Five stages of abuse of women identified

Urbana, Ill. -- University of Illinois researchers have developed a model explaining the stages abused women go through when deciding to leave their partners.

Jennifer Hardesty and graduate student Lyndal Khaw worked with 19 mothers divorcing or seeking to modify their custody or child support arrangements, whose former husbands had committed at least one of seven acts of physical abuse against them more than once.

The abused women's turning points include five stages:

-- Pre-contemplation, when women are often in denial about abuse.

-- Contemplation, when women begin to realize they are in an abusive relationship.

-- Preparation, often marked by abusive episodes.

-- Action, either regaining control of their lives or letting go of their desire to make the marriage work; holding back, or leaping directly from contemplation to action.

-- Maintenance, women reclaim their identity and often deal with an ex-husband's attempts to control them through the children.

There's a tendency to encourage an abused women to leave her partner, but a woman who's in the first two "thinking" stages may not be ready to accept help, Hardesty said.

The findings were published in Family Relations.

© 2007 United Press International.