Access to justice for female victims of crime: a study of girls and women with disabilities in Mashonaland Central Province of Zimbabwe
- Authors: Shumba, Nyaradzo Dorcas
- Date: 2021-09
- Subjects: Criminal justice, Administration of -- Zimbabwe , Women -- Crimes against , Victims of crimes
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/22176 , vital:51994
- Description: This thesis utilized a thematic content analysis, looked at how significant barriers affect Mashonaland Central girls and women living with disabilities as victims of crime from accessing justice. Zimbabwe is an optimal case to apply this study, due to its contradictory legislation and evidence of high rate of human rights violations. Mashonaland Central Province is an ideal case study due to the extant records that indicate that it has the highest incidences of violence against women. This study is therefore based in a Victimological epoch with the aim to fill the research gap in acknowledging the process of accessing justice as an important step for protecting and promoting human right. By analyzing interviews conducted with 3 different women aged 18-65 and 3 girls living with disability who were under the age of 18, through the theoretical framework of basic human rights theory and victim dynamics, this thesis contributes to the existing body of knowledge, with suggestions of how these barriers which are inclusive of societal and cultural structures tend to affect the respondents’ everyday lives and in a most pertinent manner towards their right to access justice. This thesis is also governed by the perspectives of key actors in the judicial process including but not limited to the Victim Friendly Unit. The theoretical framework is also operationalized into themes and criteria, which are then applied to analyze the conducted interviews. The emerging findings illuminate that there is a discrepancy between government policy surrounding girls and women living with disabilities and the practical experiences of the respondents. The respondents experienced a lack of accessibility to basic rights such as health care, the law, and to sex education – which are all rights ensured by government policy. Identified consequences included: discouragement in seeking justice due to fears of cultural and social stigma, discouragement in reporting crimes, and receiving adequate support, as well as information from secondhand sources. This study therefore concludes lack of access to justice is a violation of security of person, human dignity and rights to health and life to women and girls living with disability. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2021
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- Date Issued: 2021-09
A discursive analysis of what sexual violence perpetrators say to their victims
- Authors: Coopoo, Perishka
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Project Unbreakable , Rapists -- Language , Rape -- Social aspects , Language and sex , Sexual harassment of women , Women -- Crimes against , Discoure analysis
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/13869 , vital:21863
- Description: This research study aimed to examine the way in which sexual violence perpetrators talk to their victims by critically investigating the discursive strategies drawn on by perpetrators, the discursive constructions of their actions and their victims, and the consistencies with the talk of sexual violence perpetrators and rape myths and discursive and social practices promoting sexual violence. Over two-hundred photographs were collected from a photographic art project called Project Unbreakable. The photographs were of sexual violence survivors, from all over the world, holding a poster with a quote from their attacker. The words that survivors chose to represent for Project Unbreakable served as the data for this research study. The data were analyzed using the six stages of Foucauldian discourse analysis outlined by Carla Willig. The analysis revealed that by drawing on discourses of pleasure, desire, romance, marriage and consent, perpetrators discursively constructed their actions as sex. Furthermore, perpetrators discursively constructed their victims as sexually passive and dependant on men, as gate keepers of men’s sexuality, as sexual instruments for male satisfaction, and as consenting persons. On the other hand, perpetrators were also found to discursively construct their actions as a legitimized form of punishment, humiliation and intimidation. In addition, their victims were discursively constructed as deviant, deserving of their victimization, worthless, damaged and powerless. These discursive constructions of their actions and their victims enabled perpetrators to normalize their behaviour, blame their victims, minimize the incident, assert their innocence, justify their actions, silence their victims and reinforce their position at the top of the gender hierarchy. Consistencies were also found between the talk of perpetrators and rape myths, stereotypes and discursive and social practices promoting sexual violence. Another interesting finding in the data was that of quotes from a third party, not the perpetrator, which further illustrated the existence of rape culture. This research draws on the idea that a rape supportive culture does not only capture the hostile nature of the social environment that many survivors experience in the aftermath of sexual violence, but it also provides a social pattern for coercive sexuality to occur.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Ambivalence and paradox : the battered woman's interactions with the law and other helping resources
- Authors: Labe, Dana
- Date: 2001
