Florida is turning to UCF experts to find better ways to prevent domestic violence and give survivors a stronger voice in the services they need.

Through a $257,384 two-year grant from the Florida Partnership to End Domestic Violence, faculty from UCF’s Violence Against Women research cluster are conducting a statewide domestic violence needs assessment. Their findings will help policymakers and local agencies develop better strategies to fund and support domestic violence prevention programs that empower survivors.

“The collective goal of our work is to give people working in these programs and people using these services a voice,” says Bethany Backes, associate professor of social work at , who leads the Violence Against Women cluster and is the project’s principal investigator. “Having research that practitioners can understand and interpret in a way that’s helpful is important to us. “What we’re creating now is hopefully something that can be used for years to come.”

The World’s Women

Violence against women is a global issue. According to UN Women, nearly one in three women worldwide have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life. In 2024, around 50,000 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members.

“We’re looking at criminal justice, sociology, health, and so much more that altogether could create solutions beyond any one discipline.” — Kim Anderson, Professor of Social Work

UCF’s faculty cluster — working across the disciplines of education, social work, criminal justice, sociology and medicine — was created a decade ago to change these outcomes. “We know how complex this social problem is,” says Kim Anderson, a professor of social work and cluster member. “We’re looking at criminal justice, sociology, health, and so much more that altogether could create solutions beyond any one discipline.”

Informing Florida’s Strategy

The researchers have already identified some key needs for the state to examine.

“For example, we’re seeing people facing abuse who are having to spend more on food or other necessities as they navigate shifts in funding for certain assistance programs,” Backes says. “What we’re also seeing is the effect of population booms, and how rapid growth and rapid decline in some areas affects the need for services.”

The researchers are analyzing data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Florida’s Departments of Law Enforcement and Children and Families and are surveying organizations that provide domestic violence services. They are interviewing survivors who sought services and those who didn’t to understand access to care and risk factors.

Creating opportunities where more people feel comfortable sharing their domestic violence experiences is cluster member Karina Villalba’s expertise.

“My focus is on intimate partner violence, specifically within the Hispanic community,” says Villalba, an assistant professor in the ’s Population Health Sciences Division. “There are certain beliefs, like the concept of ‘machismo’, that may give an avenue for some men to pursue this kind of violence. Because it can be part of the cultural acceptance, it might not even be seen as violence by the survivors.”

She hopes efforts to prevent domestic violence in the U.S. will have impact globally.

“You’re seeing a ripple effect in countries in Latin America where people are becoming more aware,” Villalba says. “It helps us keep pushing forward with our work so we cannot just be a beacon here in Florida and the United States, but to show the world what we can do.”

Keys to Preventing Violence

Preventing domestic violence means identifying early warning signs and behaviors and providing services to lower the risk of continuing violence, Backes says.

Domestic violence is “not always physical and it’s not just seeing someone with a black eye,” she says. “Physical violence can happen after there’s been psychological abuse such as coercion, controlling, isolation or stalking.”

Cluster member Alison Cares, associate professor of sociology at , says preventing domestic abuse involves changing misconceptions.

“There’s this expectation of how abusers or survivors look. It’s easy to think the people doing this abuse look like monsters,” she says. “But the reality is these are people we know. They can be friends or family members or people we work with.”

The researchers say they are encouraged by the resilience of the survivors and service providers they have met.

“We see incredible bravery of people who talk to a support person,” Anderson says. “We’re hoping that information we get from this assessment can elevate the voices of staff and survivors.”

The work can help health care workers implement strategies for prevention and response.

Recent research indicates that a significant number of college students are at a heightened risk of experiencing intimate partner violence. It is estimated that up to 50% of college students may experience one or more types of dating, sexual or stalking violence.

Furthermore, screenings for IPV are uncommon and not standardized across university settings, while those used and practiced in general healthcare settings often do not meet the needs of college students, says Bethany Backes, an assistant professor in the Violence Against Women Faculty cluster initiative.

That’s why she’s helping lead a new study, “” to improve UCF’s ability to identify and support college students who are experiencing violence in their relationships. The project received initial funding by the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation.

