justice system and other social services
agencies applied a dichotomous definition of abuse, a person could be seen as
either the victim or the offender of intimate violence. When a woman became
offender in one incident, she could not receive services provided for victims even
when she was abused in other incidents. A majority of women who were involved
in the criminal justice system had been physically abused before the incidents
that led to their convictions, and two women were harassed and stalked by their
_ husbands/partners .after they were convicted. Their husbands violated the
restraining orders and came to their work to cause troubles. However, because of
their convictions, these women could not receive assistance from victim advocate
agencies that served victims of domestic violence. They could not even request a
restraining order against their husbands/partners to avoid harassment. As these
women explained,

After the trial, I moved out because of the restraining order [against her],

but he continued following me and causing me trouble at the restaurant

[where she worked]. . . He came there several times a week and asked to

talk with me while I was working. When I refused to talk with him, he

would yell in front of all customers, calling me a “whore” who abandoned
the family, husband, and children to go with other men. I had changed my

180

job a number of times, but he still discovered the place where I worked. . .
I went to a women’s center to ask for help, but its staff said that I was not
qualified for the services because I was convicted of a domestic offense. . .
I was not a victim. (CA8)

He called me at home, sent me letters and asked to talk with me. Because I
didn’t want to violate the order, I ignored all. He then went around the
community and talked bad about me and accused me of abandoning him. . .
When I told my story to a counselor at the batterers’ program that I
attended, she said that I was a victim of domestic abuse and advised me to
seek help from a women’s center . . . The Vietnamese counselor at the
women’s center was very sympathetic to my situation, but she said that I
was not qualiﬁed for the services because I had been convicted of a
domestic offense. When I asked my lawyer to request a restraining order
for me, he also said that it would be very difficult because I already had
one against me, and he was not interested in helping with it. (TX4)

Quality of Family Life

An examination of data for the study revealed that arrest, prosecution, and
the restraining order could provide Vietnamese-American women with some
measure of protection from physical attacks by their husbands/partners.
However, women’s physical safety did not always go along with economic
security and improvement in family relationships. Among 25 women who used at
» least one criminal justice approach to deal with intimate violence, only 3 enjoyed
both physical safety and an improvement in family relationships after criminal
justice intervention. As one of these woman described her situation,

. He made good progress . . . He stopped abusing me, and he treated me
with more respect. He stopped bringing his friends home to drink or
hanging with his friends outside all night. He began working two jobs to
buy a new car. I also urged him to go back to college to ﬁnish his degree. .
. He was very good now . . . Before the incident, I had to ask him for
money when I needed. He added my name into his bank account after I
decided to work. I told him that I could work, and I didn’t need to depend
on him to survive. If he continued to abuse me, I would leave. Now, I

can spend money without asking him every time. I could also check on his
spending, especially money he sent to his family in Vietnam. (LS3)

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For other women, forced separations by a restraining order, as well as arrest and
imprisonment of their husbands/partner caused hardships to their family lives
because they lost financial support from their husbands/partners, as illustrated in
the following cases,

My ﬁnancial situation got worse after he was ordered out of the house.
(88205)

He lost one-week’s salary because he was in jail. I also lost one-week’s

salary because I had to stay home to take care of my child while he was in

jail [both the woman and her boyfriend took turn to take care of their baby
to save baby-sitting fees]. . . I lost my mind and was so stupid to call the
police that time. . . I will never do it again. (L85)

Because the police ordered him out of the house, he left. Then he returned

to take both cars with him . . . Now, my mother didn’t have a car. He also

threatened to cut off health care insurance premiums that covered me and
my children. (TX2) '

Because Vietnamese family traditions emphasized conciliation and family
cohesion, the confrontation associated with criminal justice interventions could
worsen family relationships. In addition, the concept of family in Vietnamese
traditions included extended-family members, such as grandparents, parents, and
siblings. Thus, criminal justice interventions affected not only the couple’s
relationships but also the relationships between abused women and their abusers’
extended families. As these women explained,

My family life became more strained, more difficult . . . My daughter

didn’t agree with my calls to the police. His family obviously took his

side. They didn’t welcome me to family gathering. His friends also

criticized me. Some didn’t want their wives to socialize with me. (CA3)

After the [criminal justice] intervention, he [her boyfriend] was often
angry with me even though I hadn’t called the police . . .(hospital

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employees called). He felt humiliated, and he didn’t trust me any more.
He wanted to end the relationship. (L82)

After I called the police, my husband’s family hated me; they alienated
themselves from me. (88207)

Some of his friends said that I was not a Vietnamese woman any more,

that I didn’t understand his difficulties. Because he couldn’t make enough

money to support the family, he felt provoked by my behavior. (CA5)

Although separation required by a restraining order could serve to improve
women’s physical safety, it could also created opportunities for men to abandon
or cut off the relationships. For women who wished to maintain family
relationships, separations created by restraining orders could be a threat to their
family lives. As one woman explained her situation,

After he was released from jail, he came to stay with his sister because of

the PPO [personal protection order] . . . Several months later, I learned

that he had moved in with a woman co-worker. I felt hurt and sad. My
childrenurged me to remove the order, and I did what they wanted . . . But
it was too late. He came to talk with me about divorce. He told me that
only strangers used the court to sold problems . . . However, I thought the

PPO caused the problem. Because he could not go home, he had an

Opportunity to live with another woman. (CA5)

Women offenders of intimate violence experienced even more detrimental
effects of a conviction on their family lives. Two women lost the custody of their
children because of their criminal convictions. One woman was not informed
about the custody hearing; therefore she could not attend the hearing to ﬁght for
her rights. Consequently, she lost beth custody and visitation. The other woman
who had depended on her husband for support before the incidents also lost

custody because she was separated from her husband by the restraining order and

did not have income to support her child. As these women explained,

183

After the criminal case was over, my husband’s lawyer gave me papers
about divorce and custody. I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t
contact my husband since the trial because of the restraining order. When
I asked him [the lawyer] why they hadn’t notify me about the case, he said
that I had no right to notification because I was a convict . . . I lost both
custody and visitation. (CA6)

I lost the custody of my son because I didn’t have income . . . I didn’t

work before . . . Currently, I work but I don’t have immigration papers, 50,
I could only work for cash, and I couldn’t report this income. (CA8)

Other Costs

Vietnamese—American women who used the criminal justice approach to
intimate violence had to pay other costs as well. In a majority of situations,
women often posted bails for their abusive husbands/partners. They also often
paid court fees and coSts Of batterers’ counseling programs for their abusive
husbands/partners. In fact, many Vietnamese-American women wanted their
husbands/partners to get counseling and were often willing to pay counseling
fees, with a hope” "that their husbands/partners would change, and their
relationship would imprdve. ’However,‘ some women were disappointed because
their husbands/partners failed to attend the counseling programs they had paid
for. One woman even spent money to pay for a medical evaluation of her
husband’s mental illness in an attempt 'to help him avoid prosecution. As these
women explained,

I had to pay $300 for his ﬁrst bail, and $500 for the second time. The

court returned the money after he appeared in court but I had to pay $350

court fees for each time. (L85)

I had to pay at least $15,000 for the evaluation of his mental illness to help
him escape prosecution, but he was prosecuted anyway. (TX6)

184

Beside financial costs, abused women whose husbands were arrested could
also experience police intrusion to their privacy. This happened when their homes
were searched because their husbands/partners were suspected for other illegal
behavior besides domestic offenses. As one woman explained,

The next day when he was still in jail, two police ofﬁcers and one civil
ofﬁcer came and searched my apartment. They suspected that my
boyfriend was involved in drug dealing. They searched everywhere, every
corner, even in the refrigerator. I felt very scared because I didn’t know
anything about his business, and I didn’t know whether he was really
involved in drugs. (L85)

In summary, Vietnamese-American experienced both positive effects and
negative consequences of criminal justice interventions in intimate abuse in terms
of satisfaction, safety, and quality of family life. Data for the study showed that
Vietnamese American women’s satisfaction with the system depended more on
how they felt protected by the system than on whether their desired solutions
were supported by the court and-the police. Even though most women did not
want their husbands to be arrested and prosecuted for a variety of reasons, a
majority of them felt protected by the arrests and convictions of their abusive
husbands/partners.

Criminal justice interventions also had positive effects on women’s safety
that varied depending on approaches used by the women, abusers’ characteristics,
and power dynamics between the women and their abusers. In general, a
combination of arrest, prosecution, sentencing, and a restraining order appeared

be more effective than arrest alone. Although most women’s requests that charges

be dropped were not approved, and although most abusive husbands/partners

185

were prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced, women who wanted charges be
dropped because they were emotionally and financially dependent on their
abusive husbands/partners did not experienced much reduction in violence as a
result of criminal justice interventions. On the other hand, women who requested
that charges be dropped because they wanted to help their abusive
husbands/partners, but not because they were dependent on their
husbands/partners, experienced less violence and improved family relationships.
In addition, criminal justice interventions appeared to have no effect on
husbands/partners who had been previously involved in the system because of
other offenses.

Positive effects of criminal justice interventions on women’s safety,
however, were often short lived, and women’s improved safety did not often go
hand-in-hand with improved quality of family life. Many women in the present
study experienced more emotional abuse, strained family relationship, and even
family break-up after criminal justice interventions. Using the criminal justice
interventions into domestic violence could also incur ﬁnancial costs for women
who had to pay for bail and court fees on behalf of their husbands/partners. In
addition, a conviction of a domestic offense could cause women offenders to lose

child custody and visitation.

Perceptions of Vietnamese Americans about Solutions to the
Problem of Intimate Violence

My interviews with women participants in the core sample showed that the

criminal justice approach to intimate violence could provide Vietnamese-

186

American women some measure of safety protection and could improve family
relationship in some situations. However, data analysis also showed that in many
other situations, women’s physical safety often coexisted with increased
emotional abused and strained family relationships. Sometimes, to the
disappointment of women who had relied on the system to improve family
relationships, criminal justice intervention also led to family break-ups.

