The psychological impact on mothers who have experienced domestic violence when navigating the family court system: a scoping review

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Orr, Kerry
Sheeran, Nicola
Douglas, Heather
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2023
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Abstract

The aim of this scoping review was to synthesise the literature to identify what the psychological impacts of family court processes were on mothers who had experienced DFV. Twenty-five articles met inclusion criteria with four themes capturing the findings: Perpetrators using the system as a mode of coercive control; Secondary victimisation as a result of interacting with the system; Required to relive their abuse; and, Long-term psychological consequences of having engaged with the system. Key findings were that perpetrators manipulated the system to perpetrate further abuse and continue/reassert their control. Secondary re-victimisation was common, with poor knowledge of DFV and limited understanding of coercive control tactics and how these were employed by perpetrators by legal professionals identified as contributing factors. This review suggests that mothers who engage with the family court system experience a range of short- and long-term psychological impacts and court processes facilitate ongoing abuse by the perpetrator.

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Psychiatry, Psychology and Law

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© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Criminology

Law in context

Applied and developmental psychology

Social Sciences

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Life Sciences & Biomedicine

Criminology & Penology

Law

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Orr, K; Sheeran, N; Douglas, H, The psychological impact on mothers who have experienced domestic violence when navigating the family court system: a scoping review, Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 2023

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