Some assaults result in physical injury and some do not.

Note that bruises sometimes take days to show up.

Such physical abuse may be as subtle as a purposeful overdose of anti-diarrheal medication.

Sometimes a victim’s resistance will be punished while other victims comply, hoping that the sexual abuse will end quickly.

Some battered women are unclear whether this sexual abuse is really abuse, believing it to be her duty as a wife.

Threats through words:
  • “If I can’t have you no
    one will.”
  • “Your mother is going to
    pay.”
  • “If you do, you’ll be sorry.”

Actions:
  • Stalking
  • Brandishing weapons
  • Standing over victim in a
     threatening manner
  • Suicide attempts

Intimidation:
  • Yelling and screaming
     in victim’s face
  • Standing over a victim
     during a fight
  • Reckless driving while
     victim or grandchildren
     are in the car

Perpetrators will use varying combinations of psychological abuse depending on what works on their victims.

The perpetrator’s threats of harm may be against the victim, others important to the victim, or they may be threats of suicide.

Perpetrators psychologically abuse their victims through attacks on their property or pets, and other acts of intimidation

Attacks on property or pets are not random outbursts of uncontrolled anger - they are part of the perpetrator’s attempts to control the victim.

It is the wall that the victim is standing near that the abuser hits, or the victim’s favorite china that gets smashed. The covert message to the victim is “You can be next.”

Emotional

  • Criticize the victim
  • Threaten children, pets
  • Mock her religious beliefs,
     appearance
  • Call her names
  • Challenge the victim’s
     sense of reality

Isolation:
  • Moving the victim far away
     or cutting the victim off
     from supportive friends or
     family members.
  • Claiming that the victim’s
     friends or family are
     “interfering”
  • Not allowing the victim to
     use the telephone or
     monitoring her calls
  • Not allowing the victim
     access to the car
  • Not allowing the victim to
     retrieve the mail or answer
     the door without permission
  • Not allowing the victim to
     socialize or meet neighbors

Misinformation:
  • Giving contradictory
     information to the victim
  • Lying to the victim

Withholding information from the victim about:
  • Resources
  • Assistance
  • Phone calls from friends
     and family

Emotional abuse is a tactic of control consisting of a variety of verbal attacks and humiliations aimed at the victim’s sense of self.

Verbal attacks usually focus on the victim’s vulnerabilities, which are well known to the abuser.

The emotional abuse in domestic violence cases is not merely a matter of someone getting angry and calling their partner a few nasty names. Not all verbal attacks between intimates are classified as domestic violence. In order for a verbal assault to be considered domestic violence, it must be part of a pattern of coercive behaviors in which the abuser is using or threatening to use physical force.

Abusers try to control their victims’ time, activities, and contact with others. Control over the victim is gained through a combination of isolating and misinformation tactics.

Misinformation tactics are used by the abuser to distort what is real or the truth.

If a victim is isolated she will believe whatever the abuser tells her, since she has no other sources of information.

It does not matter who is the primary financial provider or if both contribute - the abuser controls how the finances are spent.

Victims are put in the position of having to ask permission to spend money on basic family needs.

The abuser may purposely prevent her from becoming financially self-sufficient in order to maintain his power and control over her - as long as she is financially dependent upon the abuser, she may be forced to remain with him.

The abuser uses the legal system against the victim through its manipulation and his/her ability to enter it before the victim.

If reported first, the victim is reduced to defending herself instead of protecting herself from the abuser.