Case Study: Cycle of Violence

1. This phrase is used in many contexts; here, we're focusing on the notion of intergenerational violence - that children who grow up in abusive situations are likely to become abusers. As a group, discuss what you know about this concept (if anything) before turning the page. Note some points made in the discussion. What questions do you still have?

2. Examine the citations and excerpts or abstracts attached. Do you have any new information to add to what you already knew? Are there some surprises?

3. As you examined each citation, what "markers" helped you decide whether a source would be useful for understanding this issue or not? Make a list of markers you used to evaluate each source. Which are the most difficult of these markers for non-specialists to understand and apply?

4. Who are some of the apparent claims-makers in the formation of this social issue; that is, what groups might benefit from it being defined as an important issue and how? Who might have an interest in discrediting the concept?

5. A loaded question: Some of the excerpts attached are from scholarly sources and others are from the popular press or the Web. If students were told to use only scholarly sources, would that mean they would be limiting their search to sources that were reliable and based entirely on objective research? Why or why not?

Citations and Excerpts

Larry B. Silver, Christina C. Dublin, and Reginal S. Lourie. "Does Violence Breed Violence? Contributions from a study of the child abuse syndrome." American Journal of Psychiatry 126 (1969): 404-407.
Abstract: A study covering 3 generations of families of abused children supports the themes that violence breeds violence and that a child who experiences violence as a child has the potential of becoming a violent member of society in the future. It is believed that the physician has a critical role and responsibility in interruption this cycle of violence.

Srinika Jayartne. "Child Abusers as Parents and Children: A Review." Social Work 22 (1977): 5-9.
. . . The generational phenomenon of child abuse is one of the commonly held conceptions (or misconceptions) about abusing parents. The essence of this proposition is that the victim of abuse incorporates patterns of aggression, which are then repeated from generation to generation . . . The literature is spotted with definitional confusion, poor methodology, clinical assumptions, and a definite "Rosenthal Effect" - that is, fulfilling a prior expectation of the research. . . . The available data on the generational hypothesis do not stand the test of empiricism.

Winter, Leon. "P.G. to Study Further Aid to Victims of Abuse." Washington Post 27 Jan. 1984: B5.
Prince George's County Executive Parris Glendening, calling domestic violence a serious problem in the county, announced yesterday the appointment of a task force headed by former county police chief John Rhodes to study ways to improve county services to battered spouses and children.

"The goal is to stop the cycle of domestic violence that rolls on and on from generation to generation," Glendening said, citing a recent spate of violent cases in the county involving child or spouse abuse.

A.H. Green. "Child Maltreatment and its Victims: A Comparison of Physical and Sexual Abuse." Psychiatr Clin North Am 11 (1988): 591-610.
Abstract: Although physical and sexual abuse are separate and distinct types of victimization, their impact on children is quite similar. . . . Perhaps the most striking similarity between physical and sexual abuse of children is the tendency of the children to re-enact and recreate their victimization with others, leading to a transmission of violence in the next generation. Like their parents who were frequently victimized during childhood, they repeat and perpetuate an "aggressor-victim" interaction in their subsequent relationships. Both physical and sexual abuse are embedded in a deviant family structure, which adds to the psychopathology of the children. . . .

Ronald L. Simons et al. "Intergenerational Transmission of Harsh Parenting." Developmental Psychology 27 (1991): 159-171.
Abstract: A social learning model was developed that portrayed 4 processes whereby harsh parenting might be transmitted across generations. The model was tested using a sample of 451 2-parent families, each of which included a 7th grader. Both parent self-report and adolescent-report measures were utilized for the harsh parenting construct. Analysis using structural equation modeling procedures showed that grandparents who had engaged in aggressive parenting produced presentday parents who were likely to use similar parenting practices. The effect was stronger for mothers than for fathers. In addition to a direct modeling effect, there was evidence that similarities across generations regarding the harsh discipline of male children are in part a function of socioeconomic characteristics being transmitted across generations. There was little support for the contention that parents transmit their aggressive parenting practices indirectly by influencing the personality and parenting beliefs of their children.

U.S. General Accounting Office. Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives: Cycle of Sexual Abuse - Research Inconclusive About Whether Child Victims Become Adult Abusers. Washington DC: GAO, 1996.
This report summarizes the results of, and discusses the methodologies used in, the studies that have been done on the cycle of sexual abuse—that is, on the likelihood that individuals who were victims of sexual abuse as children will become sexual abusers of children in adulthood. . . .

