Is a sociological analysis of domestic violence and coercive control in family courts possible? Presentation of an experimentation in France

• In Event: Gender, Crime and Justice Working Group Panel 9: Developments in understanding and responding to GBV

Abstract

Studying the strategies of violent fathers in the context of parental separation involves analysing procedures relating to the residence of the children (Prigent, 2021). Experts appointed by the family court judge can give their opinion on the family situation. They are chosen from a list of legal experts, mostly psychologists or psychiatrists, drawn up by the courts of appeal. In France, psychoanalysis has a strong influence on their training (Biland, 2023). Our research on the social use of the theory of "parental alienation" suggests that experts may resort to this scientifically unfounded notion, which tends to conceal domestic violence (Sueur and Prigent, 2022).

In this paper we describe our protocol for analysing the stories of female victims of domestic violence, identified using the coercive control model (Stark, 2007), based on a semi-structured interview and the use of a scale to measure domestic violence. Our presentation will be based on fifteen cases in which we intervened privately, from March 2022 until today. In the reports we document the behaviour of the aggressors and the victims, the context in which it occurs and the consequences of this behaviour, adopting a social and systemic entrapment framework (Tolmie, 2024; Ptacek, 1999). More broadly, it is a critique in action of the psychologisation and concealment of domestic violence (Romito, 2008), a defense of evidence-based practice, and an attempt to bring sociology into an institution that seems reluctant to do so.

Authors

• Pierre-Guillaume Prigent, University of Western Brittany

• Gwénola Sueur, University of Western Brittany