DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Domestic Violence turns the home from a refuge into a prison, whether acts of cruelty are regularly committed against the vulnerable. Criminals who assault their spouses or loved ones inflict pain and lasting damage not only on their immediate victims, but on the children exposed to their violent behavior. These training sessions in abuse sow the seeds for future domestic violence, crimes committed by those who grow up believing chaos and beating to be normal.

Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.

• Physical Abuse: Hitting, slapping, shoving, grabbing, pinching, biting, hair-pulling, biting, etc. Physical abuse also includes denying a partner medical care or forcing alcohol and/or drug use.
  
• Sexual Abuse: Coercing or attempting to coerce any sexual contact or behavior without consent. Sexual abuse includes, but is certainly not limited to marital rape, attacks on sexual parts of the body, forcing sex after physical violence has occurred, or treating one in a sexually demeaning manner.
  
• Emotional Abuse: Undermining an individual's sense of self-worth and/or self-esteem. This may include, but is not limited to constant criticism, diminishing one's abilities, name-calling, or damaging one's relationship with his or her children.
  
• Economic Abuse: Making or attempting to make an individual financially dependent by maintaining total control over financial resources, withholding one's access to money, or forbidding one's attendance at school or employment.
  
• Psychological Abuse: Causing fear by intimidation; threatening physical harm to self, partner, children, or partner's family or friends; destruction of pets and property; and forcing isolation from family, friends, or school and/or work.

(Sources: National Domestic Violence Hotline, National Center for Victims of Crime, and WomensLaw.org. )

IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE

Domestic violence can happen to anyone regardless of race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender. Domestic violence affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels. Domestic violence occurs in both opposite-sex and same-sex relationships and can happen to intimate partners who are married, living together, or dating.

(Sources: National Domestic Violence Hotline, National Center for Victims of Crime, and WomensLaw.org. )

Domestic Violence Assaults by Relationship in 2006

• 95% of batterers are men.
  
  
• A woman is battered at least once every 15 seconds in the U.S.
  
  
• Battering is the single largest cause of injury to women in the U.S. 3 to 4 million are beaten in their homes each year. (Battering is severely underreported. This number accounts for only those cases of assault severe enough to warrant police or medical intervention. Many cases are not reported. )

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