. . . the experience of childhood sexual victimization is quite likely neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of adult sexual offending. The two prospective studies concluded that the majority of victims of sexual abuse during childhood did not become sex offenders as adults. Therefore, childhood sexual victimization would not necessarily lead to adult sexual offending. In addition, the majority of retrospective studies concluded that most adult sex offenders against children did not report that they were sexually victimized as children.

Cathy Spatz Widom. "Child Abuse and Neglect." Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior Philadelphia: Brunner-Routledge, 2001: vol. 1, 40-42.
Another pervasive assumption is that those who are victimized in childhood are more likely to become perpetrators of violence when they grow up. There is evidence to support this notion that 'violence begets violence' . . . [but] These 'cycle of violence' findings illustrate a related important point--the cycle of violence is not deterministic or inevitable. Childhood physical abuse and neglect put one at increased risk for being arrested for a violent crime, but the path between these two points in time is far from direct or inevitable.

Ruth-Ellen M. Grimes. "Child Sexual Abuse" Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior. Philadelphia: Brunner-Routledge, 2001: vol. 3, p 54-61.
". . . contrary to another popular myth, the clear majority of CSA (child sexual abuse) perpetrators are not victims of prior abuse."

Dennis Lehane. Mystic River. New York: William Morrow, 2001.
[a novel in which one character, abducted and sexually assaulted as a child, is suspected of murder in adulthood] Whenever Dave was uncertain of a situation, whenever the ground seemed to be shifting and slick under his feet, his brain tended to split into two halves, as if cleaved by a carving knife. This gave him a headache and occasionally something worse.

Because sometimes Dave was not Dave. He was The Boy, The Boy Who'd Escaped from Wolves . . . an animal of the dusk that moved through wooded landscapes, silent and invisible. It lived in a world that others never saw, never faced, never knew or wanted to know existed . . . And the Boy had not grown up well. He'd gotten angrier, more paranoid, capable of things the real Dave could never so much as imagine. . . .

It would be so easy . . . to just give in. Give in to what he'd been feeling for the last decade at least. . . .

But (and this is where Dave's brain always split in half) he knew deep in his soul that this would be the worst sin of all. He knew it would be crossing a line - no matter how inviting - from which he could never come back. He knew that if he crossed that line he'd never feel whole, that he might has well have stayed in that basement with Henry and George [his assailants] for the rest of his life.

A. Caspi et al. "Role of Genotype in the Cycle of Violence in Maltreated Children." Science 297 (2002): 851-4.
Abstract: We studied a large sample of male children from birth to adulthood to determine why some children who are maltreated grow up to develop antisocial behavior, whereas others do not. A functional polymorphism in the gene encoding the neurotransmitter-metabolizing enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) was found to moderate the effect of maltreatment. Maltreated children with a genotype conferring high levels of MAOA expression were less likely to develop antisocial problems. These findings may partly explain why not all victims of maltreatment grow up to victimize others, and they provide epidemiological evidence that genotypes can moderate children's sensitivity to environmental insults.

United States Department of Health and Human Services. HHS Launches Effort to Help Children Who Witness Domestic Violence. 8 Oct. 2003. (retrieved 20 Dec. 2004).
HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced a new initiative to help children who witness domestic violence to develop into healthy, well-adjusted adults and prevent the cycle of violence from continuing from one generation to the next.

The initiative, called "Safe and Bright Futures for Children," will incorporate evidence-based practices such as treatment for child and adolescent trauma, mentoring and mental health services while also addressing risk and protective factors to negate the cyclical effects of violence. It will encourage the integration of these services at the local and regional level by building collaborations of community, faith-based or other programs that identify, assess, treat and provide long-term services. . . .

Tim Robbins. "Acceptance Speech [for his role in the film version of Mystic River]" Ocsar.com 29 Feb 2004. (retrieved 21 Dec. 2004).
In this movie, I play a victim of abuse and violence and if you are out there and are a person that has -- had that tragedy befall you, there is no shame and no weakness in seeking help and counseling it is sometimes the strongest thing that you can do to stop the cycle of violence. Thank you."

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