“A lot of college campuses don’t use screenings and if they do, they are not relevant to college students,” Backes says. “However, it is recommended that screening happens for people 14 and older, and college is a great place to screen because you have a population, a young adult population, and that typically is when the onset of certain types or forms of interpersonal violence first occur.”

The project is currently in a pilot stage in which students who have appointments at the Student Health Services can opt to fill out the screener.

“Our collective goal is that we create something usable that can be implemented beyond Student Health Services settings, such as being used, for example, by college athletic trainers or in college counseling centers,” Backes says.

The data gathered will help researchers and Student Health Services improve efforts to assist students who are experiencing abuse in their relationships and educate them on resources, Backes says.

Students who are willing to participate in the project will remain anonymous and will not have anything linked to their medical files.

The project encourages students, whether or not they decide to participate, to reach out and talk about their relationships if they have any doubts or concerns.

“I think it’s really important for students to get resources, or to learn about resources because sometimes it’s just knowledge transfer.” Backes says. “So, they might not seek out victim services right away, or they might not seek them out the next time, but they start to be aware that there are services like this on campus.”

This is why Erica Fissel’s goal is to illuminate the interpersonal victimization that occurs in cyberspace in hopes that her work will be used to help inform policy and help these victims.

Fissel, an assistant professor in the , doesn’t consider herself a particularly technology-savvy person but was fascinated with the way people behave online versus offline. From there, she began to look at what use or abuse of technology looks like in an intimate partner relationship. A member of UCF’s Violence Against Women faculty cluster, she focuses on the impact it has on women.

Although she didn’t intentionally seek to make women the focus of her research, Fissel says she quickly discovered that women are the most likely to experience such forms of interpersonal victimization. She also works with the Cybercrime Support Network to help serve those affected by the growing impacts of cybercrime.

“This area is so interesting to me because it’s so underdeveloped, and there are so many ways that people can use technology to abuse their partners that I would have never thought of,” she says.

Such technology can include smart-home systems like video doorbells, which can be used to track or monitor an intimate partner. Even reading a partner’s text messages without their permission can fall into the category of technology-based abuse under certain circumstances.

She adds that it’s important to realize that intimate partner cyber abuse is not illegal. There may be laws applicable to cyberstalking or cyber harassment, but intimate partner cyber abuse extends beyond those behaviors.

“Because of that, people don’t know what they’re experiencing is abusive or problematic,” Fissel says. “They don’t know that they should be able to get help for it. I want my work to be able to inform policies and laws. I want to help individuals experiencing these behaviors access helpful resources, realize that they’re experiencing problematic behavior and get out of those situations.”

In her Women and Crime course, Fissel often finds herself teaching survivors and others who have experienced intimate partner cyber abuse. She’s even had students realize through the class that they are either currently being victimized or have been in the past.

“It’s very heavy material for students, but what I try to do is have a very open dialogue and safe space within the class where people are able to share their ideas,” she says. “We can talk about these types of behaviors and experiences because they’re important to understand.”

Defining the Cyber Abuse Spectrum

Although , Fissel says she is seeing more parity between men and women engaging in cyber-based abuse.

One of the projects Fissel has been working on examines the normalization or societal acceptance of behaviors that could be considered cyber abuse. She and a team of researchers from other universities collaborated on the study, which was funded by a faculty enrichment grant from the University of Cincinnati’s Criminal Justice Research Center. They collected data from 1,500 adults currently in an intimate partner relationship and asked about their experiences with intimate partner cyber abuse, perpetration and victimization within the past six months.

“We did a pilot test, and 100% of people experienced intimate partner cyber abuse as we defined it in the past six months,” Fissel says. “We thought, ‘This is a much bigger problem than we thought or we’re measuring it wrong.’ We talked to people about it, and some of the behaviors that we were defining as abusive aren’t abusive in all contexts.”

For example, tracking a partner via GPS would be considered abusive if it was being done without consent. However, Fissel says, many participants later indicated they tracked each other’s locations for safety reasons.

“That’s one of the tricky things with intimate partner cyber abuse, because it’s totally relationship specific and dependent on whether the boundaries developed with your partner were agreed upon without coercion,” she says.