Some scholars (Radford & Stanko, 1991) have suggested that current
criminal justice policies dealing with intimate violence may be more appealing to
women in the mainstream America, butthey do not address the needs and
concerns of victims who belong to other racial/ethnic groups. Research on public
perceptions showed a variance in the degree of public support to criminal justice
interventions into domestic violence. A study conducted by Koski and Mangold
(1988) indicated that although police interventions were considered as the least
effective behind counseling, women’s shelters, clergy, and family and friends, the
majority of respondents (61 female and .54 percent male respondents) reported
that they would report abuse incident to the police. In another study (Hilton,
1993), less than half of respondents (48 percent) recommended the police to press
charges against the male abusers in intimate violence cases. Stalans and
Lurigio’s study (1995) indicated that most respondents preferred a guilty decision
when the abusive spouses had inﬂicted injuries.

Because people’s perceptions of a problem and solutions to it are often
inﬂuenced by their own life experiences, an understanding of how members of

different racial/ethnic groups perceive as solutions to the problem is important to

187

the design of social policies. In this section, I examine perceptions of
Vietnamese Americans in general and of Vietnamese-American abused women in
particular about approaches that could reduce intimate violence in Vietnamese-
American families.

Data for the study showed that there were many similarities between the
general Vietnamese-American population and Vietnamese-American abused
women terms of their perceptions about solutions to intimate violence. The most
common suggestions given by respondents in both groups was public education
on domestic violence, followed by counseling programs for abusive spouses and
abused spouses, criminal justice interventiOns, education on gender equality, and

women empowerment.
Public Education

The preference for counseling and treatment over criminal justice
approaches among Vietnamese Americans were reﬂected in their responses to an
open-ended question asking them to suggest approaches deemed appropriate to
deal with intimate violence in Vietnamese-American families. Of 430
respondents, 73, including 34 women and 39 men, provided their suggestions.
The most common suggestions focused on public education on the problem of
intimate abuse. A majority of respondents suggested that there should be
educational programs in public schools to teach students that violenceshould not
be the answer to family conﬂicts. In addition, there should be [Vietnamese]
media programs and other community activities focusing on raising awareness

among new Vietnamese immigrants about intimate violence and disseminating to

188

the public information about-laws and policies dealing with the problem. The
assumption was that many Vietnamese Americans did not understand why
violence against wives and intimate partners was wrong (see Table 10).

There was also a similarity between the perceptions of the general
Vietnamese-American population and those of Vietnamese-American abused
women in terms of their preferences for education as a long-term solution to the
problem. A majority of abused women (20 women or 59 percent) thought that
there should be programs on laws and policies dealing with intimate violence to
educate men about their responsibilities to the family and their appropriate

behavior toward wives and children (see Table 10).
Coanseling Treatment

Counseling for abusive spouses was the second most common suggestion
by abused women in the core sample and respondents in the survey. A majority
of respondents in both groups favored a counseling approach that they thought
would give abusive spouses an opportunity to make change, and that counseling
programs should be available for indigent people. Particularly, a number of male
respondents to the survey suggested that there should be counseling programs
designed for Vietnamese clients to address issue of culture differences. Abused
women in the core sample also said that speciﬁc counseling programs, including
drug and alcohol treatments, should be available for abusive husbands/partners.
In addition, a number of respondents, including abused women, thought that
counseling for abused spouses could be beneﬁcial because it would help them

understand the dynamics of power and abuse. As one abused woman put it,

189

“Vietnamese women victims should attend counseling to open their eyes and stop

dreaming of changes that men usually promise but never realize” (see Table 10).

Table 10.

Perceptions of Vietnamese Americans about Solutions to Intimate Violence

(Qualitative Daya)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perceived Solutions to Intimate Survey Sample Core
Violence Sample“
Men Women n = 34
(n = 39) (n = 34)
Public education on domestic violence 13 (33%) 15 (44%) ll 6 (18%)
Education and counseling for abusers 5 (13%) 3 (9%) IL 14 (41%)
Counseling for both spouses/partners N/A N/A ll . 2 (6%)
Drug and alcohol treatment for abusers N/A N/A 2 (6%)
Family mediation before criminal justice 6 (15%) l (3%) N/A
interventions -
Fine and community services for abusers 5 (13%) N/A N/A
Harsh treatment for abusers 4 (10%) 4 (12%) N/A
Police intervention N/A N/A II 17 (50%)
Court intervention N/A N/A , ll 2 (6%)
Personal protection order N/A N/A II 9 (26%)
Divorce 3 (8%) 6 (18%) 12 (35%)
Social, legal, and interpretation N/A N/A 16 (47%)
a551stance
Empowerment of women for gender 1 (3%) 5 (15%) ll 9 (26%)
equality
Maintaining women’s oriental traditions 2 (5%) N/A ll N/A

 

 

Total

 

39 (100%)

 

34 (100%)” N/A

 

* Because each woman in the core sample often had multiple suggestions for a
solution to intimate violence, the classiﬁcation of their opinions is not

mutually exclusive.

190

 

Criminal Justice Interventions

Results of the survey of 440 Vietnamese Americans showed that most
respondents supported government interventions to stop intimate violence (mean
= 4.5 on a 5 point scale where 5 indicated the highest level of support). A number
of respondents who responded to the open-ended question also suggested that
there should be programs to encourage victims of intimate abuse to report, or ask
friends or neighbors to report, domestic violence incidents to the police.

With regard to particular criminal justice approaches dealing with intimate
violence, Vietnamese Americans were mOre likely to favor the counseling
approach (mean = 4.4) than to support prosecution and imprisonment approaches
(mean = 3.5 and mean = 3.3 respectively) (see Table 11). A number of male
respondents suggested that mediation by family members should be used ﬁrst,
and the criminal justice approach should be used only for repeat abusers. In
addition, many respondents also said that the criminal justice approach should
consider ways of helping couples restore family relationship instead of breaking
it up.

A majority of abused women in the core sample also supported
government interventions. They thought that police interventions could prevent
violence. About half of abused women suggested the use of a restraining order,
but respondents to the survey were not asked about restraining orders. Very few
study participants supported the use of legal approach to deal with intimate

violence, except for those who wanted a divorce (see Table 11).

191

Table 11.
Perceptions of Criminal Justice Interventions
(Survey SaanIe-Ouantitative Data)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Criminal Justice Interventions Mean Score“
Government intervention (n = 439) 4.5
Police should be called (n = 439) 4.4
Counseling (n = 397) 4.4
Arrest (n = 409) 4.0
Fines (n = 375) 3.8
Probation (n = 373) 3.8
Criminal conviction (n = 372) 3.5
Jail (n = 372) ' 3.3

 

*Mean score on a 5 point scale where 5 indicates the highest
level of support.

Gender Equality and Women Empowerment

A large proportion of abused women in the core sample and a smaller
proportion of female respondents to. the survey thought that there should be
public education programs on gender equality. In addition, women in the survey
sample recommended that Vietnamese-American women should get more
education, build up conﬁdence, and know their rights to protect themselves.
Similarly, abused women in the core sample also said that the criminal justice
approach could only prevent violence in the short term, and mutual respect
between husband and wife would be a long-term solution to wife abuse. In
addition, abused women also said that government should provide ﬁnancial

support and job training for women victims who wanted to leave the relationship,

192

help women get jobs and enforce child support policies. They also recommended
that social service agencies should have Vietnamese staff to serve Vietnamese
clients. On the other hand, a smaller number of male respondents to the survey
thought that Vietnamese-American women should keep the “oriental” tradition of
gender relationship and Vietnamese traditions to avoid conﬂicts in the family
(see Table 10).

In summary, data for the study showed that most Vietnamese Americans
including abused women, supported government interventions to stop intimate
violence. While a majority of the study participants agreed that police
intervention was necessary to stop violence, they did not favor the prosecution
and imprisonment of intimate abusers. Many participants thought that criminal
justice interventions had only short-term effects, but gender equality should be a
long-term solution to the problem. They perceived that public education on
gender equality, laws and policies dealing (with intimate abuse, and women

empowerment would help reduce intimate violence.

193

CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The present study examines the experience of Vietnamese American
women with the criminal justice system as victims and offenders of intimate
violence. Specifically, the study seeks. to answer the following research
questions: 1) To what extent do Vietnamese-American women rely on the
criminal justice system to deal with violence by an intimate partner? 2) What are
socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors affecting Vietnamese-American
women’s decisions to use the criminal justice approach to intimate violence? 3)
What are experiences of Vietnamese-American women with the police,
prosecutors, judges, and defense lawyers when they are involved in intimate
violence as victims and offenders? 4) What are consequences of using the
criminal justice approach to deal with intimate violence? and 5) What are
perceived solutions to domestic violence among Vietnamese Americans in
general and Vietnamese-American women who are involved in intimate violence
in particular? In this chapter, I summarize major ﬁndings from the study and
discuss the results in great, details as how they are relevant to the practice-based
theory of gender relations and the qualitative case-study method used for the
study. The chapter closes with a conclusion and discussion of policy

implications, as well as limitations and contributions ofthe study.

Summary of Findings from the Study

Data for the study showed that Vietnamese-American women did not often

contact the police to report intimate abuse. Most abused women in the core

194

sample who did seek help from law enforcement only called the police after being
abused many times. A substantial majority of women who reported abuse to the
police only wanted the police to stop the violence and/or order their abusers out
of the home for their safety but did not want their abusers arrested (92 percent).
A majority of women whose husbands were arrested also wanted charges dropped
(79 percent). In addition, the majority of abused women in the core sample did
not use restraining orders to prevent further violence by their husbands/partners
(58 percent). Despite women’s preference that arrests not be made and charges
be drOpped, men were arrested in more than half of the times the police
responded to their wives/partners’ calls (58 percent), and most men who were
arrested were also prosecuted (86 percent).

Findings from the study showed that a variety of structural, organizational,
and cultural factors affected help-seeking behavior among Vietnamese-American
women. Economic and emotional dependency, language barriers, lack of
understanding of the American criminal justice system, immigration status, and
fear of reprisal negatively affected Vietnamese-American women’s decisions to
report intimate abuse to the police. On the other hand, the severity of abuse and a
desire to express agency were reasons behind women’s decisions to rely on law
enforcement to deal with intimate violence. All these factors interacted, and their
effects on women’s help-seeking behavior changed over time, according to the
progress of abuse. Generally, many women decided to report abuse incidents to
the police when other approaches to deal with abuse did not work, or when fear

for their safety outweighed other concerns. Because of economic and emotional

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dependency and fear of discrimination, most women did not want their
husbands/partners to be arrested. When intimate violence cases moved into the
judicial process, pressure from abusers and families, economic and emotional
dependency, a desire to keep the family intact for the beneﬁts of children, and
immigration status affected women’s desire to drop charges and women’s
decisions to terminate a restraining order.

