Detalhes do Documento

Researchers, advocates, clinicians and other technicians who work in the field of intimate partner violence, mostly, consider that women who live in a violent relationship suffer an impairment of their ability to protect themselves, namely to end their relationship, as part of their experience of being victimized. Maintenance of those violent relationships is understood as lack of empowerment. In the present study, that is part of a larger study, it has been used a qualitative approach. A semi-structured interview was specially conceived for this research. Our participants are 4 female adults, inmates, condemned for homicide perpetrated by themselves against their male partner and 2 females condemned by hiring someone to kill their male partner. A content analysis from the interviews transcripts was conducted in order to explore dimensions associated to women’s self-perception, their perception of their husband, perception of their power in the relationship and their explanations for pursuing into the relationship. Their narratives reveal a sense of strength and endurance that allows them to persist in the relationship. At the same time, that perception seems to prevent those women of being aware of the danger in which they live as much of being victimized as of becoming perpetrators.