What is Domestic Violence?

• Domestic violence is a pattern of behavior that one intimate partner or spouse exerts over another as a means of control.
• Domestic violence may include physical and sexual violence, coercion, threats, intimidation, isolation, and emotional, sexual or economic abuse.
• Perpetrators often use the children to manipulate victims: by threatening to harm or harming or abducting the children; by forcing the children to participate in abuse of the victim; by using visitation as an occasion to harass or monitor victims; or by fighting protracted custody battles to punish victims
• Perpetrators often invent complex rules about what victims or the children can or cannot do, and force victims to follow these frequently changing rules.
• In some families, perpetrators of domestic violence may routinely beat their partners until they require medical attention. In other families, the physical violence may have occurred a few times in the past; perpetrators may currently exert power and control over their partners simply by looking at them a certain way or reminding them of prior episodes.

What are the warning signs of domestic violence?

Domestic violence is not just physical. You may be in a violent relationship if your partner or spouse:

• Keeps track of what you are doing all the time and criticizes you for little things.
• Constantly accuses you of being unfaithful.
• Prevents or discourages you from seeing friends or family, or going to work or school.
• Controls access to all the family finances.
• Humiliates you in front of others.
• Destroys your property or things that you care about.
• Threatens to hurt you or the children or pets, or does cause hurt (byhitting, punching, slapping, kicking, or biting).
• Uses or threatens to use a weapon against you.
• Forces you to have sex against your will.
• Blames you for his/her violent outbursts.
• Says that your concerns and fears about your relationship are not real or not important.