CAUSES AND EFFECT OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN NIGERIA (A CASE STUDY OF AJEGUNLE LAGOS)
ABSTRACT
The study investigated the causes and effects of domestic violence in Ajegunle Lagos State, Nigeria. The population of the study comprised all he registered married couples in Ajegunle Lagos State from 2010-2015. 500 respondents made up 250 couples were used as sample. The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire entitled: Domestic Violence Question (DVQ) five research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. The research questions were answered using person product moment correlation while regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results obtained showed that Nigerian couples are faced with different types of domestic violence which are: physical violence, psychological violence and sexual violence; age of the couples and their employment status were the socio-demographic factors that significantly correlate with domestic violence among couples and that gender and educational status did not correlate with domestic violence significantly. Based on the findings, recommendations for implementation include organization confirming marriages such as families, religious groups, hospitals, courts etc., ensuring that their clients pass through marital counselling with professional marriage counsellors among others.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of Study
Domestic violence, also recognized as household disturbance can be defined as brutal or threatening behaviour within the family, mostly involving the violent abuse of either a husband or a wife. It is considered as a crime, because domestic violence includes both verbal and physical abuse which is performed towards an individual. Domestic violence mostly takes place when one tries to prevail and dominate the other person, which causes an absolute bane and misery throughout the victim’s whole life. The growth of this act in our society is getting way more critical nowadays. According to Straus (1992), he stated that “research implies that between 3.3 million and 10 million children in the U.S. are vulnerable against domestic violence each year”. It brings a very huge impact towards the community, which is extremely catastrophic and disastrous. There are a few causes and effects of domestic violence which are going to be discussed and reviewed.
First and foremost, one of the factors which influenced domestic violence is that perpetrators discover violent behaviour mostly from their family members or mass media resources such as gory action movies and gruesome video games. As mentioned by Fantuzzo, Boruch and Beriama (1997), “Children exposed to domestic violence are in our schools, day-care centres, health care institutions, child welfare systems, and other agency settings”. There are sadistic families where the parents are obnoxious and cruel towards their own children, leaving a permanent trauma inside the children’s heart, leading them to become vengeful. Thus, the revengeful and merciless behaviour of a person can bring them to carry out crimes in the future, such as domestic violence Furthermore; the explicit as well as uncensored virtual contents can also affect an individual. For example, there are movies and video games which include graphical disturbance such as dismemberment of a character’s body parts through hack and slash. Hence, naive adolescents will try to mimic those actions in order to obtain the same effects as they find that these actions are the best ways for them to express their anxiety.
