Abstract

The article discusses the responses supplied by selected social institutions - social health services and the police force - to women who are victims of domestic abuse; it also aims to help understand male violence and the experience of women who are subject to it. The data are drawn from a qualitative study, in which thirty women were interviewed. The results show that institutions' responses may be either appropriate or inappropriate. Inappropriate responses may be classified in: denial, refusal, abusive psychologisation. When women, often after years of abuse and life-threatening situations, resort to social/health services or the police, they often receive inappropriate responses, which sometimes represent an objective complicity with male violence.