Data analysis revealed that Vietnamese-American women had both
positive and negative experiences in their contacts with the police and the court
as victims and offenders of intimate abuse. Language barriers caused many
problems in communications between women victims and law enforcement and
judicial officials. A large proportion of women in the core sample had
difficulties in understanding and speaking English, but only a small numbers of
these women got interpretation assistance from law enforcement agencies and the
courts. Women who received interpretation assistance also faced problems
created by inaccurate interpretations. Combined with language difﬁculties was a
lack of knowledge about the law that prevented many women from understanding
the process and sometimes the outcomes of their cases. In addition, many women
did not beneﬁt from police referrals that did not appropriately respond to their
needs. Furthermore, insensitive and indifferent treatments by court ofﬁcials
made many women feel alienated and excluded from the process. On the other
hand, services provided by victim’s advocates, legal counsel, and social welfare
agencies could helped women victims understand the beneﬁts of participation in

the criminal justice process and gave them ﬁnancial and emotional support to

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follow through with the process. However, not many women could receive these
supportive services.

For women offenders, a lack of understanding of the law, inadequate legal
counsel, law enforcement investigation practices and judicial evidentiary rules
negatively affected their experiences. Because police investigations often used
injuries and information provided by the complainants as evidence for domestic
violence cases, and because the court heavily relied on the police report to make
decisions, many women were prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced solely on the
basis of husbands/partners’ complaints. In addition, inadequate legal counsel and
a lack of conﬁdence in defense lawyers caused many women to plead guilty to the
offense they did not commit.

The study found that Vietnamese-American women experienced both
positive effects and negative consequences of using the criminal justice system to
deal with intimate abuse in terms of satisfaction, safety, and quality of family
life. Although most women did not want their husbands/partners arrested and
prosecuted, many women were satisﬁed because they felt protected by the arrests
and convictions of their abusers. Police and judicial interventions also had
positive effects on women’s safety reﬂected in a reduction of violence.
However, the effects of criminal justice interventions on women’s safety were
short-lived and varied, depending on variations in context. In some cases, the
presence of the police was effective enough to reduce violence in the future, but
in many other cases, the combinations of arrest, prosecution, sentencing, and the

restraining order appeared be more effective than non-arrest or arrest alone. In

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addition, criminal justice interventions seemed to have no effect on
husbands/partners who had been previously involved in the system because of
other offenses.

Women’s physical safety, however, did not always go hand-in-hand with
an improved quality of women’s family life. Many women experienced more
emotional abuse, strained family relationship, and even family break-up after
criminal justice interventions. Restraining orders that removed abusive
husbands/partners from the home caused ﬁnancial hardship for a number of
women who depended on'their husbands/partners’ support. In addition, using
the criminal justice approach to deal with intimate abuse could also incur costs
for women who had to post bail and pay court fees on behalf of their
husbands/partners. For women offenders of intimate violence, a conviction and a
restraining order could cause them to lose child custody and visitation rights.

Although Vietnamese-American women did not ”often use the criminal
justice approach to deal with intimate violence, most Vietnamese Americans
surveyed by phone, including abused women, supported government interventions
to stop intimate violence. The overwhelming majority of respondents agreed that
police interventions were necessary to stop violence in most situations, but they
thought that prosecution and imprisonment of intimate abusers were only
appropriate in certain situations. They also perceived that criminal justice
interventions had only short-term effects, and that women’s empowerment, and
public education on gender equality, domestic violence laws, and policies would

be most effective in reducing violence in Vietnamese-American families.

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Discussions of Findings

The present study uses a qualitative case-study method and a theoretical
framework of gender relations to examine the contacts of Vietnamese-American
women with the criminal justice system as victims and offenders of intimate
violence. The practice-based theory of gender relations posits that the structure
of gender relations created by the division of labor, a system of social power, and
a cultural patterns of emotional relationships shapes men’s and women’s
experiences. Findings from the study suggest that the experiences of
Vietnamese-American women with the criminal justice system have been affected
by a variety of personal, socioeconomic, political, organizational, and cultural
factors linked to the structure of gender relations in the context of immigration

and resettlement.
Effects of the Division of Labor and Socioeconomic Corglitions

Results of the study indicate that the experiences of Vietnamese-American
women with the criminal justice system as victims and offenders of intimate
violence can be shaped by their-socioeconomic conditions in different ways.
Interviews with women in the core sample have showed that abused women who
were ﬁnancially dependent on their husbands/partners were often reluctant to
report abuse incidents to the police because they feared that the arrests,
subsequent prosecutions, and imprisonment of their providers could cause
damages to their family incomes. Economic dependency can also prevent women

from requesting, or force women to terminate, a restraining order that requires a

199

separation of a woman from her provider. These findings are consistent with
previous studies showing that economic hardship can cause battered women to
return to their abusive husbands/partners (Okun, 1988, Strube & Barbour, 1983,
1984)

Economic resources, however, can ease difficulties that abused women
often face in the criminal justice process because of their relationship with their
abusers. In the present study, women who bad financial resources and wanted to
use the judicial system to deal with abuse could hire a private lawyer to represent
them in the court and, therefore, could avoid the unpleasant confrontation with
their abusers during the criminal processing.

For women offenders, financial resources can have major impacts on their
experiences with the criminal justice process. Data for the study have showed
that because most women offenders could not rely on their husbands/partners to
pay for their bail, those who did not have ﬁnancial resources had to rely on
relatives and friends for their pretrial release. Otherwise, they had to stay in jail
waiting for the court decision. On the other hand, ﬁnancial resources enabled
women to hire private counsels to protect their legal rights or defend for their
innocence. Although women who lack ﬁnancial resources could have free legal
counsel provided by the state, public defense was often inadequate or provided
too late to have a positive effect on the case.

The present study suggests that women’s economic dependency needs to
be conceptualized more broadly to include absolute dependency and relative

dependency and measured by both women’ incomes (absolute dependency) and

200

women’s desires to maintain their existing living standards (relative dependency).
Not only unemployed women and women who work in low-paying jobs but also
women who earn decent incomes are reluctant to use the criminal justice
approach to deal with intimate abuse. While unemployed women and women
working in low-paying jobs need their husbands/partners’ incomes to make ends
meet, women working in well-paying jobs also depend on their husbands/partners
incomes to maintain a middle-class lifestyle. These ﬁndings are consistent with
previous studies showing that women’s economic characteristics have had no
significant effects on women’s decisions to call the police, to take steps to
support the prosecution of their abusers, or to go through the process of
requesting a restraining order (Bui, forthcoming; Fernandez, 1997; Johnson,
1990).

Economic conditions also interact with other factors, including fear of
reprisal, immigration status, women’s safety, and women’s desire to express their
agency, to affect women’s decision to use the criminal justice approach to deal
with abuse. In most situations, the criminal justice approach is the last resort
when abuse increases in term of frequency and severity of abusive acts, and when
other approaches fail to stop violence. However, absolute dependency appears to
have a stronger negative effect on women’s decision to rely on the criminal
justice system than relative dependency. Data for the study has showed that
women who had high levels of income and education were likely to report abuse

incidents to the police after being abused for a short period of time, while other

201

women only called the police after experiencing abuse for a long period time, or
they did not report abuse at all.

Related to the division of labor and women’s socioeconomic status are
language barriers that often cause a lot of difficulties for Vietnamese-American
women in their contacts with the criminal justice system. Results of the study
have showed that language barriers prevented women victims from effectively
communicating with criminal justice officials to report abuse incidents and to
understand the proceedings and outcomes of their cases. Language barriers also
prevented women offenders from understanding the laws and their legal rights
and effectively communicating with their legal counsels. Women who did not
speak and understand English could rely on interpretation assistance, but they
also experienced problems of distortions often associated with interpretations.

The present study also suggests that the process of adaptation to American
life in terms their English proficiency and their familiarity with the criminal
justice system is not a linear progressive improvement over time (see Gordon,
1964). For many Vietnamese-American women, their abilities to speak English
and understand the law that in turn affect their experiences with the criminal
justice system as victims and offenders are not a function of the time they have
lived in the US. Instead, their adaptations are a function of socioeconomic
conditions and the division of labor that give them opportunities to learn the new
language and pursue an education. In the present study, many women did not
study English after coming to the US because they had to work to support their

families, or because they had to stay home to take care of their children and do

202

housework. A few women did not have opportunities to go to school in Vietnam;
therefore, they lacked a minimum basic education in their native language
required for studying English. On the other hand, women who had high levels of
English proficiency were often able to pursue a college education in the US. In
addition, the availability of financial resources to buy a car also facilitated
opportunities to study English. Many women did not travel to study English
because they did not have a car to avoid the inconvenience of using public

transportation.
Effects of Social Power and: Organizational Structure

The present study suggests that social institutions and organizational
structures and cultures can exert important impacts on the experience of
Vietnamese-American women with the criminal justice system. Interviews with
abused women have indicated that many women did not call the police to report
abuse incidents or husbands/partners’ violations of restraining orders because
they were afraid of their abusers’ retaliations. Because the criminal justice
system has had a history of indifference to intimate abuse (Binder & Meeker,
1992; R. P. Dobash & R. E. Dobash, 1979), women’s fear of reprisal can stem
from their perceptions and their experiences of the criminal justice system’s
failure to protect them from violence by their abusers. Although criminal justice
responses to domestic abuse have changed during the last twenty years or 50,
women’s fear of reprisal suggests that criminal justice policies do not give

women enough conﬁdence in the protection by the system.

