Ben Hine

University of West London | UWL · Department of Psychology

Background: Family breakdown, separation, and divorce (FBSD) are often traumatic events, particularly for fathers who face unique challenges. These include emotional, psychological, and financial struggles, often exacerbated by abusive behaviours from ex-partners. This study explores fathers’ experiences of FBSD, focusing on both the breakdown even...

Background: this study builds on existing research on fathers’ experiences of family breakdown, separation, and post-separation abuse, exploring the systemic challenges they face in negotiating co-parenting arrangements. Methods: using data from a survey of 141 fathers and interviews with 30 participants, we examined the dynamics of post-separation...

In the aftermath of the global COVID-19 pandemic, it has been highlighted how measures necessary to fight the disease inadvertently exacerbated family violence and placed strain on the judicial system. Across the four countries within the United Kingdom, delays were, and still are, particularly prevalent in family law proceedings, partly due to new...

Previous research suggests that the portrayal of male and female protagonists in Disney animations may be changing over time. The current study examined the portrayal of gendered behaviors displayed within some of Disney's most successful animated feature length films, including those beyond the Disney princess franchise. Extending the scope of the...

In recent years, there has been growing acknowledgement of so-called hidden survivors of domestic and sexual violence, specifically those that fall outside of stereotypical conceptualisations of prototypical victims (i.e., cis-gendered, heterosexual women). As a result of this recognition, research on the experiences of LGBT survivors has flourishe...

Research on behavior seeking to disrupt, deny, or negatively impact the parent–child relationship, sometimes labeled as parental alienation (PA), has burgeoned in recent years. Despite this proliferation, the theoretical and practical conceptualization of PA is still a highly controversial topic, not helped by the potential outpacing of academic kn...

An abundance of previous research has investigated how gender has been portrayed within feature length films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, particularly those within the Disney princess franchise. However, the Disney corporation acquired the Marvel and Star Wars franchises in 2009 and 2012, respectively, which was likely a strategy for...

Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) within relationships is a worldwide problem, which has detrimental direct and indirect consequences. Indeed, the negative health effects of DVA have been evidenced both nationally and internationally. It is also increasingly acknowledged that men experience DVA, and the gendered experience of DVA by those who ident...

Previous research has demonstrated the profound negative impact of both intimate partner violence (IPV) and parental alienation (PA) on both the mental and physical health of fathers. However, considering the increasing arguments for PA to be categorized and examined as a form of IPV, there is an urgent need to explore the impact of PA as part of a...

Previous research has highlighted that when men describe their experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV), they frequently talk about the use of children by their abusive partners. The behaviors they describe align with descriptions of so-called parental alienation (PA) where children are coercively controlled to reject one (alienated) parent i...

Substantial gaps remain in our understanding of the risks and barriers that exist for men affected by rape and sexual abuse. The present research utilized semi-structured interviews with 12 service providers from specialist organizations in the United Kingdom. An interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed three superordinate themes: (a) surv...

The present study represents the third part of an exploration into the demographic characteristics, context, and outcomes of abuse and outcomes of service engagement for users of specialist Domestic Violence and Abuse (DVA) services in the United Kingdom (UK; parts I and II respectively). It delivers on a commitment made in those parts to provide a...

Male victims of sexual violence currently receive little attention in the UK, despite a growing number of men reporting sexual offences to the police and seeking psychological support for sexual trauma. Such issues are situated against a backdrop of substantial, gender-specific barriers for men around recognising, disclosing, and seeking support fo...

Attrition, or the ‘dropping out’ of rape cases from the criminal justice process remains a persistent and troubling issue; despite several governmental and academic reviews and interventions designed to address myriad challenges identified. It is argued in this chapter, that this lack of success is perhaps partially due to a disconnect, or lack of...

Research on men’s experiences of sexual victimization is limited and largely outdated. The present study seeks to remedy this issue by qualitatively examining the accounts of nine male-on-male survivors of rape and sexual abuse in the UK. It examines survivors’ experiences of psychological distress post-incident, the influence and manifestation of...

The present study represents the second part of a two-part project that has sought to explore the demographic characteristics, assessment of abuse risks, and provision needs of service users of specialist Domestic Violence and Abuse (DVA) services in the United Kingdom (UK; see Hine, Bates, et al., in press for Part 1). The current study utilised a...

