uch as "domestic violence" and "spouse abuse" limiting in the sense that it relieves society of an obligation to understand battering as a women's issue (Rodriguez, 1991, 237).
The literature continues to remain limited in the area of care and treatment of battered and abused women. Despite short-lived mass media forays into the issue following highly-publicized incidents such as the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson or the Lorena and John Bobbitt event, society seems to prefer disregard to activism. An estimated $14 billion in federal funds was expended in the "war on drugs" in 1993, although a paltry $25 million was allocated in federal spending on women's sheltering programs (Novak, 1993, p. 785). While many researchers are devoting time to studying the broad incidence of violence in society, seeking to link violence to mental illness or "intergenerational transfer of domestic violence", feminists decry such studies as following "reactionary directions" (Rodriguez, 1988, p. 237).
According to Hart (1993), the 1982 National Crime Survey found that 32 percent of women battered by persons known to them were revictimized within six months (an average of three times each), while only 13 percent of victims of stranger-committed crimes were subsequently assaulted in a similar period of time (p. 625). Among other reasons for the elevated risk of battered women for retaliatory violence, Hart believes that most women-victims are: 1) economically dependent upon the perpetrator; 2) compelled into continuing contact with the perpetrator; and, 3) are more likely to be killed "when attempting to seek legal redress or when leaving an abusive relationship" (pp. 625-626).
In the three decades which have followed the recognition of battered and abused women as a unique subset of violence and victimization, two principal, divergent trends have taken hold in attempting to prevent both short- and long-term revictimization of battered...