In addition to looking at intimate partner cyber abuse on the victimization side, Fissel also is working on it from the perpetration side. That entails trying to understand why people engage in such behaviors, which is vital to being able to prevent them from happening.

Fissel also is working on another study with Jackie Woerner, an assistant professor in UCF’s departments of sociology and psychology, that focuses on the perpetration side. The two surveyed 544 people and followed up with nearly 300 of them a month later to examine their intimate partner cyber abuse behaviors over time. Part of this research involved asking participants about the factors that motivate their behavior. Fissel says many cited personal insecurities such as lack of trust.

“There’s almost a range within intimate partner cyber abuse,” she says. “There are things like checking someone’s text messages without their permission, which I would say is probably on the lower end of the spectrum. Then you also have people who are opening bank accounts in your name and ruining your credit, or people who are sending you threatening text messages. We’re also trying to figure out where the line that society draws is, because that’s going to help with trying to determine laws, too.”

Fissel received her doctorate in criminal justice from the University of Cincinnati. Her primary research interests focus on various types of interpersonal victimization that take place online, including cyberstalking, intimate partner cyber abuse and cyberbullying. She joined UCF’s , part of the , in 2019.

This pretrial period, when a judge decides if a person charged with intimate partner violence should be detained pretrial, is a critical time, says Bethany Backes, an assistant professor in UCF’s Violence Against Women research cluster and the project’s co-lead investigator.

An improper decision about pretrial detention could result in the release of someone likely to commit a new violent crime.

“Women are dying during this period,” Backes says. “When survivors separate or become estranged from their partner, it’s a time of heightened intensity, and probability of homicide increases.”

That’s why the researchers will work to create evidence-based, intimate partner violence pretrial safety assessment guides for judges to use when considering pretrial detention in such cases, with a focus on achieving safety for intimate partner violence survivors during this period.

The goal is to improve the well-being of survivors and decrease homicides during the pretrial period, Backes says. The project is supported by Arnold Ventures, a Houston-based philanthropy dedicated to maximizing opportunity and minimizing injustice.

“Post-arrest and the time waiting for trial are delicate,” she says. “Those who use violence against their partners often try to reconcile, threaten and intimidate survivors, or may increase stalking and surveillance tactics. This will help us better understand what abuse is occurring during the pretrial period and ensure it is addressed in our recommendations for judges.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 33 percent of women in the U.S. are physically abused by an intimate partner in their lifetimes, and 25 percent report severe intimate partner violence in their lifetimes.

Backes, who holds joint appointments in UCFs and , will work on the study with a team that includes co-lead investigator, Jill Messing, a professor in the School of Social Work and Watts College of Public Service & Community Solutions at Arizona State University.

Current pretrial assessments are often based on general likelihood of committing a new offense or missing a trial date. They rarely incorporate existing, specific factors for continued intimate partner violence, Backes says, such as an accused person’s history of dangerous forms of intimate partner violence, if the accused person owns a gun, has threatened to kill the survivor or children, if they have strangled the survivor, if they have a history of stalking and more.

The researchers will work to change this by merging intimate partner violence safety factors and pretrial safety factors and validate their effectiveness for use in pretrial decision-making using criminal justice data and reports from survivors throughout the pretrial period.

The safety factors will come from established tools that are typically implemented by police officers when responding to intimate partner violence calls to determine next courses of action, such as getting a survivor in touch with a personal safety advocate.

These include the Lethality Screen, the Danger Assessment for Law Enforcement, and the Danger Assesssment-5.

Also, intimate partner violence survivors will complete weekly assessments to help the research team understand the types of abuse experienced during the pretrial period that are not necessarily reported back to the criminal justice system.

“Although intimate partner violence-specific safety assessments have been developed for use with informed collaborative interventions, these safety assessments have not been assessed for use in pretrial settings,” Backes says. “This will be the first inquiry regarding the impact of risk assessments and safety-based recommendations on pretrial decision-making and outcomes in intimate partner cases.”

Project collaborators include Kevin Grimm and Neil Websdale, professors with Arizona State University; Christopher Maxwell, a professor with Michigan State University; and Tami Sullivan, an associate professor with Yale University.

