e for the victim, resulting in less promotion and sometimes job loss. Included in these issues are the higher medical costs that intimate conflict requires a victim and their employer to pay (Bugarin, 2002).
Campbell (2003) stressed that all professionals should be aware of the following risk factors in a perpetrator: unemployment of the abuser, presence of stepchildren in the home, and threats to kill the victim. If any of these conditions exists the health care provider should be firm with the victim about "their risk of homicide and their need for shelter" (Campbell, 2003, p. 1095)
Power and control theory refers to the belief that domestic violence is related to the power and control of one person over another in an intimate relationship. Litke (p. 182, as cited in Brewster, 2003) describes power in an intimate relationship as: "To dominate means to control others, to have power over them...Sometimes we obtain such power by disempowering others" (p. 207). In intimate relationships, power is often tied to the quantity of education, employment and economic income that a partner contributes to the relationship (Brewster, 2003). In many traditional households, women were usually the ones who did not have power in the relationship, creating an environment where women were subject to be the receiver of abuse (Kaukinen, 2004). Brewster explains that the ultimate power is to get someone to do what he does not want to do and the ultimate exercise of power refers to influencing or controlling another's thoughts or desires (Brewster, 2003).
Bolen (1999, as cited in Brewster, 2003) states that power and control in intimate violence are prevalent in patriarchal systems of all kinds. Traditional Latino families tend to be patriarchal, in that they assume men are the ruler of the home. McLoyd, Cauce, Takeuchi, and Wilson (2000) observed this hierarchy when they reported that Latino families have two cultural values known as Marianism...