IF YOU ARE IN A DANGEROUS SITUATION OR NEED HELP PLEASE CONTACT

THE NATIONAL DOMESTIC HOTLINE AT 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

What is Domestic Violence?

Types of Abuse

Resources for Domestic Violence information

Helpful Books

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women Domestic Violence (https://www.justice.gov/ovw/domestic-violence) describes Domestic violence as “a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner.”

  • Domestic violence isn’t always easy to spot and doesn’t always come with bruises or black eyes.

  • Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, technological, reproductive coercion, and the list goes on.

  • It can happen to anyone. Anyone can be a victim of domestic violence, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, faith or class.

  • It can occur within a range of relationships including couples who are married, living together or dating.

Darlene once said death resulted from her finally leaving her domestic violence relationship, the death of her daughter.

In January she said, “I am the result of a worst-case scenario situation.”

Death isn’t always the final result, but domestic violence-related homicides increased by 200% during the pandemic.


EMOTIONAL ABUSE

Emotional abuse occurs when an intimate partner seeks to control his/her loved one by:

  • Name calling, insulting

  • Blaming the partner for everything

  • Extreme jealousy

  • Intimidation

  • Shaming, humiliating

  • Isolation

  • Controlling what the partner does and where the partner goes

  • Stalking

PHYSICAL ABUSE

  • Hitting, slapping, punching, kicking

  • Burning

  • Strangulation

  • Damaging personal property

  • Refusing medical care and/or controlling medication

  • Coercing partner into substance abuse

  • Use of weapons

SEXUAL ABUSE

Sexual abuse is not about sex. It is about power, and includes any sexual behavior performed without a partner’s consent. Examples include:

  • Forcing a partner to have sex with other people (human trafficking)

  • Pursuing sexual activity when the victim is not fully conscious or is afraid to say no

  • Hurting partner physically during sex

  • Coercing partner to have sex without protection / sabotaging birth control

TECHNOLOGICAL ABUSE

This form of abuse includes the use of technology to control and stalk a partner. Technological abuse can happen to people of all ages, but it is more common among teenagers who use technology and social media in interact in a manner often unmonitored by adults. Examples include:

  • Hacking into a partner’s email and personal accounts

  • Using tracking devices in a partner’s cell phone to monitor their location, phone calls and messages

  • Monitoring interactions via social media

  • Demanding to know partner’s passwords

    FINANCIAL ABUSE

Any behavior that maintains power and control over finances constitutes financial abuse. Examples include causing a partner to lose their job through direct and indirect means, such as:

  • Inflicting physical harm or injury that would prevent the person from attending work

  • Harassing partner at their workplace

  • Controlling financial assets and effectively putting partner on an allowance

  • Damaging a partner’s credit score


ABUSE BY IMMIGRATION STATUS

There are specific tactics of abuse that may be used against immigrant partners, including:

  • Destroying immigration papers

  • Restricting partner from learning English

  • Threatening to hurt partner’s family in their home country

  • Threatening to have partner deported

POWER and CONTROL WHEEL

The wheel diagram serves as tactics abusive partners use to keep survivors in a relationship.

https://www.thehotline.org/identify-abuse/power-and-control/

USING INTIMIDATION

  • Making her afraid by using looks, actions, gestures

  • Smashing things

  • Destroying her property

  • Abusing pets

  • Displaying weapons

USING EMOTIONAL ABUSE

  • Putting her down

  • Making her feel bad about herself

  • Calling her names

  • Making her think she is crazy

  • Playing mind games

  • Humiliating her

  • Making her feel guilty

USING ISOLATION

  • Controlling what she does, who she sees and talks to, what she reads, where she goes

