Domestic and Family Violence

What is domestic and family violence?

Domestic and family violence is abusive behaviour used by one person to control
and dominate another person within a domestic relationship.

Types of abuse

Verbal, emotional and psychological abuse includes:

• name calling
• yelling and swearing
• putting someone down,"you’re no good", "hopeless" etc
• turning around arguments/disagreement so that it’s one person's fault
• threatening to hurt you or someone close to you – or threatening to hurt themselves
  if you don’t do what they want you to
• jealousy or criticising friend or family
• giving “the look” to intimidate or get what you want

Physical abuse includes:

• direct personal contact such as hitting, slapping, punching, biting, pulling hair, kicking,
  pushing, tripping, choking or strangling
• indirect contact such as deliberately placing dangerous objects in the way so that they hurt you,
  blocking your movements eg: blocking doorway
• breaking/smashing things, or damaging property – yours or theirs

Sexual abuse can be when someone:

• touches or kisses you when you don’t want them to

• forces you to have sex with them when you don’t want to
  

• makes you do other sexual stuff when you don’t want to

• threatens to have sex with someone else so that you will give in to sex

Controlling behaviour includes:

• not allowing your partner to spend time with friends and/or family or go to school or work

• checking up on someone all the time to find out where they are, what they’re doing and who they’re with

• forcing you to do things against your will (eg. telling you what clothes you should wear)

• invading your privacy without your consent (eg. reading your diary, emails, phone messages)

Financial abuse includes:

• controlling all the money and financial decisions
• being forced to explain how money has been spent
• being denied money

Domestic Violence also includes spiritual abuse, for example stopping someone from practising their religion.

Sometimes, the person who is experiencing physical violence may fight back attempting to stop
further abuse from happening. It is important to recognise that the person who starts using physical
harm or threats of violence to gain control over the other partner is the perpetrator of the abuse.
This can happen in both heterosexual and same sex relationships.

Want to know more?