- Subjects: Family violence -- Law and legislation , Abused women , Wife abuse , Women -- Crimes against , Women -- Counseling of , Family violence -- Prevention
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:699 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006424 , Family violence -- Law and legislation , Abused women , Wife abuse , Women -- Crimes against , Women -- Counseling of , Family violence -- Prevention
- Description: This thesis explores how the battered woman attachment to her abusive partner impacts on her interactions with the legal system and non-legal resources. This qualitative research project is based on in-depth interviews conducted with seven abused women who procured interdicts in terms of the Prevention of Family Violence Act 133 of 1993 to restrain their husbands from assaulting them. The research reviews the nature of abuse suffered by the participants, their psychological attachments to their husbands, and their patterns of help-seeking in relation to the law and non-legal resources. Two main theoretical frameworks, psychoanalysis and feminism inform this study. The study found that the participants retained unrealistic hopes that their husbands would reform and become loving, caring partners, and that they treated their husbands with care and sympathy despite their husbands’ often brutal behaviour towards them. The findings suggest that the women’s behaviour towards their husbands was the product of two reality distorting psychological defences, splitting and the moral defence which they used to preserve their attachments to their abusive partners. These defences intersected with rigid patriarchal prescriptions of femininity which dictate that women should be stoically caring towards their husbands, and should hold relationships together no matter what the cost to themselves. The participants interactions with the legal system and with non-legal sources of help were structured by their reliance on splitting and the moral defence, and by the dictates of patriarchal ideology. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that at one level the participants sought help to get protection from abuse, the study shows that their help-seeking was motivated by their conflicting desires to punish and reform their husbands. The participants sought help in ways which enabled them to strike a compromise between expressing their anger at their husbands, whilst simultaneously preserving their psychological attachments to them. The study concludes that the women’s interactions with the law and with other helping resource reflect their attempts to preserve their paradoxical attachments to their husbands, and to stabilise their own fragile sense of self and gender identity
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- Date Issued: 2001
Ambivalence and paradox: the battered woman's interactions with the law and other helping resources
- Authors: Labe, Dana
- Date: 2001
- Subjects: Family violence -- Law and legislation , Abused women , Family violence , Wife abuse , Women -- Crimes against , Women -- Counseling of , Family violence -- Prevention
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3333 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003127 , Family violence -- Law and legislation , Abused women , Family violence , Wife abuse , Women -- Crimes against , Women -- Counseling of , Family violence -- Prevention
- Description: This thesis explores how the battered woman attachment to her abusive partner impacts on her interactions with the legal system and non-legal resources. This qualitative research project is based on in-depth interviews conducted with seven abused women who procured interdicts in terms of the Prevention of Family Violence Act 133 of 1993 to restrain their husbands from assaulting them. The research reviews the nature of abuse suffered by the participants, their psychological attachments to their husbands, and their patterns of help-seeking in relation to the law and non-legal resources. Two main theoretical frameworks, psychoanalysis and feminism inform this study. The study found that the participants retained unrealistic hopes that their husbands would reform and become loving, caring partners, and that they treated their husbands with care and sympathy despite their husbands’ often brutal behaviour towards them. The findings suggest that the women’s behaviour towards their husbands was the product of two reality distorting psychological defences, splitting and the moral defence which they used to preserve their attachments to their abusive partners. These defences intersected with rigid patriarchal prescriptions of femininity which dictate that women should be stoically caring towards their husbands, and should hold relationships together no matter what the cost to themselves. The participants interactions with the legal system and with non-legal sources of help were structured by their reliance on splitting and the moral defence, and by the dictates of patriarchal ideology. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that at one level the participants sought help to get protection from abuse, the study shows that their help-seeking was motivated by their conflicting desires to punish and reform their husbands. The participants sought help in ways which enabled them to strike a compromise between expressing their anger at their husbands, whilst simultaneously preserving their psychological attachments to them. The study concludes that the women’s interactions with the law and with other helping resource reflect their attempts to preserve their paradoxical attachments to their husbands, and to stabilise their own fragile sense of self and gender identity.
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- Date Issued: 2001