The gender paradigm in domestic violence research and practice part II: The information website of the American Bar Association

The Website of the American Bar Association (ABA) sets out to correct ten purported myths about domestic or intimate partner violence (IPV). The critique of these myths appears to be empirically based. However, a close reading of the studies used to debunk these “myths” shows that they are either: 1) government publications with no empirical data, or 2) empirical studies that do not refute the targeted myth. The problems with the false conclusions on the website are varied, but three main ones are: 1) confusion of allegations of abuse with real incidence of abuse; 2) interpretations of unsubstantiated claims of child abuse that are based on varied sources for corroboration that use vague decision criteria in studies not designed to assess malingered claims; and 3) over simplification of the complex causality of psychological phenomena, such as Parental Alienation Syndrome. In many of these studies, social science methodology may be poorly suited to answer questions best left to an unbiased weighting of facts in an individual case.