Backes received her doctorate in social work from the University of Maryland Baltimore. She worked for more than 10 years as a social science analyst for the U.S. Department of Justice. She joined UCF’s Department of Criminal Justice and School of Social Work, part of UCF’s and , respectively, in 2019.

A Focused Research Approach

Although Backes’ work is based on a generalist approach, meaning she looks at different aspects of domestic violence — such as issues like stalking or solutions like access to resources — all of her efforts work together and center around the post-victimization path.

“After someone gets victimized and hurt, what is that process like for them and how can our responses be improved?” she says. “I look at how they seek help, how our services are set up to respond and how we can make that process better not only for them in the short-term but also across the lifespan.”

To examine this pathway, Backes looks at multidisciplinary responses, including community-based resources, family and friends, or departments within the criminal justice system. Ultimately, she examines how all of these resources and responses come together to inform someone, which she says contributes to their decision to seek help or not.

One of the many projects Backes is currently working on looks at the effectiveness of transitional housing for survivors of domestic violence and is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. A major reason why people do not or cannot leave abusive relationships stems from a lack of housing, Backes says. This project examines the different transitional housing models and services offered to domestic violence survivors and their children to see how stable and secure housing relates to economic, safety, and health outcomes.

“A big thing for me is the applied nature of my work,” says Backes. “The ‘so what’ question is really meant to elevate a good practice and move it forward for enhanced [federal and state] policy and funding decisions.”

Many people in the domestic violence field begin their journey due to personal victimization, Backes says. A career in this area is not for the faint of heart. Burnout can occur, and vicarious trauma during the research process happens. It’s moments like these that Backes turns to the kitchen and her daughters for stress-relief from the intense work she does every day.

Workforce Insight and Inspiration

Backes spent 10 years working as a social science analyst for the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice. As an analyst, she managed the department’s violence against women internal research, wrongful conviction research and violent victimization work. Her job was to understand what research had been conducted in these areas and what gaps existed, and then figure out a way to fill them.

One project she worked on involved domestic violence homicide prevention, which required her to look at models for identifying high-risk cases.

“It is a huge initiative, but working on these topics is difficult because people are dying in communities at the hands of their intimate partner,” Backes says. “You’re trying to figure out what [went] wrong. How can we make sure this doesn’t happen again?”

After a decade with the U.S. Department of Justice, preceded by a director position for the victim services and community outreach arm of a Maryland-based nonprofit, Backes was ready for a change.

“I got to the point where I realized I wanted to be the one doing the research,” she says. “I wondered if my work could be more impactful by doing the research, going into academia, working with students, and really teaching and broadening minds around these topics.”

Making Her Mark in Academia

Although the decision seemed easy enough, the transition was Backes’ biggest professional challenge. Despite her belief that her experience would make her more qualified, she was surprised to encounter people who thought former federal government employees couldn’t successfully make the switch into the world of academia.

“It was hard to figure out my home and who I could trust,” she says.

But Backes, who earned her doctorate while working full-time and starting a family, has never been one to shy away from a challenge and remained persistent until she found the right fit. When she landed at UCF, she didn’t have to narrow her research focus or change her values to be accepted as a faculty member.

“As a cluster faculty member, I’m with a connected group of researchers who understand studying and teaching tough, sensitive topics,” Backes says.

As a product of research-focused universities, including the University of Michigan and University of Maryland, Baltimore, Backes feels right at home (although she admits she’s still a die-hard Michigan fan).

“One of the things that really appeals to me about Ů��AV is being in an environment where there’s a mixture of traditional and nontraditional students,” she says. “I appreciate the different perspectives and cultures here that add so much context to the classroom and to the campus.”

With the freedom of continuing her generalist approach in her work, Backes says she also feels at home in the classroom. One of the reasons she has an appointment in the criminal justice department is so she can work with doctoral students.

“I view my classrooms as a place of learning and application — not just for the students, but for me as well,” Backes says. “It is amazing to be a part of the student journey. I strive to be like many of my women mentors who have had an incredible impact on my personal and professional path. I want to give back to students what I received. When they return asking for guidance on careers or graduate school or needing a safe space to talk, I am here for them.”