203

Insensitivity to the special needs of abused women on the part of law
enforcement, judicial and other social service agencies also contribute to
women’s negative experiences with the system. Literature has showed that
language barriers often constrain victims’ willingness to become involved in the
criminal justice system and create difﬁcultiesfor those who have contacts with
the system (Davis & Erez, 1998; Rimonte, 1989). In the present study, law
enforcement and judicial agencies often failed to provide adequate interpretation
assistance for Vietnamese-American women who could not speak and understand
English. Many women victims could not .understand the criminal justice process
because they did not understand English and did not receive interpretation
assistance.

Besides budget constraints, organizational goals can affect the provision of
interpretation assistance for non-English-speaking victims. Because holding
abusers accountable for their behavior through criminal proceedings and
convictions is a goal of current domestic violence policies, women who are
reluctant to cooperate with the prosecution are not often seen as useful witnesses
for the court and therefore do not deserve interpretation assistance. A lack of
female interpreters in criminal justice agencies also contributes to women’s
negative experiences because male interpreters may bring their gendered bias to
their jobs by providing inappropriate interpretations for female victims.

In addition, organizational practices that defines the victim and the
offender as two separate entities in domestic violence cases have important safety

implications for abused women who are involved in the criminal justice system as

204

offenders of intimate abuse. In the present study, a number of abised women
continued to be harassed and stalked by their husbands/partners after they were
convicted of a domestic offense. These women, however, were denied assistance
from victim’s service agencies because, under the views of these agencies, they
were not victims due to their convictions.

On the other hand, special services that address the special needs of
women victims can facilitate their cooperation with the system. In the present
study, many Vietnamese-American abused women who received interpretation
and legal assistance, as well as emotional support from victim Vietnamese staff
in service, legal service and social welfare agencies were willing to use the
system to deal with intimate abuse. By explaining the law and criminal justice
policies, helping women obtain public assistance and providing emotional
support, these victim service agencies have ameliorated the adverse impacts of
language barriers, lack of understanding of the law, and economic constraints that
often prevented women from participating in the criminal justice process.

The study also suggests that police investigation practices and judicial
evidentiary rules in domestic violence cases can have detrimental effects on the
experience of abused women who are charged with a domestic offense as these
rules and practices can inadvertently serve to reinforce the control of men over
their spouses/partners. Literature has shown that in most domestic violence
cases, the police only take pictures of injuries and talk with the complainants to
collect evidence used for prosecution (Erez & Belknap, 1998). Most women

offenders in the present study reported that police did not conduct investigations

205

beyond the complaints of their husbands/partners, and that prosecutors and the
court heavily depended on police reports to make prosecution, conviction and
sentence decisions. As a result, many women were arrested, prosecuted,
convicted, and sentenced on the sole basis of their spouse/partner’s false reports.

The structure of racial relations can also affect Vietnamese-American
women’ help-seeking behavior. As members of an ethnic minority group,
Vietnamese American women can learn about racial discriminations through the
media or through their own experiences. Data obtained from interviews with
women in the core sample and participants in the community sample showed that
many Vietnamese-American women did not report abuse incidents to the police
or did not want their husbands/partners to be arrested because they feared police
discriminations against them and their abusive husbands/partners.

Moreover, the judicial organizational culture that inﬂuences legal and
judicial practices also has negative impacts on Vietnamese-American women’s
experiences with the judicial system. Although in principle the right to counsel
is guarantee for all peopleaccused of an offense, a number of women in the
present study did not receive adequate legal counsel that could help them
effectively challenge evidence provided prosecutors and the court. Literature has
suggested that budget constraints are often a reason for a lack of legal counsel
and inadequate legal counsel for the indigents (Bright, 1994; Spangenberg, 1989;
Uphoff, 1992).

Although there are different ways to provide free legal counsel for the

poor, lacks of funding generally make ﬁnancial compensations for public

206

defenders low (Bright, 1994; Spangenberg, 1989). Due to the absence of
economic incentives for the job, the number of public defenders is usually too
small compared to a large demand from indigent people who need counsel, thus
often leading to large case loads (Bright, 1994; Spangenberg, 1989). These
factors, large case loads and low salaries, have negative impacts on the quality of
counsel and the outcomes of the case because there is no incentive to investigate,
to research, and to take a case to trial (Uphoff, 1992).

In addition, the organizational structure of the criminal court also
contributes to women’s experience with the judicial system through its inﬂuence
on the practices of court actors, including defense counsel. Under the
organizational pressure for plea-bargaining that happens to 90 percent of all
criminal cases, most defense lawyers, both public and private, tend to prepare
their clients to plead guilty (Uphoff, 1992). In some situations, defense counsels
respond to organizational pressuresand large case-loads by cajoling, threatening,
or manipulating their clients into pleading guilty (Uphoff, 1992). In the present
study, most women, including those who hired private lawyers and those who
received free legal counsel, reported that their defense lawyers were more
interested in bargaining with prosecutors than in defending their innocence.
Lacks of conﬁdence in the willingness and the ability of their legal counsels to
help, many women had to plead guilty while maintaining their innocence.

Immigration policies and immigration status can also affect women’s
help-seeking behavior. Data for the study showed that women who entered the

US under the sponsorship of their husbands/partners were often reluctant to use

207

the criminal justice approach to deal with abuse because they feared that their
abusers would retaliate and would not help them with the paperwork to obtain a
US permanent residency as required by the law. In addition, concerned with
negative consequences of domestic violence offenses that could result in a denial
of American citizenship and the deportation of the offender prevented many
women from calling the police, or caused them to request that charges against

their abusers be dropped.
Effects of Culture

The study suggests that culture can exert an important impact on
Vietnamese-American women’s experiences with the criminal justice system.
Most women in the core sample grew up With Vietnamese family traditions that
emphasized women’s subordination to men and the elderly, close family ties, and
hierarchy in interpersonal relationship. Consequently, in many situations help-
seeking behavior among these women not only reﬂected their own desires but
also the desires of other family members, including their abusive husbands,
parents, in-laws, siblings, and children.

In addition, perceptions of women’s appropriate behaviors, women’s
place, women’s family responsibilities, and the privacy of the family that are
shaped by culture have often make Vietnamese-American women feel reluctant to
seek help from outside the family, or to use any approaches that may cause a
separation between husband and wife, and between parents and children. For
many abused women in the present study, concerns for their safety caused them to

call the police, but most of these women did not want arrests and prosecutions.

208

Besides economic conditions and culture, women’s patterns of emotional
attachment shaped by Vietnamese family traditions also inﬂuence Vietnamese-
American women’s decisions to request that arrests not be made and charges be
dropped. These findings are in sharp contrast to the results of a study of white
abused women (Erez & Belknap, 1998) showing that the overwhelming majority
of participants (98 percent) cooperated with police request for information, and
that the reasons for women’s cooperation were to protect themselves and to have
the offender arrested or brought to justice. Erez & Belknap’s study ( 1998) also
found that only less than half of participants (48 percent) desired to drop charges
mainly because of threats from their. abusers.

Immigration to the US has caused changes in Vietnamese family traditions
in response to new economic, cultural, and political environments. For a number
of Vietnamese-American women, when abuse became intolerable, family break-
ups as a result of criminal justice interventions could be acceptable. For a
majority of other women, however, family life is an important element in their
lives, partly because of the inﬂuence of traditional values but also because of
social isolation resulting from the process of immigration to the US. Women
who desire to maintain family relationships often feel disappointed because the
enforcement of restraining order eventually cause family separations, and because
strained family relationships resulting from criminal justice interventions often

‘ lead to divorce.

209

Feminist Standpoint and Qualitative Methods for Understanding
Women’s Experiences ‘

 

The present study uses a feminist standpoint approach and a qualitative
method to examine the experience of Vietnamese-American women with the
criminal justice system as victims and offenders of intimate violence. The
approach of in-depth interview using open-ended questions has resulted in a rich
body of data that help understand women’s experiences under their own
perspectives. The analysis of women’s interpretations of the situations, using the
theoretical framework of gender relations, hasrevealed a complex interaction of
various structural, organizational, and cultural factors affecting women’s
experiences.

The feminist standpoint approach and a qualitative method have permitted
an examination of women’s experiences as a process that is constantly changing
toadapt to emerging situations and helped make sense of apparent contradictions
of women’s experiences. Data analysis indicated that the decision to rely on the
criminal justice system to deal with abuse among Vietnamese-American women
changed over time as new circumstances emerged to alter the importance of the
effects of socioeconomic, cultural, and organizational factors on their decisions.
Many women did not report abuse incidents when abuse started but decided to
call the police when violence escalated to the point that made women’s fear for
their safety outweighed other concerns.

Qualitative data analysis that emphasizes women’s interpretation of the

problem and its meanings helps produce a holistic understanding of Vietnamese-

210

American women’s complex experiences shaped by the interaction of various
social forces and two conﬂicting sets of values, including Vietnamese traditions
that stress collectivism and American culture that emphasizes individualism.
The study findings that both unemployed women, women working in low-paying
jobs, and women having high educational levels were reluctant to use the
criminal approach to deal with intimate violence seem to be inconsistent with the
framework of gender relations. However, using women’s interpretations of their
own experiences within the context of their. socioeconomic situations can help
broaden the concept of economic dependency to include relative economic
dependency applied for women who depend on their husbands/partners’ incomes
to maintain their existing living standards.

A contextual analysis of women’s experiences also helps make sense of
contradictory in women’s behavior. Although most women in the study did
support and adopt the ideal of gender equality, and many did want their
husbands/partners held responsible for their abusive behavior, various social,
economic and cultural constraints kept many women from using the criminal
justice to deal with abuse. In addition, even though most women requested that
no arrest be made or no charged be pressed against their husbands/partners, many
did feel satisﬁed with the criminal justice intervention. Their satisfactions were
more a result of protections they received than whether their preferences for
arrest or prosecution were realized. However, most women who felt satisﬁed

because of improved personal safety also felt disappointed because of strained

211

family relationships, separation, or divorce resulting from criminal justice
interventions.

An examination of women’s interpretation of their own experiences within
the context of cultural, social, and structural interactions has revealed the effects
of organizational structure on women’s help seeking behavior. Social support
networks, including victim advocate and legal counsel services, and social
welfare, can facilitate women’s participation in the criminal justice process by
mediating the negative effects of women’s economic dependency, language
barriers, and a lack of understand the law that often prevent abused women from
using the criminal justice approach. On the other hand, the application of the
dichotomous definition of the victim by social support networks and criminal
justice agencies that view the victim and the offender as two separate entities can
have important safety implications for abused women. In the present study, many
women were both victims and offenders of intimate violence in different points in
the relationships. However, abused women who were charged with a domestic
offense were excluded from the protections and services of various victims’
service agencies.