Despite longstanding investigation into the experiences and needs of female victims of domestic violence and abuse (DVA), and a burgeoning literature on abused men, information on service engagement by both of these groups is limited, particularly in direct comparison. This is in part due to a lack of large-scale quantitative data on victim needs u...

Current understandings on service engagement by male victims of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) within the United Kingdom (UK) have generally been captured by qualitative research. As such, large-scale quantitative data detailing the profile, needs and outcomes of abused men, upon both presentation and use of services, is currently lacking. The p...

Despite growing recognition of male-on-male rape and its related myths, research in this area has been held back by the lack of a reliable and comprehensive measure or scale. The present work utilises a large and diverse participant sample over two studies (Study 1 N = 510, Study 2 N = 527) to validate a new Male Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (MRMAS),...

Severe levels of attrition in rape cases within the criminal justice system are widely recognised. Previous reviews (e.g. Hohl & Stanko, 2015. Complaints of rape and the criminal justice system: Fresh evidence on the attrition problem in England and Wales. European Journal of Criminology, 12(3), 324–341) have provided information on the general pro...

Male-on-male rape remains an under-researched area, and little is known about the characteristics and outcomes of this type of crime. This study examines 122 rape cases involving young adult and adult male victims reported to the London Metropolitan Police Service between 2005 and 2012. Overall, there were a number of similarities with cases involv...

While previous studies have begun to provide evidence on the experiences of male victims of domestic violence and abuse (DVA), current understanding in this area is still limited, and subject to narrow methods of inquiry. Moreover, little is known regarding the challenges of providing support to men in abusive relationships, and how barriers to eff...

Gendered models of abuse describe intimate partner violence (IPV) as unilaterally perpetrated by dominant, aggressive men toward vulnerable women. This unidirectional conceptualization has contributed to a “domestic violence stereotype” which, alongside broader attitudes regarding gender, influences attitudes toward “non-typical” victim and perpetr...

This reports and examines the landscape of rape investigations and attrition in cases reported in the most recently available data for the London Metropolitan area.

This research was the first in the United Kingdom to examine the prevalence and nature of nonconsensual sharing of sexually explicit messages, pictures, and videos and to examine whether this varies according to gender and by role (i.e., perpetrator, victim, or as dual role of perpetrator/victim). In a sample of 391 young adults (aged 18-25 years),...

Previous quantitative research examining Disney movies has highlighted that whilst prince characters display largely balanced gender profiles, princesses exhibit biased gender role portrayals—performing mostly feminine characteristics, rarely participating in rescue behavior, and concluding movies in romantic relationships with the prince. However,...

Both popular and academic discourse has noted progressive change in the gender role portrayals of much-loved Disney princess characters. However, at present, little is known about children’s recognition of such changes, or of their interpretation of princesses’ gendered behavior. This study therefore asked 131 8–9-year-old UK children to attribute...

Purpose: Previous studies suggest that officers' level of rape myth acceptance (RMA) is predictive of their case decision making and judgements towards victim-survivors. However, few studies have directly assessed the relationship between RMA and responsibility and authenticity judgments. Methods: 808 UK police officers categorised as ‘high’ or ‘lo...

Efforts to understand rape myth acceptance (RMA) as a cognitive framework in police, unifying key cognitive/attitudinal and demographic factors into one coherent model, are lacking. Using a cross-sectional survey design, predictors of RMA were assessed by linear hierarchical regression, including demographic (age, length of service, gender, experie...

Purpose Previous studies suggest that judgments of responsibility and authenticity made towards hypothetical rape cases differ when specific case factors are varied. However, few studies have examined whether police officers exhibit similar variations in judgment. Methods Sixteen vignettes depicting a hypothetical rape scenario were created. Vignet...

This presentation will discuss research examining police attitudes and the broader context of the investigation process of rape in London. Working with the Metropolitan Police Service, 912 current serving specialist and non-specialist officers took part in a study to assess the demographic and attitudinal predictors of rape myth acceptance in Polic...

Across childhood and adolescence prosocial behaviour is consistently female-typed. This is in contrast to patterns in adulthood suggesting that some prosocial behaviour, congruent with the male gender role, is distinctly male-typed. This study investigated the gender-typing of prosocial behaviour in children and adolescents aged 9–19 years. 1189 pa...

Two-hundred-and-fifty-eight White British (ethnic majority) and British South Asian (minority) children (5, 9 and 13 years old) chose potential friends from descriptions of peers who had traits and preferences that were either consistent (normative) or inconsistent (deviant) with ethnic group membership. White children chose peers from the ethnic i...