Cycles of Abuse

Cycles of abuse is a term used to explain the experience of abuse in intimate partner violence. This entry describes cycles of abuse in intimate partner violence and offers critiques of the framework, as well as adaptations of the model. This entry pays specific attention to the ongoing evolution of this foundational framework for understanding abuse.

Cycles of Abuse in Intimate Partner Violence

The term battering cycle was utilized by researcher Lenore Walker in 1979 to describe a pattern of abusive behaviors she found in her seminal quantitative study documenting the experiences of battered women in Denver, Colorado. Since that time, researchers and practitioners have utilized her framework to build knowledge about behavioral patterns commonly seen in relationships with violence, which generally include three phases: (1) ...

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