Institutional Betrayal and Race in the Civil Legal System: A Latent Class Analysis with Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence

Institutional betrayal, the experience of mistreatment by an institution upon which a person depends, is common for survivors of intimate partner violence; however, it has scarcely been examined within the civil legal system. Past evidence suggests that survivors’ negative experiences with the civil legal system as well as racism may increase their risk for negative outcomes, but few studies directly explore the extent to which these adverse experiences impact survivors’ perceptions of institutional betrayal. The present study is a secondary analysis utilizing a latent class analysis approach to explore underlying patterns among these variables, specifically negative experiences and racism, and their impact on institutional betrayal among a sample of 199 Black and Hispanic survivors of intimate partner violence. The analysis revealed that a two-class Racism Model best fit the data, with one of the two classes tending to endorse most items related to racial discrimination and the other class tending toward low endorsement of these items. Class probabilities were then used to predict participants’ scores on a measure of institutional betrayal. Results provide evidence that experiencing racism may be a risk factor for negative outcomes in the civil legal system, specifically institutional betrayal. Implications and future directions are discussed.