Professionals’ critical positionings of women as help-seekers: Finnish women’s narratives of help-seeking during post-separation stalking

Participants and their recruitment

The data for the present research consist of narratives of 15 Finnish women aged 29–50 years who were stalked by their male ex-partners. In all cases, the history of the relationship with the ex-partner was violent or the man had controlled the partnership in other ways. The women had been stalked from less than 1 year to some 20 years. They still lived in fear of the perpetrator’s next attack or contact. All had had contacts with the police, justice or health and social services due to the stalking. Twelve of the women currently or previously had a restraining order against the stalker, whereas three had not obtained one for fear of provoking him; the administrative procedures involved were also cited as a hindrance. Thirteen women had a child or children (1–5 in number) with the stalker or from an earlier relationship. Children were involved in stalking and suffered from the harmful consequences of stalking that targeted the mother. The data were collected during the period 2011–2013.

Ten women were recruited for the study through the researcher’s contacts with professionals (social workers, shelter workers and therapists) who work with victims of stalking. The researcher asked the professionals to consider the women they knew based on the following criteria: the woman was being stalked by her ex-partner; she found the stalking intrusive and threatening; and she could participate in the study without concern for her safety. Three more women were recruited through the researcher’s contacts with other academics in the field, and an additional two women contacted the researcher personally after the social workers had provided a written description of the study to their other clients and their colleagues.

Data collection method

The women were interviewed individually or in the company of a professional. Before conducting the interviews, the researcher discussed the life situations of the women and the aims of the study with the professionals. In eleven cases, an assessment was made that the woman’s participation in the interview would have been unsafe without a familiar professional present, as the stalking was still intense in the woman’s life or she was still dealing with her traumatic experiences. Some women wanted a professional to be present when conducting the interview in any event. A total of five professionals participated in conducting the interviews. This group comprised social workers, shelter workers or therapists, some of whom were working with more than one of the women. All had identified the women as victims of stalking. The professionals and women met for the purpose of the study in addition to their regular appointments. Four women considered that their life situation and mental wellbeing were in balance to the extent that they could participate in the interviews without a professional present.

The data collection method can be considered an adaptation of Hydén’s (2014) teller-focused interview: the interviews were oriented towards the women and aimed at validating their experiences (also Harding, 1991). The nature of the interviews was dialectic. The interviewees, professionals and researcher shared the same interest: to make the women’s experiences meaningful and to produce knowledge about post-separation stalking for the general public but, in particular, for social work and other professional practices (Hydén, 2014). The role of the professionals was to facilitate women’s narration of sensitive experiences, which they related from the non-knowing position (Hydén, 2014). Since the aim was to understand the narratives of the women and their subjective experiences, the researcher’s approach was to listen to the discussion, observe the interaction of the women and professionals and ask clarifying questions. In the four interviews involving only one of the women and the researcher, the researcher’s role was more active one than in the other sessions.

Each of the women was interviewed one to three times depending on how much she was willing to share and how safe it was for her to participate in the research. The participants were informed beforehand that interviews would focus on their everyday life experiences of stalking and how the system of professional support had responded to those experiences. The interviews were carried out in a professional’s office, the woman’s home or other quiet location conducive to discussing sensitive and private experiences. Each interview lasted one to two and one-half hours and was recorded and transcribed.

There are a number of limitations regarding the methods of data collection and studying sensitive and traumatizing experiences that bear mentioning. In the interviews, many victims may have found it challenging to recall all the details of what were multiple encounters with the professionals. Additionally, the presence of the professionals in the interviews may have had an impact on what the women were willing to share concerning the help and support they received. In future studies, research designs comparing data collected from victims of stalking and professionals working in different services (law enforcement, the courts, healthcare and social welfare services) could produce more in-depth and multifaceted knowledge.

Ethical considerations

The study complies with the Finnish research ethics guidelines (Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity, 2015). A research permit was required by one local chapter of the Federation of Mother and Child Homes and Shelters and it was duly applied for and granted. The women’s informed consent to participate in the research was obtained orally. The women were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any point and that they did not need to discuss issues about which they felt uncomfortable. At the end of the interviews, the women were asked if they felt a need for further discussion of the issues that had come up. Some continued the discussion with the professional at their next appointment, while others felt no need to discuss the issues any further.

