Spousal abuse can have fatal impacts on individuals, which receives immense recognition in the media. Overall, the media tends to focus on female victims which concord with research done on the issue. The physical violence enables the mass population to understand and associate violence to victims. However, psychological violence is harder to explain since, you cannot ‘physically’ see the aftermath results.
Although, in some cases this terror causes the victim to stand up to the abuse and fight for their life. Ms. Doucet decided to fight for her life with the help of another. After years of abuse, Ms. Doucet hired an assassin to kill her abusive spouse. She attempted to use the plea of duress, however, the court ruled she wasn’t in duress at the time she hired the hit man. The supreme court of Canada sentenced her to six months in jail for attempting to murder her husband. She claims her actions are due to the repeated lack of response of the officials she asked for help. This causes individuals to once again question the understanding of domestic violence issues. If she would have attempted to kill her husband herself, she could have used the ‘battered woman’ defense, and possibly …show more content…
This calls into question the effect social media has on the perception within society. The journal articles primarily focus on females as well, but that is due to the limited information surrounding male victims. Social media cases tend to reinforce our social standards and stereotypical characteristics on gender. In the social media examples, many of the victims only used violence when they felt to be in a life-threatening situation. In extreme cases, such as Ms. Doucet, resulted in the loss of a life. However, instead of remaining dormant with the survival coping strategy, she decided to take action using the process method.