Living on the Edges: The Voices of Abused Adolescent Israeli Women

The purpose of this study is to utilize an insider’s perspective to describe and analyze the experience of abuse and neglect of adolescent girls in Israel. A purposive sample of 20 adolescent, “at risk” girls was... [ view full abstract ]

The purpose of this study is to utilize an insider’s perspective to describe and analyze the experience of abuse and neglect of adolescent girls in Israel. A purposive sample of 20 adolescent, “at risk” girls was interviewed and chosen due to intensive experiences of abuse throughout their lives. Findings highlighted how these individuals negotiated and framed their experiences in order to enable them to cope with the abuse they had endured. Firstly, they manipulated space as well as time, using controlled, incremental processing (“dosing”) when narrating their experiences. For the adolescents in our study, communication was a central organizing axis of their abuse experiences and a tool for healing, encouraging a sense of self and facilitating relationships with others. In addition, the findings indicated that these adolescent girls possess a body of experiential knowledge that translates into coping skills extending beyond their abuse experiences.