Data analysis

Positioning theory was applied to examine how the knowledge of the women’s life situations was constructed and how professionals positioned the women as help-seekers (Harré and van Langenhove, 1999). In the first phase of analysis, the transcripts of the interviews were read systematically with a focus on the women’s encounters with professionals; of particular interest were the services the women had sought help from and whether they felt the services were helpful. The salient passages were marked using ATLAS.ti software. In the second phase, the focus was directed to women’s reactions as well as to accounts in which the women indicated that they had not received adequate help and that their subjective experiences differed from the professionals’ interpretation of their life situations. Discrepant perceptions were identified in the case of topics such as child custody, mothering, a woman’s duties, and the nature of violence. The third phase of reading the encounters was more interpretive (Mason, 2002). It included thematisation of the discrepancies in terms of parenthood, motherhood, womanhood and victimhood. These four themes were then used as analytical tools in re-reading the women’s perceptions of their encounters with professionals and ascertaining the women’s positionings. Four categories describing professionals’ most frequent positioning of the women as particular kinds of help-seekers were identified: (1) alienating parent, (2) unprotective mother, (3) overcautious woman and (4) implausible victim. These may be seen as professionals’ critical positionings, that is, ones that prevented the women from receiving adequate help. They describe the variety of ambivalent identities ascribed to the women as help-seekers. Two or more of the four positionings were often present at the same time in interaction with professionals.

The following sections present the findings and a discussion of the salient literature. The findings are analysed from the viewpoint of rights, duties and moral order, which are the fundamental elements of positioning theory and which take on their meaning based on the socio-cultural context and cultural codes (Harré and van Langenhove, 1999). Quotations from the victims’ interviews that are representative of the women’s experiences are used to illustrate the positionings. Although the professionals were also involved in this study, the paper presents quotations from the victims’ narratives only.

Alienating parent

Positionings falling into the category of alienating parent appeared mainly in the women’s encounters with the family social workers, primarily when negotiating child visitation between the resident and non-resident parent and in child custody disputes. If the woman did her utmost to make the children’s meetings with their father ‘work’ – but was unsuccessful because the father lacked real interest in meeting the children – the professionals might interpret it as unwillingness to co-operate on her part and accuse her of depriving the father of his children. One woman recalled her encounters with a social worker as follows:

[I was] accused of depriving the father of his children [and was asked] whether I understand at all what kind of consequences it has for the children’s development. (–) For a long time I tried to make the meetings work. I believed that children needed to meet both parents. (–) Anyway, they accused me of being resentful, of looking out for my own interests, of trying to get revenge, or of not wanting the children to meet their father for some other reason.

Another woman shared how her ex-partner tried to convince the professionals that she was mentally ill and was alienating him from the children:

If only he hadn’t convinced the professionals at that appointment that now the woman [referring to herself] tried this because of the separation, that this is alienation, that I have PAS – Parental Alienation Syndrome – and need to be examined. [He said:] ‘The woman is crazy.’ We [the woman and those close to her] were told the man demanded that ‘the woman be placed in a psychiatric facility and that a psychiatrist examine her now’.

These two quotations describe how professionals can view a woman as a selfish parent who manipulates the children, complicates child custody negotiations because of personal motives, and makes no effort to organise the children’s meetings with the father and co-operate as a parent. In other words, professionals can assess a woman as being a difficult client, not as a victim of stalking. Often when the social workers interpreted the woman as an irresponsible parent, they based their perception on the ideology of shared parenthood after separation, which is rooted in the best interests of the child (Eriksson, 2011). The professionals tried to organise the families’ social relations from their statutory perspective and in most cases interpreted the woman’s experiences of being stalked as a family matter rather than as a power imbalance between the woman and the man stalking her. Accordingly, the professionals expected the women to create a constructive relationship with their ex-partners, as well as with the professionals, in the name of shared parenthood and responsible parenting.

