Domestic Trauma and Adult Education on the United States-Mexico Border.

While there are increasing efforts to address the problem of domestic violence and trauma in the justice, health care, and social service systems, the adult education system still lags behind. The inattention to this issue in adult education is particularly troubling because these programs often play a significant role in the lives of women who experience multiple levels of victimization rooted in language, race, gender, and educational level, among other factors. In order to address this issue, we need to know the extent to which domestic trauma affects women in adult education programs; few, if any, existing studies include this data. This paper begins to fill that gap by reporting on a preliminary, practitioner-led study with 187 Hispanic women enrolled in El Paso Community College-- Community Education Program (EPCC--CEP) on the United States--Mexico border. The results of this preliminary study show the prevalence of domestic trauma among female students in one adult education program, and support the development of efforts to address this problem in a comprehensive manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]