“The desire to understand human behavior arises from our desire for order and justice” (Gail, 2002). If we do not understand the behavior we observe, experience, and learn from in society, we feel that we no longer have control over what will happen in our lives (Gail, 2002). The simplest way for society to understand the many facets of behavior is through science (Gail, 2002). Science offers us a way to explain, through cause and effect, most of what we might encounter in society (Gail, 2002). This explanation helps us cope and understand what we encounter and possibly regain some of the missing control in our lives. In today's society, child abuse is extremely prevalent in society. Estimates of maltreatment range from approximately 700,000 to nearly 3 million children who have been maltreated in some way (Lee et al., 2012). Abuse can be sexual or physical and affects children and their development as adults. Many studies have been done to try to determine the effects of abuse on a child's adult life, and one aspect that has been uncovered is the idea that an abused child becomes an abuser when he or she becomes a young adult. This article will examine the relationship between maltreatment and adult violence by exploring social learning theory, gender differences in maltreatment outcomes, intimate partner violence, other theoretical ideas related to the relationship and finally possible problems involved in the research. This article uses the theory of Social Learning, theorized by Bandura. The relationship between maltreatment and adult violence perpetration can be theoretically attributed to social learning theory (Franklin et al., 2012). With social learning, the adult learns behavior from corporal punishment in the middle of a sheet of paper and from non-abused people (Siegal, 2000). However, it is important to note that only a small portion of the sample had matched controls (Siegal, 2000). When results were compared in control groups, sexual abuse was found to be a statistically significant risk factor for becoming a violent offender (Siegal, 2000). Widom's findings suggest that research on this relationship may be poorly reviewed, giving the wrong impression in the results. Additionally, in a study by Garland and Dougher, they speculated on several different characteristics that might attribute to a youth becoming a sex offender (Burton et al., 2002). The first circumstance that influences the risk of violence in adulthood is the age at which sexual victimization occurred, because if the victim is younger, sexual assault becomes more of a normal norm ( Burton et al.., 2002).