The positioning of women as alienating parents shows that when stalking concerns children it can be addressed as a matter of child welfare (see Fargion, 2014) rather than criminal behaviour. Child welfare draws on a socialised, cultural understanding of shared parenthood and co-parenting, as well as parental rights and duties after separation, as a way to maintain the moral order in the family. Here the professionals’ positioning of the women took on complex forms. They were influenced by how the stalker responded to the woman’s efforts to be a co-operative and caring parent.

Unprotective mother

Positionings falling into the category of unprotective mother emerged primarily where the issue was motherhood. In these instances, the professionals took the view that the women should take responsibility for the ex-partner’s stalking behaviour in order to safeguard the children. As with the category of alienating parent, positionings in this category figured prominently in the women’s encounters with family social workers. In two instances where women were seen as unable to protect their children, the women shared that they had no choice but to let their children be taken into care, as this was the only way to protect them from the stalker:

Four times I applied for a restraining order against him. I applied for it because of the children. (–) If we think about the child welfare services, what has irritated me is that I have asked for many kinds of help. I have tried many channels, but one response I got from the child welfare services was that here it is not the clients who make suggestions; these go top down. I had suggested what kind of help would work in our case. Ultimately, the only thing they had to offer us was that the children could be taken into care. This was the only way to protect the children.

In practice, they asked me: ‘Which one is more important, your child’s or your own mental health?’ And I knew that I had been driven into a corner with the authorities, too; I didn’t have any options.

Many of the women found themselves caught between the stalker’s threats and coercion and the professionals’ risk assessment and monitoring of their mothering. This situation arose partly because the limited possibilities to intervene in stalking are a structural problem: Social work practices are framed by institutional power and statutory practices that leave professionals little choice or few means to protect children when their mothers are stalked. The only solution may be to remove the children from the mother’s care. The data also indicate the complexity of mothering in the context of stalking. Many women’s ability to be protective and caring mothers was threatened because the perpetrator’s acts often targeted their mothering, one example being false reports of child abuse. Thus, the professionals’ possibilities to help the women depended on whether professionals were familiar with the nature of stalking and whether they viewed the women’s situations as instances of stalking.

Professionals’ concern to protect children is real as it is known that children can be abused in the course of stalking (Nikupeteri and Laitinen, 2015). When a woman is a target of stalking, her emotional ability to take care of her children and protect them is threatened; but this does not necessarily imply a deficiency in her mothering skills. Moreover, removing children from the mother’s care is not an intervention in stalking; it can still continue. The data show that some professionals led women to believe they were accountable for the stalking inasmuch as they had chosen their partners and had been in a romantic relationship with them, and should thus be able to handle them and take responsibility for the consequences of stalking. In such cases, many women blamed themselves for their situation and tried to manage with the stalking and safeguard their children.

The positioning category of unprotective mother is constructed on the cultural understanding of motherhood, which includes certain rights and duties and is based on a moral order of succeeding or failing as a mother. It also reflects the gendered construction of parenting (Eriksson, 2010) which can often be seen in Nordic professional practices. The data show that responsibility for the well-being and safety of children is often given to the mother. This burden on the mother is doubled where society, through a restraining order, essentially declares the father unfit as a parent.

Overcautious woman

When positioned as overcautious, the women were viewed in the light of the dominant cultural understandings of womanhood. This positioning occurred in the women’s encounters with police officers, social workers and judicial officials. The key themes in this category were the women’s emotional experiences and the truthfulness of their reports.

Positioning a woman as overcautious relates to how professionals assess and justify the emotions which stalking arouses in the women. Professionals may interpret the women’s fear and sense of insecurity as exaggerated or imagined or, in contrast, valorise the emotions as real reports of stalking (Nikupeteri, 2016). According to the women’s accounts, the professionals they encountered contemplated who to believe and who was the more truthful – the woman or her ex-partner. Where they felt that a woman was imagining or exaggerating her ex-partner’s behaviour, the professionals may have questioned and played down her experiences. The women related many such encounters. Two of the women share in the following:

The second restraining order expired and the man started threatening me again. I went to the police and asked what to do. I got the answer: ‘Are you sure it is not just a bogeyman in your own head? When you hear the man’s name you start to cry. Why don’t you just phone him and say that you are going to apply for a restraining order again?’ (–) But for that kind of person [stalker], it is like throwing petrol on the flames.

