The Impact of Victim Advocacy on the Prosecution of Domestic Violence Offences: Lessons from a Realistic Evaluation

This article explores the impact of a court-based advocacy service on the prosecution of domestic violence offences. The research, conducted as part of a PhD thesis, evaluated a team of Independent Domestic Violence Advisors (IDVAs) based within a Specialist Domestic Violence Court (SDVC). The author adopted the methodology of Realistic Evaluation (Pawson and Tilley, 1997) in order to understand firstly, any impact of the court-based IDVA service on court outcomes, secondly, how any such outcomes were achieved and, finally, in what contexts they occurred. As this article explores, effective victim advocacy has the potential to impact positively on the prosecution of domestic violence offences.