Finally, the qualitative approach that emphasizes a holistic view of social
phenomena and its meanings in their own social contexts has allowed a clear
understanding of the subordinate status of Vietnamese—American women through
their experiences with the criminal justice system as both victims and offenders.
Data analysis showed that most women victims who called the police to report

abuse did not want their husbands/partners to be arrested and prosecuted. To the

212

contrary, most men who called the police to report abuse wanted their
wives/partners to be arrested and prosecuted. The behavior of women victims
reﬂected their financial and/or emotional dependency on their husbands/partners.
On the other hand, the behavior of men who were victims of intimate violence
reﬂected their attempts to use criminal justice policies to maintain control over
their wives/partners. The practices of criminal justice agencies that only take
into account information provided by the complainants and that appear to be
gendered-neutral can be detrimental to women when women’s economic and
emotional subordination to men is not considered. Police investigations and
court processresulting in the arrests, prosecutions, and convictions solely on the
basis husbands/partners’ false complaints only serve to reinforce the power of

men OVCI’ WOIIICII.

Conclusion

The present study examines the experiences of Vietnamese-American
women with the criminal justice system as victims and offenders of intimate
violence. Data uSed for the study were obtained from in-depth interviews with 34
Vietnamese-American women in the core sample and 11 Vietnamese Americans
in the community sample, and from a survey 440 Vietnamese Americans. All
participants in the three samples were selected in four Vietnamese communities
in Orange County (California), Houston (Texas), Boston (Massachusetts), and

Lansing (Michigan).

213

The study shows that structural, cultural, and organizational forces
simultaneously affect the experiences of Vietnamese-American women with the
criminal justice system. Vietnamese-American abused women, like the general
Vietnamese-American population, are supportive of government interventions to
stop the problem of intimate violence. However, socioeconomic conditions,
language barriers, immigration status and policies, fear of reprisal, pressures
from the family, indifference and insensitive treatments of criminal justice
ofﬁcials often prevent women from reporting abuse incidents to the police, or
from participating in the criminal justice process. On the other hand, ﬁnancial
and emotional support provided by victim’s advocate, legal service, and welfare
service agencies can facilitate women’s cooperation by helping them overcome
difﬁculties created by economic constraints’and language barriers.

The study suggests that criminal justice practices that appear to be
gendered-neutral can have negative consequences for women. Police
investigations and judicial decisionsin intimate violence cases that heavily
depend on information provided by the complainants can make domestic violence
laws become a power tool that men“ can use to control their wives/partners’
behavior. Women who do not speak and understand English are particularly
vulnerable to their husbands/partners’ attempts to take advantages of the law to
maintain control over the relationships. Bail policies also have different effects
On male and female offenders of intimate violence. While most women post bail
for their husbands/partners, most women cannot depend on their

husbands/partners to post bail for them.

214

Finally, the study suggests that criminal justice interventions into intimate
violence can reduce violence experienced by a spouse/partner, but they usually do
not improve family relationships. Many women in the present study felt satisﬁed
because of protections that they received from the criminal justice system, and
many of them experienced violence reduction at different levels. At the same
time, most of the women also experienced strained family relationship and
increased emotional abuse. In addition, many women also experienced family
break-ups temporarily through separations or permanently through divorces as a

results of criminal justice interventions.

Policy Implications

There are multiple implications for criminal justice and social service
policies on the basis of ﬁndings from the present study. First, economic
constraints can prevent women from calling the police to report abuse and
participating in the criminal justice approach. Many women in the core sample
and participants in the survey sample suggested that empowering women to create
a balance in relationships would be a way to reduce violence in the long terms.
Therefore, a necessary step would be helping women obtain public assistance,
jobs, and child support to have ﬁnancial resources stable enough to improve their
power in the relationships or help them break their dependency on their
husbands/partners.

Secondly, language barriers can prevent women from effectively

communicating with law enforcement and judicial ofﬁcials to provide necessary

215

and important information about the cases. Language barriers can also prevent
women from being aware of resources for battered women, understanding the law
and participating in the criminal justice process. Therefore, criminal justice and
other social agencies, including law enforcement, prosecutor offices, courts, and
legal service, victim’s advocate and social welfare agencies should address
women’s needs to overcome language barriers by employing staff that can speak
the language of abused victims, providing interpretation assistance when it is
necessary, and using printed materials in the native languages of non—English-
speaking clients. Besides providing interpretation assistance, these agencies
should prevent gender biases in interpretations by employing women for
particular interpretation tasks. In addition, because counseling for batterers has
become a major part of criminal justice policies to reduce intimate violence, there
should be bilingual counseling programs for batterers.

With regard to criminal justice policies and practices, the police should
change investigation practices in domestic violence cases and use multiple
sources of information to establish evidence for domestic violence cases. This
approach will improve the quality of criminal justice services for both men and
women who are involved in the criminal justice system because of intimate
violence. It can also give women a safeguard against husbands/partners’ attempts
to use the law as a power tool to control the other person in relationships,
especially when women do not understand English and the law. To protect the
right to counsel in domestic violence cases, legal counsel for indigent domestic

violent offenders should be adequately provided as in other criminal cases.

216

Court officials should be sensitive to women’s various needs and should
listen to women victims of intimate violence, regardless of their initial
unwillingness to participate. Because women often make decisions on the basis of
their judgments of the situation, they can change their minds and become willing
participants when they feel that they are welcome to and not excluded from the
process. In addition, the deﬁnition of victims of domestic violence should be
expanded to include women offenders who are also victims of intimate violence.
This change in the definition of the victim would allow this group of women to
receive assistance from the system to avoid further abuse.

Findings from the study suggest that criminal justice interventions only
have short-term effects, and they often cause strains to family relationships. In
many cases, the abusers do not change their attitudes and behavior, and women
have to exchange the quality of their family lives for their safety. Because the
family is an important element in the lives of many Vietnamese Americans,
especially women, long terms approaches that help avoid negative consequences
of criminal justice interventions should be explored. One approach would be
public education about gender relations, domestic violence, and domestic
violence laws and policies to raise awareness about the problem among
Vietnamese-American populations. Breaking social and cultural isolations would
also help change gender attitudes because they would give Vietnamese Americans
more opportunities to engage in mainstream educational and economic activities

that support the ideal of gender equality.

217

Limitations of the Study

Like other studies, the results of this study present some limitations. First,
the core sample did not proportionally represent Vietnamese-American women
from all different social classes, but it disproportionably included women from
the working class. The sample included just two professional women who used
law enforcement services, but neither participated in the judicial process.
Although the analysis could reveal some effects of social class on women’s
decisions to report abuse to the police, a lack of variance in social class
characteristics did nOt allow a full understanding of the effect of social class
(education, incomes, and language proficiency) on women’s experiences with the
judicial process as victims of intimate abuse. Similarly, all six women offenders
were from the working class and had similar levels of education and English
proficiency, as well as occupation status.

Secondly, the sub-sample of women offenders was small and was selected
mainly in one source. Five among six women were selected in a counseling
program for batterers in Orange County; one woman was selected in Houston.
The small number of women participants and a narrow source of the sub-sample
did not allow the inclusion of women from a wider range of situations. For that
reason, results of the study regarding the experiences of women offenders should
be considered as suggestive and should be used as a starting point for further
research.

Third, the present study failed to include in the core sample Vietnamese-

American women of the second immigration generation. Most women in the core

218

sample came to the US as adults or young adults, except one who came to the US
at two years old. Because age is often negatively associated with assimilation,
Vietnamese children tend to assimilate to American culture more quickly than
adults. Although data analysis show that the time women had spent in the US did
not affect their help-seeking behavior, a lack of American-born Vietnamese
women did not allow for a full understanding of the effect of assimilation on
women’s experiences.

Finally, because this study was about women’s experiences, I did not
interview male victims and male offenders of intimate violence. In addition,
concerns for the safety of women who participated in the study did not allow the
interviews of their spouses/partners. A lack of data obtained from women’s
spouses/partners prevented a . comparison between men’s and women’s
interactions with the police. Although most women offenders reported that their
husbands/partners lied to the police when they reported abuse, whether women
also lied to the police was unknown. Due to a lack of information provided by
male victims that might affect the results, interpretation of the results should be
made with cautions.

On the basis of this study’s shortcomings, future research should use larger
sample sizes, and should include women with a wider range of demographic
characteristics and immigration generations. In addition, more research on
women offenders is needed to provide a fuller understanding of women’s

experiences with the criminal justice system as offenders of intimate violence.

219

Contributions of the Study

Despite a number of shortcomings, the present study has unique
contributions to the literature of women’s experiences as well as the literature of
domestic violence. First, the study has enriched the understanding of women’s
experiences by producing for the first time a body of knowledge on the
experiences of Vietnamese-American women with the criminal justice system and
an understanding of the effects of immigration-related variable on women’s
experiences with the system.

Second, this study has been the first to provide a comprehensive
understanding of women’s experiences with the criminal justice system as
victims and offenders of intimate violence. While most other studies examined
women’s experiences at only a single stage of the criminal justice process, either
women’s experiences with the police, or with the court, or with the restraining
order, the present study examines Vietnamese-American women’s experiences
with the whole criminal justice system. In addition, the study has provided an
opportunity to understand women’s subordinate status from a new angle:
women’s experiences with the criminal justice systems as victims and offenders.

Third, the present study, by using a qualitative approach, has produced a
unique understanding of women’s complex experiences. The study has revealed a
clear picture of various social forces that simultaneously inﬂuence women’s
experiences. For the ﬁrst time, the concept of relative economic dependency
proposed by Fernandez and colleagues (1997) is supported by scientiﬁc evidence,

and the harmful effects of the deﬁnition of the victim and the offender as two

220

separate entities on women’s experiences has been revealed. In addition,
multiple effects of criminal justice interventions have been examined, especially,
for the first time the effects of criminal justice on women’s family lives. Results
of the study suggest that although criminal justice interventions can reduce
violence in some situations, they are far to be an approach to improve both
women’s safety and family relationship.

