In 2003, women accounted for 85% of the victims of domestic violence, (about 5.3 million victims), men accounted for approximately 15% of the victims (about a million victims).
People of every class, culture, religion, wealth, sexual orientation, marital status, age, or sex can be victims or perpetrators of domestic violence.
What is domestic violence?
Domestic violence is generally understood to be physical violence, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and stalking.
Wife beating, battering, domestic abuse, family violence; it has been called many names, and all refer to abuse by one person of another in an intimate relationship.
Susan Forward, Ph.D., has described abuse as:
Any behavior that is intended to control and subjugate another human being through the use of fear, humiliation, and verbal or physical assaults. It is the systematic persecution of one partner by another. Partners might be married, dating, heterosexual, gay or lesbian, living together, or separated.
Physical Violence
Physical violence can range from bruising to murder, and may include:
slapping, hitting, kicking, burning, punching, strangling, beating, throwing things, restraining, and other acts designed to injure, hurt, endanger, or cause physical pain.
This sort of violence often begins with acts that seem trivial, which escalates into more frequent and serious attacks.
Emotional Abuse
Emotional abuse includes verbal intimidation, isolation, and other behaviors used for the purpose of power and control over another person, like; consistently doing or saying things to shame, insult, ridicule, embarrass, demean, belittle, or mentally hurt another person.
This may include calling a person names such as:
fat, lazy, stupid, bitch, silly, ugly, failure; telling someone they cannot do anything right, is worthless, is an unfit mother, is undeserving, or unwanted.
It also often involves:
- withholding money, affection, or attention
- forbidding someone from working, handling money, seeing friends, making decisions, socializing, keeping property
- flaunting infidelity
- engaging in destructive acts
- forcing someone to do things they don not want to do
- manipulation
- hurting or threatening children or pets
- threatening to abandon
- threatening to take children away
- refusing to help someone who is sick or hurt
- ridiculing their most valued beliefs, religion, race, heritage, or class
- threatening suicide, insulting and isolating their family or friends
© 2006 Calico Jordan
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