Demographic, Psychosocial, and Personality Characteristics of Lesbian Batterers

ORCID

Carolynn S. Kohn: 0000-0002-2156-4898

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Violence & Victims

Department

Psychology

ISSN

0886-6708

Volume

18

Issue

5

DOI

10.1891/vivi.2003.18.5.557

First Page

557

Last Page

568

Publication Date

1-1-2003

Abstract

Prevalence of domestic violence (DV) in lesbian and heterosexual relationships appears to be similar. Despite this, few studies have examined factors associated with DV in lesbian relationships, and even fewer have examined characteristics of lesbian batterers. Demographic and psychosocial characteristics and personality traits were examined in 100 lesbians in current relationships (33 Batterers and 67 Nonbatterers). Results indicated that Batterers were more likely to report childhood physical and sexual abuse and higher rates of alcohol problems. Results from the MCMI-III indicated that, after controlling for Debasement and Desirability indices, Batterers were more likely to report aggressive, antisocial, borderline, and paranoid personality traits, and higher alcohol-dependent, drug-dependent, and delusional clinical symptoms compared to Nonbatterers. These results provide support for social learning and psychopathology theoretical models of DV and clinical observations of lesbian batterers, and expand our current DV paradigms to include information about same-sex DV.

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