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Perpetrator of physical Number of cases
violence in stories
Only father is violent 88
Father and mother are 36
violent
Only mother is violent 23
Unclear which parents is 2
violent
Total 149
Fathers are clearly more often alleged of intimate partner violence. In case of mothers,
there are slightly more allegations of violence against children than against spouses. In
addition, the degrees of violence perpetrated by fathers and mothers in the case file descriptions
differ from each other because there is notably more written evidence of fathers
as perpetrators of violence, which includes, for example, violence convictions, restraining
orders and doctor’s statements. Descriptions of serious violence in the data
mainly concern intimate partner violence.
Final results of child custody disputes
Chapter 6 deals with the final decisions over child custody disputes. In most cases a
court order had been issued, but parental agreements and cancelled legal processes were
also common. I included in my analysis of decisions made by judges altogether 95 cases
in which allegations of physical violence perpetrated by parents had been presented.
My analysis of the child custody decisions showed that the cases resulted more often
in sole custody than in joint custody. Sole custody was mostly awarded to mothers,
and the fathers were awarded sole custody in only one fourth of the cases. When there
was disagreement over children’s place of residence, in two thirds of the cases the children
were ordered to live with their mother and in one third with their father. Sole custody
was also awarded to parents alleged of using violence, and children were also ordered
to live with them. Violence convictions or restraining orders do not prevent the
court from ordering children to live with parents having been convicted for a crime either
or make it impossible to award sole custody to them.
Of the decisions over visitation rights, I explored cases concerning supervised visitations
in particular. When the residential parent wanted to have visitations supervised
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