Competing Conceptions of Victims of Domestic Violence within Legal Processes

It is well established that victims of crime are often measured against an idealised standard of victimhood, typically to the detriment of those who are seen to depart in significant ways from notions of the ideal. However, as Paul Rock noted (2002, p. 17), we need to give more attention to the ways in which various framing discourses are deployed and give shape to our understandings of victimisation. There is ‘interpretative work done at every level in bringing the categories victim and offender into play’ (Rock 2002, p. 21). Laws and legal practices are significant in how matters are framed and in constituting the subjects and objects of law. In this chapter we examine this further by reference to the multiple and competing conceptions of the victim of domestic violence that emerge in different domains of legal practice. We focus on victims of domestic violence who as mother are more likely to be subjected to particular scrutiny and to competing, and often conflicting, requirements and obligations (Douglas and Walsh 2010; Hester 2010; Jaffe et al. 2003; Kaye et al. 2003).