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Violence is all too common in our society, and co-investigators Richard Steeves and Barbara Parker of the UVA School of Nursing are conducting research on an especially traumatic kind of violence, one that can reverberate for decades more in the life of someone who has experienced it: uxoricide – the homicide of one parent by the other parent. Although seemingly rare, the rate of incidence of uxoricide in the United States is similar to that of childhood leukemia. For a child, there are immediate and devastating consequences to uxoricide: Through a single act, the child effectively loses both parents; one parent is dead; the other instantly becomes either incarcerated by or a fugitive of the law. Home life, neighborhood, school— and therefore friends— change as the child is moved into another's custody; and in the ensuing trial the child may be forced to talk about, and therefore relive, the traumatic event. What issues do children who have experienced uxoricide face in their futures? Steeves and Parker have interviewed and are examining the testimony of adults (over 18) who experienced uxoricide as children, in order to further understand and describe how these children dealt, and continue to deal with, the experience. From For more information on this study, click here . Steeves's and Parker's study is funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research of the National Institute of Health, from October 2003 to July 2006 (Grant number R01-NR008532-01).
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