"She said..." "He said...": Cross applications in NSW apprehended domestic violence order proceedings

This thesis examines the use of cross applications in civil protection order proceedings in New South Wales (NSW) (known as Apprehended Domestic Violence Orders, ADVOs). A cross application takes place when one person in an existing or former intimate relationship, usually the woman, applies for an ADVO and sometime afterwards the defendant in that originating application, usually the man, seeks an ADVO against the first person. The focus on cross applications provides a means to investigate the nature of men’s and women’s competing allegations about domestic violence, and to explore the way in which professionals working within the ADVO system approach, and seek to unravel, these competing claims. This thesis draws on the extensive debate within the sociological literature about ‘what is domestic violence’ and whether domestic violence is gendered in its perpetration. This debate has been paid scant attention in the legal literature. This thesis examines the assumptions underpinning the legal definitions and understandings of domestic violence in the civil protection order system, with reference to these theoretical debates about ‘what is domestic violence’ and ‘what counts as domestic violence’. To do so it draws on empirical work: semi-structured in-depth interviews with women involved in cross applications and key professionals working in the field, documentary analysis of court files, and observations of court proceedings. The key contribution of this thesis to this literature is threefold: (1) it explores the question of gender perpetration through the investigation of official data (a data source little explored in debates about gender and domestic violence), (2) it combines qualitative and quantitative methods in a single study, and (3) it extends questions about the gendered perpetration of domestic violence to the legal arena (in particular the prime legal arena that responds to domestic violence in NSW, the ADVO system, a system ostensibly designed to better respond to domestic violence). This thesis found that, like other studies in this field, the analysis of quantitative data alone reveals few differences between the types of violence men and women are alleged to use against their intimate partners. However when supplemented by qualitative data differences started to emerge particularly for men who lodged their application second in time. This qualitative analysis reveals not only that male second applicants appeared to make claims of a different nature, but that some men appeared to use the ADVO process to undermine women’s claims for legal protection. The differences that emerged between men and women’s alleged experiences of domestic violence resonated with feminist understandings of domestic violence that highlight its function of control and the repetitive, cumulative environment in which violence is perpetrated by men against women. While the study focussed on cross applications, its findings reveal a number of issues of concern for the ADVO system more broadly: its focus on incidents, the poor quality of complaint narratives, the brevity of court proceedings and the emphasis on settlement. These features undermine the progressive potential of the ADVO legislation to capture more than single incidents of largely physical violence. This was further compounded by the fact that while the professionals interviewed articulated broad definitions of domestic violence, this tended to be lost when responding to practice-orientated questions (here professionals returned to incident-based definitions). Perhaps more significantly the defining feature of domestic violence as a mechanism of control is not articulated in the NSW legislation, and hence (not unsurprisingly) was generally not articulated in the complaint narratives examined in this thesis. Yet control was the dominant way in which the women interviewed described their relationship with their former partner. The failure of complaint narratives to reflect the dimension of control, combined with the failure of key professionals to give sufficient emphasis to control in their practice under the ADVO legislation, an absence highlighted through the focus on cross applications, is an issue of concern for the ADVO system generally. This is important given the growing recognition in the research literature of the fundamental nature of control to the experience of domestic violence, particularly women’s experiences of domestic violence

Delayed-onset muscle soreness does not influence occlusal sensitivity and position sense of the mandible

Masticatory muscle-pain patients often complain about sensorimotor changes, but the effects of pain on the psychophysical properties remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate the effects of delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) on the jaw's position sense (PS) and occlusal sensitivity (OS). In all, 12 participants underwent intense concentric–eccentric jaw exercises. Self-reported muscle fatigue and pain, pain-free maximum mouth opening (MMO), pain pressure thresholds (PPTs) at right and left masseter and right and left anterior temporalis, maximum voluntary bite force (MVBF), PS and OS were recorded before, immediately after, 24 h, 48 h and 1 week after the exercises. Data were analysed with repeated measures anova. Pain and fatigue increased significantly after the exercises, while fatigue also increased 24 h afterwards. Time and site had a significant effect for PPTs, not for MVBF. MMO decreased significantly 24 h after the exercises. OS and PS did not change significantly. Experimentally induced DOMS does not influence the psychophysical properties of the masticatory system

Correlates and genetics of self-reported sleep and awake bruxism in a nationwide twin cohort

Background Sleep bruxism (SB) and awake bruxism (AB) have been considered different entities, although co-occurrence between them has been shown. While genetic factors have a marked influence on phenotypic variance in liability to SB, this remains unclear for AB. Aim To examine the degree of co-occurrence of SB and AB, and whether they have common correlates and also twin similarity of SB and AB bruxism traits by zygosity and sex. Methods A questionnaire was mailed to all twins born 1945-1957 in Finland in 2012 (n = 11 766). Age and sex adjusted logistic regression models were used. Twin similarity was assessed using polychoric correlations, and crosstwin-crosstrait correlations were computed. Results The response rate was 72% (n = 8410). Any SB was reported by 14.8% and >= 3 nights weekly by 5.0%. Percentages for any AB were 18.4% and 6.3%, respectively. There was substantial co-occurrence (29.5%) between SB and AB, and several shared correlates were found. For SB, the polychoric intra-class correlation was 0.366 in monozygotic (MZ) and 0.200 in dizygotic (DZ) pairs, without gender difference. A twofold crosstwin-crosstrait correlation was observed in MZ twins compared to DZ twins. Conclusions The risk factor profiles of SB and AB were largely but not entirely similar. The higher correlation in MZ than in DZ pairs suggests the influence of genetic factors on both SB and AB. The higher crosstwin-crosstrait correlation in MZ than in DZ pairs suggests some degree of genetic influences shared by SB and AB.Peer reviewe