2016 Volume 57 Issue 2 Pages 29-42
This study aims to clarify the process of how victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) reconstruct their new life after leaving their life with batterers and to consider provision of appropriate support by professionals in this process. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 26 victims. Interview records were qualitatively analyzed using the Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA). The following results were obtained. In the process, victims experienced “a loss of many things and the feeling of carrying burdens”. They worked on three challenges: “rebuilding their life”, “drawing the line in their relationship with their batterers in real life”, and “drawing the line with batterers psychologically”. They then gradually obtained the feeling that they were “Okay (security and ease)” and they increased their feeling of being “Okay”. This process involved “working to set a boundary and recreating their daily life”. In this process, several items are mutually intertwined: “the facet of victims actively obtaining their feeling of ‘Okay’”; “the facet of supporters enabling former victims to feel ‘Okay’”; and “the facet of victims consequently increasing their feeling of being ‘Okay’”. The results show the importance of providing victims with support to attain a feeling of being “Okay” and suggest that social work in Japan needs to clearly perceive and support IPV victims who leave their life with batterers.
