Evan Stark, a sociologist who helped broaden the definition of domestic violence beyond physical assault to include the patterns of domination often at its root, a shift that improved services for victims as well as their treatment under the law, died March 17 at his home in Woodbridge, Conn. He was 82.
— when a friend in Minnesota helped open one of the country’s first shelters for battered women in the 1970s.As a sociologist, author, expert witness and advocate, Dr. Stark challenged pervasive misconceptions about domestic violence, which is primarily, although not universally, inflicted upon women. One of the most pernicious myths is the notion that women who remain in abusive relationships do so willingly.
With his work, she continued, Dr. Stark helped demonstrate that “battered women live in a landscape where their daily choices are defined and confined by the possible consequences that their partners might impose.” Regarding the abused mothers, he “talked about coercive control … though he did not call it that in the context of this lawsuit,” Jill M. Zuccardy, one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, wrote in an email. “He understood at a time when many did not that domestic violence was so much more than just violence.”“the pitiless double abuse of these mothers is not malicious, but is due to benign indifference, bureaucratic inefficiency, and outmoded institutional biases.
Flitcraft pursued a thesis examining the medical profession’s treatment of domestic violence victims. Recalling the language used at the time, she said in an interview that a typical patient chart might note that a woman had been “hit in the head by a glass ashtray,” without noting who had thrown the object at her.
Dr. Stark received a PhD in sociology in 1984 from Binghamton University, part of the State University of New York, according to his wife. He spent much of the rest of his career at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he taught in fields including public health and women’s studies. His degrees also included a master’s of social work from Fordham University in 1991.His marriage to Sally Connolly ended in divorce.
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