Intimacy and Terror: Making Peace with My Critics

Source: (2005) Violence Against Women: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal. 11(12):1536-1543.

This article describes a restorative approach to dealing with domestic violence. The article was written as a response to critiques of the author’s book, Insult to Injury: Rethinking our Responses to Intimate Abuse (2003). The main criticisms leveled at the author and her book include the charge that she blames women for men’s violence and that her approach to dealing with intimate violence places battered women at risk. In response, the author charges that the mainstream feminist movement has over-relied on the criminal justice system to respond to and prevent domestic violence and that mainstream researchers have not listened to the victims of violence. The author outlines her approach to dealing with domestic violence, which involves a restorative justice framework within two different models: peacemaking circles and healing circles. In both models, those affected by the violence are brought together to confront the violence and learn alternatives to violence. Abstract courtesy of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, www.ncjrs.gov.