Finally, this study has contributed to the literature in the area of public
perceptions about domestic violence policies. Public perceptions are often used
to measure public support for social policies, and the results of public surveys
have been often used to guide social policies. Despite a great deal of scholarly
discussions on new domestic violence policies during the last 15 years or so, few
studies explored public perceptions about criminal justice interventions in
intimate violence. In addition, there has been .no study examining public
perceptions among ethnic/racial minority groups. Although the survey of the
general Vietnamese Americans is only a small part of this study, results of the
survey have provided an understanding of the perceptions of Vietnamese
Americans about intimate violence and criminal justice approaches to the

problems that can be used as input for future policy designs.

221

APPENDICES

222

Appendix 1
Coding Techniques for Qualitative Analysis

I used three different coding techniques to analyze qualitative data
obtained from 34 interviews with women in the core sample and 11 participants
in the community sample. These included open coding, axial coding, and
systematic coding.

Open Coding

For data obtained from interviews with 34 women in the core sample, open
coding was perform by thoroughly examining each interview transcript to identify
concepts that seemed to ﬁt to 6 broad categories, including 1) immigration
experience, 2) resettlement experience, 3) experience of family life, 4) experience
of abuse, 5) help-seeking experience, and 6) perceived solution to intimate
violence. Data under each category were re-analyzed to create sub-categories.
For example, data under the category “help-seeking experience ” were re-
analyzed and coded into 7 sub-categories, including: 1) seeking help with the
police as victims, 2) experience with the police as offenders, 3) experience with
the court as victims, 4) experience with the court as offenders, 5) experience with
personal protection order as victims, 6) experience with personal protection order
as offenders, and 7) seeking help with others. When it was necessary, data under
sub-categories were further analyzed to create lower-level sub-categories. For
example,data in the sub-category “seeking help with the police” were analyzed
and coded to create 6 lower-level sub-categories, including: 1) when and how
were the police called? 2) who made the call? 3) how many times? 4) reasons for
calling or not calling, 5) police process, and 6) effects and consequences of
calling the police (see the list of categories and sub-categories resulting from
open coding below).

For data obtained from interviews with 11 participants in the community
sample, open coding was perform to create 4 broad categories. These included: 1)
domestic violence policy, 1) report rates of intimate violence among Vietnamese
Americans, 3) criminal justice process (domestic violence cases), and 4) victims’
services. When it was necessary, data in each category were re-analyzed to create
sub-categories. (see the list of categories and sub-categories resulting from open
coding below).

Axial Coding anﬁd Systematic Coding

Axial coding was performed by analyzing categories and sub-categories of
codes resulting from open coding to create codes that were consistent with the
main axes of the research questions. There were four axes, including: 1) the
extent to which Vietnamese American women rely on the criminal justice to deal
with domestic violence, 2) factors associated with women’s decision to use
criminal justice services, 3) women’s experiences with the criminal justice

223

system as victims and offenders of intimate violence, and 4) the perceived
solutions to the problem of intimate violence. For example, data in the category
“help-seeking experience” and its sub-categories were re-analyzed to identify
codes that consistent with the axis “the extent to which Vietnamese women rely
on the criminal justice to deal with domestic violence.” This resulted in 8 axial
codes, including: 1) when were the police calleda? 2) how many times were the
police called? 3) reasons to call or not to call, 4) preference for arrest, 5)
expectations from police work, 6) preference for dropping charge, 7) court
attendance, 8) request and termination of personal protection order.

While performing axial coding, I also performed systematic coding by
identifying concepts that ﬁt with the theory framework of the study (economic
dependency, the system of social power, patterns of emotional relationship, and
the interaction between race/ethnicity, class, gender, and culture). Concepts that
did not fit with the theory were also identify and included in the analysis to
evaluate the explanatory power of the framework. Systematic coding provided a
basis for assessing the usefulness of the theory by showing how data from the
study were consistent with the framework, and for identifying new concepts and
assumptions.

List of Categories and Sub-Categories

Data obtained from the core sample.

1. Immigration Experiences - Types of migration (for the women and their
husbands/partners):

0 Escape

- Amerasian ~

0 Dependent on/sponsored by husband

0 Dependent on/sponsored by parents and relatives
0 Others (HO and ROVR) '5

2. Resettlement Experiences (for women participants and their
husbands/partners)
0 Education in the US.
0 Types of education (basic, college, vocational, ESL)
0 Reasons for not studying in the US. (gender roles,
transportation, levels of basic education, health conditions)
0 Work and jobs (upward mobility, downward mobility, employment, and
unemployment).

 

15. HO (Humanitarian Operation) is the program designed to resettle former military and civil ofﬁcers
serving in the South Vietnamese government. ROVR (Resettlement Opportunities for Vietnamese
Retumees) is the program designed to allow Vietnamese who escaped to a refugee camp in Southeast
Asia and were repatriated to apply for resettlement in the US.

224

Housing (assistance and difficulty).
Isolation-Loneliness.

3. Experiences of Family Life

Reasons for marriage (traditional expectations, economic and
immigration reasons, being forced to marry).
Forms of marriage (romantic, arrangement, “picture-bride”).
Place of marriage (Vietnam, the US, refugee camp).
Mobility independence (drive license, availability of car, public
transportation, dependence on husbands/partners, children, and
neighbors).
Economic independence (ability to keep and spend money when
needed; dependence totally or partially on ﬁnancial support of
husbands/partners).
Relatives in the US. (parents, siblings, and other relatives).
Leaving and returning:
0 Reasons for leaving (temporary escape of abuse, divorce,
separation, because of PPO).
0 Reasons for returning (emotional and economic dependence,
traditional expectations).

4. Experiences of Abuse

Forms of abuse (physical and emotional).

Severity of abuse (frequency and injuries - forms of injuries and
medical care attention).

Reasons leading to abuse (jealousy, conﬂicts over money and house
chores, husbands/partners’ use of alcohol).

5. Help-Seeking Experiences

Seeking help with the police:

0 When were police called? (When abuse began? After being
abuse how many times?)

0 Who made the call? (women participants, neighbors, health care
staff)

0 How many times?

0 Reasons to call or not to call (economic dependency, fear of
reprisal, language barriers, immigration status, emotional
attachment, safety and agency).

Police process (women victims):

* Women’s expectations from police work (wanted the
police to arrest husbands/partners, stop the violence, or
order abusers out of the home).

* Communication with the police (language barriers,
problems with interpretation, misunderstanding).

O

225

* Police arrest decisions.

* Police referrals (transportation to shelters, information
materials in English or in Vietnamese, referral to social
services agencies, perceived police referral as helpful and
not helpful).

* Women’s perceptions of police work (satisfaction and
dissatisfaction with police performance, perceived police
protections, perceived police discriminations, police
courtesy and fairness).

0 Effects and consequences of calling the police (reduction of
violence, no effect, strained vs. happy family relationships,
isolation from relatives and friends, increased emotional abuse).

0 Experience with the police as offenders:

0 When were police called? Who made the call?
(Husbands/partners, or family members).

0 Police process:

* Husbands/partners’ preference for arrest.

* Communication with the police (language barriers,
problems with interpretation, misunderstanding).

Police arrest decisions.

Women’s perceptions of police work (satisfaction and
dissatisfaction with police performance, perceived of
police discrimination and unfairness).

O Jail experiences (bail and release pending trial).

0 Experiences with the criminal court as victims:

0 Preference for dropping charges.

* Factors affecting women’s desire to drop charges
(pressure from abusers and families, economic and
emotional dependency, immigration status).

* How to substantiate the request to drop charges (use of
economic reasons, mitigation of the severity of abuse,
self-blame for the violence).

0 Prosecution decisions.

0 Difficulties encountered at the court (language barriers,
problems with translations, lack of knowledge of the law).

0 Experiences with legal counsels (encouragement, helpful
counsel).

0 Experiences with victim’s advocates and court ofﬁcials
(encouragement, discouragement, helpful advice, indifference,
alienation).

0 Court attendance: -

* Reasons for not appearing (avoided confrontation with
the abuser, wanted to help the abuser, not asked to

appear).

226

* Factors facilitating victims’ court appearance (support
and assistance from legal counsels, social service
agencies, and victim’s advocates ).

Court decisions (conviction and sentence).

Effects and consequences of seeking help from the court
(reduction of violence, strained vs. happy family relationship,
economic difﬁculties, family break- -u.p)

0 Experiences with the criminal court as offenders.

0
O
0

000000

Husband’s preference for dropping charges.

Prosecution decisions.

Difﬁculties encountered at the court (language barriers,
problems with translations, lack of knowledge of the law,
inadequate defense counsel).

Experiences of pretrial hearing (reasons for pleading guilty).
Experiences with defense lawyers (lack of trust, dissatisfaction).
Experiences court officials (dissatisfaction, sense of unfairness).
Husbands/partners’ court attendance.

Court decisions (conviction and sentence).

Consequences of criminal convictions (family break-up,
economic difficulties, loss of child custody and visitation,
harassment and staking by husbands/partners, loss of protections
in subsequent abuse by husbands/partners).

0 Personal protection order (PPO) (for victims):

0

0

Why was and why wasn’t PPO requested? (Lack of knowledge
about PPO, fear of public knowledge about the problem,
economic reasons, the roles of police referrals, victim’s
advocates, lawyers, and trial judges).
How many times was PPO requested?
Husbands/partners’ violations of PPO:
* Reasons not reporting (fear of reprisal, level of severity
of violence, violation of PPO by victims).
Termination of PPO:
* Reasons for termination of PPO (economic and emotional
reasons).
Effects and consequences of using PPO (family break-up,
economic hardship, reduction of violence).

0 Personal protection order (PPO) (for offenders):

0

Were the participants subject to a PPO?

0 Did husbands/partners request to remove or terminate PPO?
0 Consequences of PFC (family break-up).
o Seeking help with others:
0 Relatives (parents, siblings), friends, co-workers, neighbors.
0 Social agencies (health care, refugee resettlement, welfare

ofﬁce).

