Infidelity accusations prove main cause.

• Position: Domestic Abuse

An analysis of jailhouse phone calls between men charged with felony domestic violence and their victims allowed researchers for the first time to see exactly what triggered episodes of violent abuse. The findings showed that violence often immediately followed accusations of sexual infidelity made by one or both partners. Drug or alcohol use often is involved. Researchers long have known that sexual jealousy plays a general role in abuse, but this is the first time it was shown that it is a specific form of jealousy--infidelity concerns--that tends to initiate the violence.

"What we were looking for was the immediate precursor--what was the one thing that happened right before the violence that was the catalyst," explains Julianna Nemeth, lead author of the study published in the Journal of Women's Health. "I have worked in domestic violence intervention for a lot of years, but still the findings shocked me. We never knew that it was the accusation of infidelity that tended to trigger the violence."

The findings are powerful because they come directly from conversations of the couples involved in domestic violence, explains coauthor Amy Bonomi. "What we had before was what the abuser and victim said to police, to courts, to advocates, to health care providers," says Bonomi, an affiliate with the Group Health Research Institute, Seattle, Wash., "but we never before had the couple together discussing just between themselves what happened...