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Criminal Legal System Response to Intimate Partner Violence

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence

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Abstract

In 1978, John Rideout became the first man in the United States to be prosecuted for raping his wife while they were living together. Although acquitted, the fact that he was even prosecuted signaled a change in the winds with respect to the prosecutorial response to allegations of marital rape and sexual assault. Just over 20 years later, in 1999, Jessica Gonzales tried unsuccessfully to get the Castle Rock, Colorado Police Department to enforce a valid restraining order against her estranged husband. He had taken their three daughters from her front yard without any prior arrangement, violating the terms of the order. She made several attempts to get them to find and arrest him; each time they refused and told her to “call back later if the girls did not show.” Eventually she went to the police station after midnight in a final attempt to enforce the order. At 3:20 AM, her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, appeared at the police station and started a gunfight with the police that resulted in his death. His vehicle contained the bodies of the couples’ three daughters. These two cases illustrate the centuries’ long struggle for equal treatment of victims of intimate partner violence. This entry will summarize the history of intimate partner violence along with the corresponding and sometimes maddening history of the criminal/legal response to it.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Campbellsville University, Campbellsville, KY, USA

    B. Dale Wilson

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  1. B. Dale Wilson
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Correspondence to B. Dale Wilson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Gavin Vance

  3. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester Hills, MI, USA

    Madeleine K. Meehan

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Wilson, B.D. (2023). Criminal Legal System Response to Intimate Partner Violence. In: Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85493-5_344-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85493-5_344-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-85493-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-85493-5

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