Creating a Domestic Violence Court: Combat in the Trenches

Abstract

The prevalence and incidence of domestic violence makes it a major public health problem for many women, with over a third of women treated in emergency rooms having been injured by intimate partners.1 Since colonial times, and espe- cially over the past 30 years, legal reforms aimed at protecting women from domestic violence have failed at a national and a local level. With half of all battered women living in house- holds with children, these children are at risk for repeating the cycle of violence