Domestic Abuse

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The systematic pattern of controlling behaviors in which one partner uses physical, sexual, emotional, and/or financial abuse to dominate and control the other partner.

Definition of Domestic Abuse: Understanding the different types of domestic abuse: physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, financial, and digital abuse.
Statistics and prevalence of Domestic Abuse: Understanding the frequency and patterns of domestic abuse, including its impact on different communities and individuals.
Dynamics of Domestic Abuse: Understanding the power and control dynamics that exist within abusive relationships, including the use of manipulation, coercion, and intimidation.
Impact of Domestic Abuse on Victims: Understanding the physical, psychological, and emotional impact that domestic abuse has on victims, including the long-term effects like PTSD.
Causes of Domestic Abuse: Understanding the factors that may contribute to domestic abuse, including societal norms and pressures, economic challenges, and personal histories of trauma or abuse.
Signs of Domestic Abuse: Understanding the warning signs of domestic abuse, including the behaviors and attitudes of abusers and victims.
Intervention and Prevention: Understanding strategies for intervening in abusive relationships, including crisis intervention, advocacy, counseling, and legal services.
Legal and Social Responses to Domestic Abuse: Understanding the role of the law in addressing domestic abuse, including court orders and criminal prosecutions, and the importance of social responses such as public awareness campaigns.
Support Services for Domestic Abuse Survivors: Understanding the resources available to victims of domestic abuse, including shelters, hotlines, therapy, and support groups.
Intersectionality and Domestic Abuse: Understanding how factors such as race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect with domestic abuse and shape the experiences and outcomes of survivors.
Domestic abuse and Adolescents: Understanding how adolescent romantic relationships are also subjected to domestic violence and exploring different approaches in managing such scenarios.
Measuring Domestic Violence: Examining the various strategies used to measure the scale of the problem, including administrative data, surveys and experimental designs.
The Cycle of Violence: Exploring the dynamics of the cycle of abuse that is common in domestic violence relationships, and examining the factors that lead to the escalation of violence.
The Role of Men in Domestic Violence: The cultural and social expectations that foster the entitlements created towards the violent behaviour of men, psychological profile of male perpetrators and strategies for prevention.
Economic Consequences of D.V: Economic abuse, non payment of child support and the interconnection between employment opportunities and the occurrence of domestic violence.
Physical abuse: Involves the use of physical force that causes harm, injury or death. This can include hitting, slapping, pushing, kicking, choking, burning, or using weapons.
Sexual abuse: Involves any non-consensual sexual activity, such as forced sexual acts, rape, sexual assault, or coercive behavior.
Emotional abuse: Is a form of psychological abuse that can include belittling, humiliation, threats, name-calling, isolation, manipulation, or control tactics.
Financial Abuse: Involves the improper use of someone's finances. This can include stealing money, controlling access to financial resources, or preventing them from obtaining or keeping a job.
Stalking: Involves following, harassing or monitoring the victim without their consent, this can also include cyber stalking via online messages or social media.
Digital Abuse: Is a form of emotional abuse that takes place online or through digital communication, such as constant monitoring of one's activity, threats or harassment through text messages or social media.
Gaslighting: Involves manipulating or distorting the victim's perception of reality to gain control over them. This can include denying past events or experiences or making them feel like they are crazy.
Spiritual Abuse: Involves the use of religion or spiritual beliefs to control or manipulate the victim's behavior or thoughts. This can include creating a sense of guilt or shame for not adhering to religious practices or beliefs.
Neglect: Involves the failure to provide basic needs such as food, shelter, and medical care, this can also include withholding affection, care, love and attention.
Intimidation: Involves using fear or threats to control the victim's behavior, such as threatening to harm their loved ones, pets, or reputation.
"Domestic violence is violence or other abuse that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage or cohabitation."
"It can assume multiple forms, including physical, verbal, emotional, economic, religious, reproductive, or sexual abuse."
"It involves violence against children, parents, or the elderly."
"Worldwide, the victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women, and women tend to experience more severe forms of violence."
"The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 1 in 3 of all women are subject to domestic violence at some point in their life."
"Research has established that there exists a direct and significant correlation between a country's level of gender inequality and rates of domestic violence."
"Domestic violence is among the most underreported crimes worldwide for both men and women."
"In abusive relationships, there may be a cycle of abuse during which tensions rise and an act of violence is committed, followed by a period of reconciliation and calm."
"Many people do not recognize themselves as abusers or victims, because they may consider their experiences as family conflicts that had gotten out of control."
"As a result of abuse, victims may experience physical disabilities, dysregulated aggression, chronic health problems, mental illness, limited finances, and a poor ability to create healthy relationships."
"Children who live in a household with violence often show psychological problems from an early age, such as avoidance, hypervigilance to threats and dysregulated aggression."
"Victims may be trapped in domestically violent situations through isolation, power and control, traumatic bonding to the abuser, cultural acceptance, lack of financial resources, fear, and shame, or to protect children."
"[...] includes the use of technology to harass, control, monitor, stalk or hack."
"Domestic murder includes stoning, bride burning, honor killing, and dowry death, which sometimes involves non-cohabitating family members."
"It can range from subtle, coercive forms to marital rape and other violent physical abuse, such as choking, beating, female genital mutilation, and acid throwing that may result in disfigurement or death."
"In 2015, the United Kingdom's Home Office widened the definition of domestic violence to include coercive control."
"Domestic violence often happens in the context of forced or child marriages."
"In some countries, domestic violence may be seen as justified or legally permitted, particularly in cases of actual or suspected infidelity on the part of the woman."
"Victims may experience severe psychological disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)."
"It may produce an intergenerational cycle of violence in children and other family members, who may feel that such violence is acceptable or condoned."