The Denouement?

"It was not until the feminist movement of the 1960s/70s that public interest in "domestic violence" piqued"

wrote Alison Huggan in her letter to The Gazette which was published on Saturday, July 5th 2014. Where did she get her inspiration from?

Well back in 1982 the South End Press in Boston published 'Women and male violence: The visions and struggles of the battered women's movement' by S. Schechter.

This work was cited by Fran S. Danis, in 'The criminalization of domestic violence: What social workers need to know' published by Social Work on April 1, 2003.

Then an unknown author wrote an essay which contained the following sentence:

"Not until the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s was public interest in domestic violence piqued (Danis, 2003, citing Schechter, 1982)."

Note that evidence is given for the statement by way of correctly attributing the original sources and also that 'piqued' is used in the correct tense within the context of the sentence. Minor points maybe but important nevertheless.

Anyway, our old friend 'piqued' makes a welcome return and the only differences between the sentences are that Alison omits 'late' and substitutes 'that' with 'was'.

But where is the new essay from?

Let's go back to ukessays.com and there, amongst the free Social Work Essays is one about Domestic Violence and the second paragraph of the third section (Historical Evolution ...) contains the very sentence:

"Not until the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s was public interest in domestic violence piqued (Danis, 2003, citing Schechter, 1982)."

So in Alison's letter there are now two instances of her making statements which are, clearly, the words of others. There are no attempts to reference or cite the original sources.

In stark terms a third of Alison's letter constitutes the words and opinions of others. Can we rely on the remaining two thirds?

Time for someone to put the record straight?