Domestic Violence is a global pandemic that impacts everyone. Become aware and recognize the signs.

Domestic Violence

Domestic Violence (also referred to as intimate partner violence or IPV) is defined as a pattern of behaviors used by one partner to maintain power and control over another partner in an intimate relationship.

The violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, financial, psychological, or tech-based. It can include any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.

Domestic violence can happen to anyone, regardless of age, race, gender, religion, place of residence, or socioeconomic status. Source

Know The Signs

Signs of a Perpetrator

  • Preventing or discouraging a person from spending time away from them.

  • Showing extreme jealousy of friends/family/co-workers. Even accusing of affairs or lies.

  • Insulting, humiliating, demeaning, or shaming someone, especially in front of other people.

  • Preventing or discouraging individuals from making their own decisions, including work, school, medical, and family.

  • Controlling finances without discussion, using coercion, or demanding a meticulous explanation of purchases.

  • Pressuring to have sex, perform sexual acts, or dress in a way that a person is not comfortable with.

  • Pressuring or pushing others to use drugs or alcohol.

  • Intimidating through threatening looks or actions.

  • Demeaning someone’s parenting, threatening to harm, or take away children/pets.

  • Intimidating and displaying weapons or weaponizing household items.

  • Destroying personal belongings or home.

Signs of Someone being Abused

  • Developing a pattern of drug or alcohol abuse.

  • Changes in sleep habits. Getting poor sleep or a change in sleep pattern.

  • Constant apologies, changing, and canceling of engagements with others or work.

  • Anxiety, panic, apprehension, or fear around potential triggers.

  • Loss of interest, depression, suicidal ideation, or attempting suicide.

  • Physical harm- bruises, cuts, scrapes that are being hidden or unusual stories.

  • Isolating physically and/or cutting off communication with friends and family.

  • Becoming reserved, distant, or claiming to need excessive privacy.

  • Constant contact with the perpetrator, text, calls, tracking, hovering, stalking, etc.

  • Little or no access to money or transportation.

  • Getting abandoned somewhere unknown or locked out of their home.

Definitions

Blame Shifting
A habitual psychological abuse tactic for projecting blame onto someone else who then is subjected to defending themselves or held accountable for actions they did not commit.

Gas Lighting
A form of emotional abuse, it is the act of manipulating a person by forcing them to question their own thoughts, memories, and the events occurring around them.

Love Bombing
The practice of overwhelming someone with signs of adoration and attraction to influence a person for their own purposes.

Coercive Control
A pattern of behaviors a perpetrator uses to obtain compliance by eroding a person’s autonomy and self-esteem. This can include acts of intimidation, threats, propaganda, or humiliation. This type of abuse often predicts future physical violence.

Source: Power & Control Wheel, originally created by Domestic Abuse Intervention Project, Duluth, MN.

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