Module 3 - Types of Abuse
Module – Domestic Abuse in more detail
Domestic abuse involves a pattern of controlling, coercive, or violent behavior by one partner to dominate the other.
In the last module we look at the definition of domestic abuse and some of the statistics. In this module we look in more detaile about the different types of domestic abuse and how domestic abuse can manifest itself. Some of the information can be upsetting, so please take your time and take a break if needed.
As we have already discussed that domestic abuse is not just physical abuse. Domestic abuse can take many forms, each with its own impact on the victim. We have outlined the main types, but there can be a lot of cross over. The main theme is that the perpetrator is asserting control and fear.
Physical Abuse: Involves any form of physical harm or violence, such as hitting, slapping, punching, choking, or using weapons. This is often the most visible form of domestic abuse and what domestic abuse is associated with. But it is important to understand that there are many other forms of abuse beyond violence and physical abuse.
Sexual Abuse: Involves forcing or coercing a partner into sexual acts without consent, including rape, sexual assault, or any form of sexual manipulation, and can also include physical abuse.
Verbal Abuse and Threaterning Behaviour: Includes insults, threats, name-calling, and other forms of communication meant to demean or control the victim. It often overlaps with emotional abuse.
Digital or Technological Abuse: Involves using technology to monitor, or control the victim. This includes tracking their location, hacking social media accounts, or using devices to spy on them. It can also include placing false or malicious information about a person on their social media, or image-based abuse. It can include threatening to share intimate images (real or false) online with the intent to cause the person distress (‘revenge porn’).
Coercive and controlling behaviour is a systematic pattern of behaviour to undermine someone, that may leave no physical evidence but that causes immense harm. This behaviour ranges from controlling someone’s daily activities, such as time spent doing certain activies e.g. getting dressed or using the bathroom etc, to cutting off their access to finances and isolating them from friends and family. Coercive and controlling behaviour is a criminal offence in its own right in England and Wales under the Serious Crime Act 2015.
Emotional or Psychological Abuse: This type of abuse is characterised by tactics like manipulation, humiliation, belittling, and controlling behaviors. It can lead to anxiety, depression, and loss of self-esteem in victims. Emotional and psychological abuse is a form of controlling or coercive behaviour with the specific intent to make a person feel fearful or undermined, and diminish their confidence in their abilities. One form of pshycologycal manipulation is Gaslighting.
This is when someone seeks to make another person question their perception, memory, or reality. It is often used as a tactic to gain control over or undermine another individual. The gaslighter will try to distort reality, denies facts, twists events, or fabricates information to confuse the target. They may use statements like "You're overreacting" or "That never happened" make the person doubt themselves. They use blame-shifting, denial, and emotional exploitation to maintain control.Victims often feel confusion, self-doubt, anxiety, and diminished self-esteem. Prolonged gaslighting can lead to mental health issues like depression or PTSD.
Gaslighting is insidious because it erodes trust in one’s self-perception, making it a subtle but potent form of abuse.
Economic or Financia Abuse is when one partner controls the other's access to money or resources, preventing them from gaining financial independence or making personal financial decisions. Economic abuse can take subtle and insidious forms, such as secretly putting someone into debt, wrongfully taking child benefits, not paying bills, removing or controlling access to Wi-Fi, or conrolling bank accounts and general access to money.
Many abusers will specifically target someone’s job or career (and thus, independence/earning potential), by preventing them from being in education or employment. This could involve limiting their working hours, making them consistently late for work, causing injury so they must call in sick, hiding car keys or breaking glasses so they can’t drive to work, withholding money so they can’t use public transport, forcing them to take unpaid leave, or not allowing them to attend training courses. Further information is available from: Surviving Economic Abuse
Stalking is a pattern of repeated, unwanted, and obsessive behaviour which has a serious, adverse effect on a person’s daily activities or makes them fear violence. This can include harassment, repeated unwanted communications such as messages, phone calls or emails, repeatedly following a person online or in person, monitoring their locations and activities, or encouraging others to spy on them. This very often happens at the end of a relationship with a domestic abuser.
Harmful (and illegal) Traditional Practices
There are also traditional practices, though rooted in certain cultures, that are considered domestic abuse because they violate human rights and personal freedoms. These are illegal in the UK and include:
- Forced Marriage: This occurs when an individual is coerced into marriage without their consent, often through threats, manipulation, or pressure from family or community. It can involve emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.
- Honour-Based Violence: This includes physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, and sometimes even murder, often justified by a belief that the victim has brought shame or dishonor to their family. It typically affects women and girls but can also affect men.
- Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): This harmful practice involves the partial or total removal of female genitalia for non-medical reasons, causing lifelong physical and emotional damage.
These practices are illegal in the UK and are seen as forms of domestic abuse because they control and harm individuals, primarily women and girls, in the name of tradition or cultural expectations. The UK government has legal frameworks to prevent and prosecute such practices.
Economic Surviving Economic Abuse: Transforming responses to economic abuse (add to signposting)
Domestic Abuse and the Use of Children and Pets
And it doesnt stop there. Perpetrators often exploit pets and children to exert further control, amplify fear, and manipulate their victims.
The abuser may manipulate children to side with the abuser for example by using degrading language about the victim in from of the children. They may threatern to take custody or harm the children if the victim attempts ot leave.
Abusers may harm, kill, or threaten to harm pets to instill fear and punish victims. They exploit the victim’s emotional attachment to pets, knowing it can coerce compliance. they may prevent the victim from seeking safety by threatening that pets will be harmed.Victims may stay in abusive situations out of concern for their pets' safety, especially when shelters lack provisions for pets.
Using childern and pets in abuse magnifies the harm, making intervention and tailored support critical for breaking the cycle of violence.
The Cycle of Abuse
How it starts, subtle changes, isolation, etc
Case studies
Watch more videos - the Ted video and other.