This thoroughly revised second edition is an examination of domestic violence from social, legal, and historical perspectives.

Domestic Violence: A Reference Handbook provides straightforward and objective coverage that considers all aspects of the issue through a careful combination of facts, statistics, case studies, and victims’ stories.



This volume in ABC-CLIO's Contemporary World Issues series examines the causes and historical roots of domestic violence, providing the facts and analyses to foster a better understanding. The work analyzes the complex dynamics of domestic violence from three perspectives—legal, social, and psychological. This reference is an important source of information for those touched by domestic violence and for those seeking to understand it.









A chronology that stretches from 753 BCE, when Romulus, the founder of Rome, formalized the first “law of marriage” to January 2006, when President George W. Bush signed the third reauthorization of the 1994 Violence against Women Act



Illustrations include the power and control wheel (a model in the form of a wheel that explains the dynamics of domestic violence), the ecological theory of battering, and the characteristics of the victim as illustrated by the World Health Organization