  • Limiting her outside involvement

  • Using jealousy to justify actions

MINIMIZING, DENYING AND BLAMING

  • Making light of the abuse and not taking her concerns about it seriously

  • Saying the abuse didn’t happen

  • Shifting responsibility for the abusive behavior

  • Saying she caused

USING CHILDREN

  • Making her feel guilty about the children

  • Using the children to relay messages

  • Using visitation to harass her

  • Threatening to take the children away

USING MALE PRIVILEGE

  • Treating her like a servant

  • Making all the big decisions

  • Acting like the “master of the castle”

  • Being the one to define men’s and women’s roles

USING ECONOMIC ABUSE

  • Preventing her from getting or keeping a job

  • Making her ask for money

  • Giving her an allowance

  • Taking her money

  • Not letting her know about or have access to family income

USING COERCION AND THREATS

  • Making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt her

  • Threatening to leave her, to commit suicide, to report her to welfare

  • Making her drop charges

  • Making her do illegal things

CYCLE of ABUSE

The cycle of abuse suggests that there are four phases of abusive behavior. 

1. The First Phase: Tension Building

The cycle begins with tension building, creating fear in the victim. This tension might come from stress related to everyday events like work, family conflict or financial problems. It could also come from bigger events like illness and catastrophic events. It’s important to note that most people can cope with stressors like these without taking it out on others–the abuser is just using these events as an excuse to justify their actions.

Victims might try to placate the abuser and avoid the next phase of violence by becoming submissive or extra helpful. Other victims might try to provoke the abuser into the violence they both know is coming; this can be a survival strategy to lessen the impact of the abuse, have control of where and when it happens or just to “get it over with.”

2. The Second Phase: Incident

Next, there is an incident. This may be the abuser lashing out with physical, verbal, emotional or psychological abuse such as hitting, slapping, strangling, belittling, name-calling, screaming or yelling and threatening.

While the entire Cycle of Abuse is a method abusers use to exert power and control over their victim, the incident phase is often a particularly frightening and dangerous time of the abuser trying to dominate the victim. 

3. The Third Phase: Reconciliation

The third phase of the Cycle of Abuse is the “reconciliation” phase, though it could also be called “the excuse stage.” During this phase, the abuser might apologize for their behavior, try to excuse it (“I’m just stressed because of work.”) or blame it on the victim and falsely put the impetus on the victim to avoid it happening again (“Don’t make me so angry.”)

Gaslighting is often common during this phase, as the abuser denies that anything happened or that the incident wasn’t abuse. 

4. The Fourth Phase: Calm

Finally, the final stage–calm. The incident has been forgiven and, for a while, things seem back to normal or even better than before. Survivors sometimes refer to this as "the honeymoon stage." Sometimes abusers will use love-bombing to “make up for” the abuse, though this further manipulation is actually designed to keep the victim off-guard and remaining with the abuser.

However, the calmness of this phase doesn’t last. Eventually, tension begins to build again. The abuser’s apologies and promises become insincere or vanish entirely. Before long, another abusive incident occurs. 

Escalation and the Cycle of Abuse

The length of the cycle usually diminishes over time, bringing abusive incidents closer and closer together. The “reconciliation” and “calm” stages can disappear completely, leaving only tension that builds quickly into violence. 
https://www.domesticshelters.org/articles/identifying-abuse/what-is-the-cycle-of-abuse

DomesticShelters.org https://www.domesticshelters.org/

Safe Passage, Inc.  https://safepassageinc.org/

National Domestic Violence Hotline https://www.thehotline.org/what-to-expect-when-you-contact-us/

  • Domestic Violence Hotline

After Silence https://aftersilence.org/

  • Help victims become survivors and to communicate in the recovery of domestic and sexual violence

Love is Respect https://www.loveisrespect.org/

  • National Teen Dating Helpine

Bringing in The Bystander https://www.soteriasolutions.org/bringing-in-the-bystander

  • ‘Safe Passage’ adopted this curriculum a few years ago. It is designed for middle, high school, and college students and has strong strategic elements with an emphasis on actions that can be taken to avoid sexual violence. There is a program called Green Dot which is a comprehensive violence.