227

6. Perceived Solutions to Intimate Violence

0 Perceptions of laws regarding domestic violence in Vietnam and in the
US. (similar, different).

0 Perceived solutions to the problem of intimate violence (police
presence, arrest, prosecution, convictions, probation, counseling,
education, gender equality, women’s empowerment through job
opportunities and public ﬁnancial assistance).

Data from the community sample.

1. Domestic Violence Policy
0 Arrest policy (mandatory arrest, pro-arrest).
0 Bail and pretrial release:
0 Amount of money for bail
0 Prosecutorial policy (mandatory, no-drop).

Sentencing policy (prison terms, probation, mandatory counseling,
community services).

2. Report Rates

3. Criminal Justice Process (domestic violence cases)

0 Court processing:
0 Arraignment.
O Pre-trial.
0 Trial.
0 Victim’s advocates at the court (availability of Vietnamese-speaking
staff).
0 Interpretation services at the court
0 Availability of interpretation services.
0 Quality of interpretation
0 Gender of interpreters.

4. Victims ’ Services

0 Vietnamese police liaison for domestic violence
0 Availability of Vietnamese police liaisons.
0 Gender of police liaisons.
0 Social service agencies
0 Women’s center
0 Health care and refugee resettlement agencies
0 Availability of Vietnamese-speaking staff.

228

0 Type of services:

0

0000

Shelter.
Referrals.
Translations.

Emotional counseling.

Economic assistance.

229

Appendix 2
In-Depth Interview Questionnaire

Part I : The Context of Family Life

1.

2.

10.

11.

Age of the respondent and her husband/partner

a) How old are you? ’

b) How old is your husband/partner?
Place of birth

a) Where were you born?

b) Where was your husband/partner born?
Age at the time coming to the US.

a) How old were you when you came to the US. (or N/A -- born in the US)

b) How old was your husband/partner he came to the US. (or N/A — born in

the US)

Immigration history: ask the respondent when and how she leave Vietnam; if she
spent time in refugee camps; her experience of resettlement in the US; difﬁculties
with languages, ﬁnding jobs, transportation, housing.
Type of relationship with the abuser

a) Wife/husband (legal)

b) Wife/husband (common-law)

c) Wife/husband (separate)

(1) Ex-wife/husband (divorced)

e) Girl/boy friend (living together)

i) Girl/boy friend (not living together)

g) Ex-girl/boy friend
Place of marriage (or place where the respondent and her husband/partner started
living together)

a) in Vietnam

b) in the U8

c) in a refugee camp

d) Other
If you were married (or lived together with . . .) outside the US, who came to the US
ﬁrst?

a) your husband/partner came ﬁrst

b) you came ﬁrst

c) both came at the same time
If your husband/partner came ﬁrst, did be sponsored you to the US? Explain the
situation.
If your husband/partner came ﬁrst, did he send money back to support you (and your
children)? (ask the respondent to explain the situation).
If you came ﬁrst, did you sponsored your husband/partner to the US? (ask the
respondent explain the situation).
If you came ﬁrst, did you send money back to support your husband/partner (and your
children)? (ask the respondent to explain the situation).

230

12. Type of marriage

a) Self selection

b) Arranged

c) “Picture-bride”

d) “Picture-groom” --- also ask the respondent to describe the situation leading to
the marriage/cohabitation ﬂaressure from the family? her own perception of
the importance of having a husband?)

13. Length of relationship (how many years?)

14. Number of all children respondent has with the current husband/partner?
15. Number of children respondent has from other relationship?

16. Number of children living in the same household with the respondent?
17. Number of children under 18 years of age?

18. Number of respondent’s close relatives in the US.

a) Parents (specify the location)?

b) Siblings (specify the location)?

c) Other relatives (uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. . .)?

19. How close are the relationships respondent has with relatives (ask for details about
the relationship, such as frequent visits, ﬁnancial and emotional support)?
20. Number of husband/partner’s close relatives in the US.

a) Parents (specify the location)?

b) Siblings (specify the location)?

c) Other relatives (uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. . .)?

21. How close are the relationships husband/partner has with relatives (ask for details
about the relationship, such as frequent visits, ﬁnancial and emotional support)?
22. Respondent’s citizenship

a) American citizen

b) Permanent resident

c) Legal alien (not sponsored by husband/partner)

(1) Legal alien (sponsored by husband/partner)

e) Illegal alien

23. Husband/partner’s citizenship

a) American citizen

b) Permanent resident

c) Legal alien (not sponsored by the respondent)

d) Legal alien (sponsored by the respondent)

e) Illegal alien

24. Husband/partner’s ethnicity (specify)
25. Respondent’s religion

a) Catholic

b) Other Christian branches

c) Buddhist

d) Other

e) No religion

26. Husband/partner’s religion

a) Catholic

231

b) Other Christian branches
c) Buddhist
d) Other
(I) No religion
27. How is your English proﬁciency?
a) Good
b) Fair
c) Lots of difﬁculties with English
28. How is husband/partner’s English proﬁciency?
a) Good
b) Fair
0) Lots of difﬁculties with English
29. Respondent’s educational attainment in the country of origin (if not born in the US).
a) Less than high school
b) High school
c) Two year college, but no degree
d) Two year college with a degree
e) Four year college but no degree
1) Four year college with a degree
g) Graduate study, but no degree
h) Graduate study with a degree
30. Respondent’s education and training in the US.
3) Less than high school
b) High school
c) Two year college, but no degree
d) Two year college with a degree
e) Four year college but no degree
1) Four year college with a degree
g) Graduate study, but no degree
h) Graduate study with a degree
** also ask the respondent if she went to school to study English or vocational programs
If not, ask her to explain the situation.
31. Husband/partner’s educational attainment in the country of origin (if not born in the
US).
a) Less than high school
b) High school
c) Two year college, but no degree
(1) Two year college with a degree
e) Four year college but no degree
1) Four year college with a degree
g) Graduate study, but no degree
h) Graduate study with a degree
32. Husband/partner’s education and training in the US
a) Less than high school
b) High school

232

c) Two year college, but no degree
(1) Two year college with a degree
e) Four year college but no degree
0 Four year college with a degree
g) Graduate study, but no degree
h) Graduate study with a degree
Malso ask the respondent if her husband/partner went to school to study English or
vocational programs. If not, ask her to explain the situation.
33. Occupation In the country of origin In the US.
a) Respondent (specify)
b) Husband/partner (specify)
*Also ask the respondent to describe employment conditions of the couple during the
resettlement process (steadily employed, under-employed, sporadically employed, part-
time, full time, etc.) and difﬁculties they confronted in obtaining jobs.
34. Respondent’s yearly income (from all sources)
a) None
b) Less than 5,000
c) From 5,000 to 10,000
d) From 10,000 to 20,000
e) From 20, 000 to 30,000
1) Above 30,000
* ask the respondent to what extent she can control her earning income
35. Husband/partner’s yearly income (from all sources)
a) None
b) Less than 5,000
c) From 5,000 to 10,000
d) From 10,000 to 20,000
e) From 20, 000 to 30,000
1) Above 30,000
* ask the respondent to what extent she can access to her husband/partner’s income.
36. Other ﬁnancial support for respondent and children
a) Public assistance (cash and food-stamps)
b) WIC
c) Public housing
(1) Financial contribution from respondent’s children and/or relatives
e) Other (specify)
37. Economic independence: ask the respondent if her and her children’s ﬁnancial
situation would be worse without her husband/partner’s income.
38. Mobility independence:
a) Do you drive? If not, explain why (language barrier to passing the written
driving test; husband/partner discouraged the training; fear of accident . . .).
b) If you can drive, can you access to car when you need?
c) If you cannot drive and cannot access to car, what kind of transportation do
you depend on?

 

 

233

Part II: Respondent’s Experience of Violence

39. When did physical abuse begin during the relationship?

40. How often was physical abuse?

41. Ask respondent about forms of abuse (e. g., hit, threaten to hit, throw something at
respondent, slap, kick, push, grasp, shove, chock, stab with a knife or scissors,
threaten to stab, shoot with a gun, threaten to shoot).

42. What were the reasons for abuse? (ask about the progress leading to physical abuse
incidents)

43. Did you get injured? How severe were the injuries? (ask for details)

44. Did you need medical attention? Hospitalized? (ask for details of types of medical
treatments)

45. Did your husband/partner humiliate or degrade you? (e. g., make you beg for
forgiveness, ask for permission to use the car or spend money, or do something
against your will) -— ask for the ways husband/partner humiliated or degraded the
respondent.

46. Did your husband/partner frequently check on you? -- ask for detail how he checked
on respondent.

Part III: Respondent’s Responses to Violence and Experience with the Criminal
Justice System

Contact with the police and the court (pay attention to differences in police, prosecution,

and court policies)

47. Did you call the police

a) when violence ﬁrst occurred?

b) after many violence incidents had occurred?

c) If you did not, explain (probe for respondent’s perceptions of the police, her
fear of involvement with the law in general and of racial discrimination,
language barrier, lack of knowledge about the law, lack of phone, prevention
from the abuser, fear of being arrested, fear that husband/partner would be
arrested, didn’t want children to see arrest, and other reasons).

48. If you did not call the police, who called the police?

49. If you did call the police, what were the main reasons for the call? (to ask the police to
stop violence, to teach him a lesson, to send him in jail, and other reasons).

50. How many times were the police contacted because of assaults by the current
husband/partner? '

51. How many ofﬁcers were involved? How many of them were female? Did any of them
can speak Vietnamese?

52. Ask for details about respondent’s contact with the police during investigations:
which of the following things did the police do that that time? giving written info
about the legal system and other resources, taking photo of her injuries, taking photo
of his injuries, helping her leave the premises, listening to your side of the situation,
blaming her for the violence, discouraging her from pursuing the case, blaming or
scolding her for not following through with prior charges, arrest her husband/partner,
arrest herself, and others.

234

53.

54.

55.

56.

57.
58.
59.

60.

Ask about the respondent’s feeling of police intervention.

a) Were the police fair/unfair with your husband/partner?

b) Were the police treat you with respect?

c) Did they try to understand the situation based on your explanation?

