RT Journal Article
T1 Institutional Violence Against Users of the Family Law Courts and the Legal Harassment Scale
A1 Clemente Díaz, Miguel Manuel
A1 Padilla Racero, Dolores
A1 Espinosa Breen, Pablo
A1 Reig Botella, Adela
A1 Gandoy Crego, Manuel
K1 Family law
K1 Legal harassment
K1 Legal system
K1 Scale
K1 Violence
AB The term harassment is often used to refer two contexts, the workplace and school, but not the legal system itself. Long drawn-out litigation in the Family Law Courts often produces a surreptitious phenomenon of violence toward one of the litigating parties, who become victims of the legal system itself. The aim of this study was to determine whether legal harassment could be detected and measured in the Spanish Justice System using an innovative Legal Harassment Scale (LHS). This hypothesis was substantiated by the data obtained using a new 32-item psychometric instrument with a global index: the LHS, consisting of four factors: Direct Aggression, Procedural Harassment, Personal Contempt, and Manipulation of Reality. The estimated reliability and validity of the LHS was satisfactory, both in terms of the global score, and for each of the four factors distributed along the normal curve. The results of this study are discussed in terms of the limitations of the study and in relation to future lines of research aimed at ensuring that the legal system respects and safeguards the rights of the parties involved in litigation, and that no party falls victim to legal harassment.
PB Frontiers Media
YR 2019
FD 2019
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/21266
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/21266
LA eng
NO Clemente, M., Padilla-Racero, D., Espinosa, P., Reig-Botella, A., & Gandoy-Crego, M. (2019). Institutional violence against users of the family law courts and the legal harassment scale. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00001
DS Minerva
RD 24 abr 2026