I went to the police and said that I wanted to report an offense. (–) The officer on duty said: ‘You know, when this kind of a break-up happens, we men get idiotic. We may get worked up and say things that we don’t mean. It is just a kind of separation anxiety.’

These examples of reports reflect how professionals, in this case the police, may view women as overcautious. The professionals may not perceive the ex-partner’s behaviour as stalking and as a problem that needs to be addressed. They may not be familiar with the dynamics of stalking or even acknowledge that stalking is occurring; rather, they can view a woman’s reaction as a surge of emotion after separation. In the cases where the professionals did not take the women’s sense of fear seriously, the women felt ridiculous and mocked. What is more, the data show that, in the long term, if the professionals did not recognise that the women were being stalked, many women started to position themselves as ‘paranoid’ and to question their own emotions.

Taken as a whole, the category of overcautious woman highlights that professionals may lack adequate knowledge about the dynamics of stalking. The ‘logic’ of stalking runs counter to the general understanding of an intimate relationship and separation and this can thus lead to situations in which the women’s reactions are questioned. According to the general cultural understanding of duties, rights and the moral order associated with womanhood, women are often considered emotionally sensitive (see Sheridan and Lyndon, 2012). Accordingly, they can be seen as driven by emotions rather than common sense, with their reactions to being stalked perhaps interpreted as exaggerated.

Implausible victim

The category of implausible victim is constructed on the theme of victimhood. According to the data, professionals often based their evaluations on the stereotype of the innocent and traumatised victim, one who is passive, vulnerable and helpless. In such cases, the professionals’ perception of a woman’s need for help depended on her behaviour and agency as a victim. In order to be a plausible victim, a woman’s behaviour should be perceived as consistent in all circumstances. The data indicate that the women had different kinds of coping strategies – including a desire to end the violent relationship – which ran counter to the perception of a victim’s ‘normal’ behaviour. Often the women used a certain tactical thinking to cope with stalking. For example, some deliberately contacted the stalker: they answered his phone calls so that they would be aware of his next move, or let him come into their home so that they did not need to live with the fear and unpredictability involved in waiting for his next move. The contacts also provided periodic relief; for example, in one case the woman obtained information on the man’s work shifts or when he was going abroad. However, these actions conflicted with the professionals’ perception of a victim as a person who would resist becoming further victimised and cease contact with the perpetrator.

The women related several cases in which the professionals questioned their need for help because they were too active as victims of violence as, for example, when they analysed their life situation and the stalker’s behaviour and motives. In the following excerpt, a woman recalls her discussion with a social worker and the reasons why she did not receive help when she sought it. It illustrates the paradox of passive and active victim.

But they didn’t see what I meant. I said that I can look like I am acting [coherently], but I am totally broken inside. I knew that I was totally broken at that point, but nobody saw it. I tried to bring it up and when I talked with the social workers I said I was exhausted. I don’t need a lot of strain anymore, I am collapsing… Then one of the social workers said that she/he believed me, ‘but most people don’t believe you because you look like you’re getting by… You take care of the home and children; in a way, you look strong, you tackle the issues’… Then I asked, ‘What should I look like?’ [The social worker’s reply was] ‘Well, a social worker’s clients should look sort of like they are beaten and not able to do anything. The social worker can then provide help from there on.’

The quotation describes the woman’s efforts to get help. However, her strong determination ran counter to the general understanding of what it means to be a helpless victim. By contrast, some women shared how their traumatisation hindered them from acting rationally. For example, many women described that the encounters with the stalker in court were scary and that they felt overwhelmed next to the stalker because he was able to present himself clearly and convincingly. Thus, the women felt that they were not able to give a coherent account of the stalking, which then hindered them from being understood in the help-seeking process.

As a whole, in the category of implausible victim, professionals’ positionings of the women reflected a lack of knowledge on the nature of stalking as well as on the victims’ strategies to cope with it and efforts to protect themselves and close ones. Professionals’ perception of the women’s agency was ambivalent, which ran counter to the stereotypical understanding of them as victims and to the general understanding of a victim’s duties and rights.