(I) Were there communication difﬁculties because of language barrier?

e) What did you expect the police to do?

i) How much you think that the police did what you expected them to do with
the incident and your husband/partner?

g) How supportive were the police of you?

Was your husband/partner arrested? How many times? Ask for details about what
happened after husband/partner was arrested.

a) How long was your husband/partner in jail?

b) Did you have to post bail for his release? How many times?

c) How much money did you spend to post bail for his release?

(I) Was there a no—contact bond? If yes, explain how it affected your life?

Were you arrested? If yes, ask the respondent to explain what happened after the
arrest and during police investigation (similar to question 47).
Ask the respondent about her feelings of her arrest:

a) Were the police fair/unfair with you?

b) Were the police treat you with respect?

c) Did they try to understand the situation based on your explanation?

(I) Were there communication difﬁculties because of language barrier?

Did you ﬁle a victim statement? If not, explain why?
Was be prosecuted? How many times?
Did you request that charges against your husband/partner be dropped?

0 If yes, explain why you did so (Probe for reasons: love; economic dependence;
pressures from parents, friends and children; fear that he would loose job; his
threats; his promise to change and go to counseling; and other reasons).

0 If yes, what did you do to have the charges dropped? (probe for her actions: go
to the ofﬁce of prosecutors and ask that charges be dropped; go to the
prosecutor and change the story; talk to or try to talk to an attorney; ask others
for help; other reasons).

Did you attend trials as witness?

o If not, explain why? (probe for reasons: fear of involvement of the criminal
justice system, lack of knowledge of what would happen next, lack of time;
troubles with transportation and child care; negative experiences with the
court before; reasons similar to those in Question 54; other reasons).

0 If yes, explain why? (probe for reasons: want to teach him a lesson; want to
get help for him; get a letter from the court and think that you have no choice;
other reasons). .

o If yes, describe what happened (probe for details of respondent’s contacts with
prosecutors, victims’ advocate programs, and the court)

a) Was the prosecutor (or the judge, or victims’ advocates) female/male?

b) Was the prosecutor (or the judge or victims’ advocates) treat you with respect?

235

c) Did you talk directly with the prosecutors (or victims’ advocates)? If yes, for
how long before the case went to the court?
(1) Did they explain to you what was going on?
e) Did they try to understand the situation based on your explanation?
f) Did they blame you for the violence?
g) Did they try to persuade you into testifying against your husband/partner?
h) Did they discourage you from pursuing the case?
1) Were there communication difﬁculties because of language barrier?
j) If you cannot speak English, did they provide a translator?
61. How many times did you ever go to a hearing or trial, including times when you went
but then it was rescheduled?
62. How many times did you go, only to ﬁnd out it had been canceled or rescheduled?
63. What were the court decisions? (Conviction? jail term? probation? court ordered
counseling? etc. . .)? Did you understand the court decisions (convictions and
sentences?
a) What did you expect the court to do with your husband/partner? (counseling,
probation, jail terms, etc. . .).
b) To what extent you feel that the prosecutor and the judge did what you
expected them to do with your husband/partner?
c) How much did you feel satisﬁed with the court decision? Explain

Persoial Protective Order

64. Did you request a personal protective order (PPO)?
If not, explain why.
If yes, did your husband/partner violate the order?

65. If husband/partner did violate the order, did you call the police? Explain what
happened when PPO was violated?

66. Did you terminate the PPO? If yes, explain why (Probes for reasons similar to those in
questions 54 & 55)

Contacts with other people and scmial services

67. Were you referred to some kind of social services (e. g., victims’ advocate, women’s
shelter, legal aid)? If yes, who referred you to these services?

68. Did the you use any these social services? If yes, describe the services and your
experience with them.

69. If you did not use these services, explain why.

70. Did you talk to relatives, friends, religious leaders and/or social workers about the
abuse ? If not, explain why.

71. If yes, describe your experience with talking to these people.

Attempt to leave the relationship

72. Did you plan to leave the relationship after being abused?
73. If yes, did you actual leave?

74. If you did actual leave, where did you stay?

75. If you did plan but did not actual leave, explain why?

76. If you did leave, then you returned, explain why?

236

Part IV: Consequences of Using Criminal Justice Approaches to Avoid Violence?

77.

78.
79.
80.
81.

82.
83.

84.

How did your husband/partner treat you after you or other people called the police?
(stop using violence against you? respect you? angry at you? etc.). In the case where
he was not arrested? During the time after his arrest and before the tn'al? After the
trial?

How did you feel about your family life after involvement with the criminal justice
system (c. g. better or worse)?

How did your children react to your calls to the police? What did they say?

How about your relatives, co-workers, friends, neighbors? What did they say?

How many trips did you take to the police stations, the ofﬁce of prosecutor, and the
court because of these violence incidents?

Did your husband/partner lose his job because of arrest or jail terms?

How much money did it cost you because you used of criminal justice services (bail,
court fees, absence from work, etc.)?

Are changes in your family life worth these ﬁnancial costs?

Part V: Respondent’s Feelings about the Relationship with Husband/Partner

85.

86.
87.

88.

How did you feel about your husband/partner at the beginning of the relationship, his
strengths and weaknesses?

Did his behavior changed after involved in the criminal justice system?

Thinking back, what do you feel about the relationship with your husband/partner?
What makes you feel good about him? What make you feel bad about him?

Do you want to stay in the relationship? Explain.

Part VI: Respondent’s Perception About Solutionsifor Family Conflicts?

89.

90.

91.

92.

93.

Are criminal justice approaches dealing with domestic violence in the US. different
from those in Vietnam? Explain how they are different.

In what ways criminal justice services(the police, prosecution, the court) in the US.
help you avoid violence?

If violence occurs in the future, do you call the police and rely on criminal justice
services again? Explain.

Thinking about your own family circumstance, what do you think would be the best
way to end violence?

What do you think the government and other social agencies should do to help
victims of domestic violence like you avoid abuse?

237

Appendix 3
Survey Questionnaire

Perceptions of Domestic Violence

1. Do you feel that domestic violence is a problem in Vietnamese community in Lansing
(Boston, Houston, or Orange County)? By domestic violence, I mean the use of force
by a person against his or her intimate partner, including husband/wife, girl/boyfriend,
ex-husband/wife, and ex-girl/boyfriend.

a) Yes b) No
2. If yes, how serious is the problem?
a) Very serious b) Serious c) A problem, but not serious

3. Have you ever heard stories told by family members, friends, acquaintances about a
person beaten by her/his spouse or intimate partner ?
a) Yes . b) No
4. If yes, who often were the victims in most the cases? (by victims, I mean persons
who were beaten ﬁrst by their spouses/partners)
a) Women were the victim in the majority of cases
b) Women and men were the victim in the same number of cases.
0) Men were the victim in the majority of cases.
5. Do you personally know someone (among family members, friends, or
acquaintances) who have been beaten by her/his spouse or intimate partner?
a) Yes b) No
6. If yes, who often were the victims in most the cases? (by victims, I mean persons
who were beaten ﬁrst by their spouses/partners)
a) Women were the victim in the majority of cases
b) Women and men were the victim in the same number of cases.
c) Men were the victim in the majority of cases.
7. Do you think that domestic violence is more common in the US. than in Vietnam?
a) More common in the US
b) Equally common in both countries
c) Less common in the US.
8. Do you agree that domestic violence needs to be stopped (or eliminate?)
a) Strongly agree
b) Agree
c) Somewhat agree
(I) Disagree
c) Strongly disagree

Perceptions of Criminal Justice Approaches to Domestic Violence
9. As you can recall, were there laws in Vietnam that prohibited domestic violence and
punished those who committed it?
a) Yes b) No c) Don’t know
10. Are you aware that domestic violence is illegal in the US. (by illegal, I mean that
there are laws prohibiting and punishing those who commit it).

238

a) Yes b) No
11. Do you agree that the government should intervene to stop violence at home?
a) Strongly agree
b) Agree
c) Somewhat agree
(I) Disagree
e) Strongly disagree
12. Do you agree that the police should be called when a person is physically attacked by
her/his spouse or intimate partner?
a) Strongly agree
b) Agree
c) Somewhat agree
(1) Disagree
e) Strongly disagree
13. Are you aware that in the US, and according to domestic violence policies in
Lansing (Boston, Houston, or Orange County) if a person commit a domestic violence
offense, he or she would be

1) Subject to arrest a) Yes b) No
2) Subject to criminal prosecution a) Yes b) No
3) Subject to a conviction a) Yes b) No

4) Subject to punishment, including jail terms, probation, court ordered
counseling, and ﬁnes
a) Yes b) No
14. Do you agree that the following measures should be used to eliminate domestic
violence in Vietnamese families in the US:
[a) Strongly agree; b) agree; c) somewhat agree; (1) disagree; e strongly disagree]

1) Arrest a b c d e
2) Prosecution a b c d e
3) Conviction a b c d e
4) Court ordered counseling 3 b c d e
5) Fines a b c d e
6) Probation a b c d e
7) Jail terms a b c d e

15. Could you suggest other measures that are more appropriate and consistent with the
Vietnamese traditions to eliminate domestic violence?

Demographic Characteristics: This information is for statistical purposes only.
16. Age
17. Sex a) Male b) Female
18. Marital status:
a) Single (never married)
b) Married
0) Married (separated)
d) Divorced

239

e) Widowed
19. Educational attainment

In Vietnam In the US.
a) Less than high school a) Less than high school
b) High school b) High school
c) Some college but no degree c) Some college but no degree
(1) Associate degree (1) Associate degree
e) Four-Year-College degree e) Four-Year—College degree
1) Master and Professional Degree 1) Master and Professional Degree
g) Doctoral and Postdoctoral g) Doctoral and Postdoctoral
20. English proﬁciency
a) Very good a) good c) fair (1) lots of difﬁculties

21. Time in the US.

22. Current occupation:
a) Professional
b) Blue-collar
c) Secretary
(1) Self-employed (business owner)
e) Self-employed (odd jobs)
1) Unemployed

23. Individual yearly income:
a) Under 15,000
b) Around 15,000-25,000
c) Around 25,000-35,000
d) More than 35,000

240

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Course Case

Thurman v. City ofTorrington, 595 F. Supp. 1521 (DC. Conn. 1984)

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