Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in a relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over the other partner. Domestic violence can be actions or threats of actions that influence or control another person’s behavior and decisions and are meant to intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, coerce, threaten, blame, or injure.
 

Below are examples of different kinds of behaviors that an abuser may use against a partner:

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• Physical Abuse: hitting, restraining, kicking, pushing, punching, beating.

 

• Sexual Abuse: forcing or using threats to demand an unwilling partner to engage in sex, demanding sexual acts that one partner does not want to perform, interfering with birth control, or trying to get a partner pregnant when she does not want to be or refusing to use condoms when asked.

 

• Coercion: making the victim feel guilty, pushing the victim into decisions, manipulating the children or other family members to control the non- abusive partner, always insisting on being right, or making “rules” and punishing the victim for breaking them.

 

• Threats and Intimidation: Threatening to harm the victim, children, and/or family members or pets, using physical size to intimidate, shouting, or keeping weapons and threatening to use them.

 

• Isolation: making it hard for the victim to see friends and relatives, monitoring phone calls, texts, or emails, controlling where the victim goes, taking the victim’s car or keys, destroying important documents, separating the victim from cultural support systems.

 

• Economic Control: not paying bills, refusing to give the victim money, not letting the victim work, interfering with the victim's, refusing to work and support the family, or ruining the victim’s credit.

 

• Self-Destructive Behavior: Abusing drugs or alcohol, threatening self-harm or suicide, driving recklessly, deliberately doing things that will cause trouble.

 

• Destruction of Property: destroying furniture, punching walls, throwing things, breaking dishes, destroying the victim’s personal belongings.

 

• Emotional and Verbal Abuse: not respecting the victim’s feelings, rights or opinions, calling the victim names, constant criticism, making humiliating remarks, not responding to what the victim is saying, mocking, name-calling, yelling, swearing, interrupting, or changing the subject
  
  We offer a 24/7 hotline, shelter, counseling, and support groups, see below for more information.