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Through a new tribal program and researcher partnership, this study aimed to answer the questions: what does violence look like to Native youth, and how do Native youth experience resilience and how can that resilience be strengthened? Through the use of two theoretical frameworks, Galtung's Basic Human Needs and the Socio-Ecological model, these questions were explored.

The work from this project was threefold, first this was a capacity-building grant. Therefore, the central goal was to establish a new tribal program partnership between Native Women's Society of the Great Plains (NWS), led by researchers from the University of South Dakota (USD) and researchers from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). Together they worked to identify additional members who would be part of the study design, implementation, analysis, and dissemination. Project partners ranged in age and geographic location. Participants from NWS, USD, and UCCS worked collaboratively to meet the additional goals of this project.

The second goal was to explore an issue of concern to NWS across the Great Plains Region using the community based participatory research approach. From previous discussions between the researchers and NWS team, vulnerability to violence begins in youth, and therefore was of particular interest to Native people of the Great Plains Region. Thus, USD, NSW, and UCCS developed and applied for the Tribal-Research Capacity-Building Grant together.

The third goal was to identify a priority matter from the data collected on this project and collaborate on a subsequent grant application.

To meet these three overarching goals, five objectives were mapped out for this project. These included the following:

• Objective 1: Develop a communication strategy among the partnership agency members to advance capacity and enable meaningful conversations about difficult topics.
• Objective 2: Develop an answer to the question "what is violence?" for this population.
• Objective 3: To understand how these different sources of violence interact with the human needs identified under objective 2 to create patterned vulnerabilities (or susceptibilities).
• Objective 4: To address how resilience works within the developed model.
• Objective 5: To extend capacity building in the broader Indigenous communities of the Great Plains through bidirectional communication and information sharing.

A troubling aspect of justice system response to intimate partner violence is custody courts' failure to protect children when mothers allege the father is abusive. Family courts' errors in assessing adult and child abuse, and punitive responses to abuse allegations, have been widely documented. A significant contributor to these errors is the pseudo-scientific theory of parental alienation (PA). Originally termed parental alienation syndrome (PAS), the theory suggests that when mothers allege that a child is not safe with the father, they are doing so illegitimately, to alienate the child from the father. PA labeling often results in dismissal of women's and children's reports of abuse, and sometimes trumps even expert child abuse evaluations. PAS was explicitly based on negative stereotypes of mothers and has been widely discredited. However, the term parental alienation is still widely used in ways that are virtually identical to PAS. However, because PA is nominally gender neutral (and not called a scientific syndrome), it continues to have substantial credibility in court.

The first goal of the study was to ascertain whether empirical evidence indicated that parental alienation is also gender-biased in practice and outcome. Drawing from courts' own reports of facts, findings, and outcomes, such research could inform advocates and the courts regarding the validity or invalidity of relying on PA to strip mothers of their children and potentially subject children to ongoing abuse. Second, inspired by some tentative findings, the study sought to explore outcomes in custody/abuse litigation by gender and by differing types of abuse. The study relied solely on electronically available published opinions in child custody cases; to date, the researchers have identified 240 cases involving alienation and alienation plus abuse. The researchers sought to expand the database to include non-alienation abuse cases as a comparison, and to address additional questions about custody/abuse adjudications.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.

These data were collected as part of a larger effort to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of a new computerized decision support system (Elder Abuse Decision Support System, EADSS) in elder abuse investigation and intervention programs in Illinois. Information on individuals with substantiated allegations of abuse includes basic demographics, physical, mental, and financial condition, and available resources. Variables describing the allegation cover the nature and severity of the abuse. Where possible, the alleged abuser(s) is(are) also evaluated physically, mentally, and financially, in addition to having basic demographics noted.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they there received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except of the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompany readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collections and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.

The major aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that legal representation of the Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) victim in child custody decisions leads to greater legal protections being awarded in these decisions compared to similar cases of unrepresented IPV victims. A retrospective cohort study was conducted among King County couples with minor children filing for marriage dissolution in King County, Washington between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2010 who had a history of police or court documented intimate partner violence (IPV). The study examined the separate effects of private legal representation and legal aid representation relative to propensity score-matched, unrepresented comparison subjects. Primary study outcomes were measured at the time the first "Final Parenting Plan" was awarded. Researchers also examined the two-year period post-decree among the subset of cases with filing between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2009 for post-decree court proceedings indicative of continued child custody or visitation disputes.