Types of Intimate Partner Violence

Emotional Abuse

• Emotional abuse includes hurting another person’s feelings by saying cruel, unfair comments or by name calling (verbal abuse).  It also includes threats to do bodily harm to you, children, family, friends, pets, or themselves (suicide) and/or manipulation and brainwashing.
• Emotional abuse involves not only hurt and anger, but also fear and degradation.  Often the purpose of emotional abuse is to render you emotionally insecure about your own self-worth and to render you helpless and/or unable to escape further physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse.
• Examples include:
  • Cursing, swearing, and/or screaming at you
  • Repeated harassment, interrogation, or degradation
  • Attacks to your self-esteem and/or insults to your person
  • Attacks on and/or insults to people you care about
  • Controlling or limiting your behavior (e.g. keeping you from using the phone or seeing friends, not letting you leave the room or the house, monitoring your behavior, etc.)
  • Forcing you to stay awake or to get up from sleep
  • Blaming you for everything that goes wrong
  • Using the difference in physical size to intimidate you
  • Criticizing your thoughts, feelings, opinions, beliefs, and actions
  • Treating you like a servant or “underling” in matters of household chores and decisions
  • Being extremely jealous, constantly accusing you of flirting or of cheating
  • Using money to control you (e.g. controlling how money is spent, giving you an allowance, forcing you to ask for and to account for any money you do get)
  • Telling you that you are “sick” and need therapy
  • Threatening physical harm to you or others
  • Throwing objects in your direction
  • Harming a pet to “get back” at you
  • Punching walls or breaking things
  • Hiding, stealing, or destroying your possessions

Physical Abuse

• Physical abuse is any forceful or violent physical behavior
• Examples include:
  • Pushes or shoves you
  • Holds you to keep you from leaving
  • Slaps or bites you
  • Kicks or strangles you
  • Hits, punches, or stomps on you
  • Locks you in or out of the house
  • Abandons you in a dangerous place
  • Refuses to help you when  you are sick, injured, or pregnant
  • Subjects you to reckless driving
  • Forces you off the road or keeps you from driving, throws you out of a vehicle
  • Threatens or hurts you with a weapon

Sexual Abuse

• Sexual abuse is any non-consenting sexual act or behavior
• Examples include:
  • Tells anti-woman jokes, makes demeaning remarks about women
  • Treats women as sex objects
  • Insists that you dress in a more sexual way than you want
  • Accuses you of dressing to attract men
  • Minimizes the importance of your feelings about sex
  • Criticizes you sexually
  • Insists on unwanted and/or uncomfortable touching
  • Withholds sex and/or affection
  • Calls you sexual names like “whore,” “slut,” or “frigid”
  • Forces you to strip against your will
  • Publicly shows interest in other women
  • Has affairs with other women after agreeing to be faithful
  • Has sex with you after you have said “no,” are sleeping, drunk or high, or any situation in which you are unable to say “no”
  • Forces you to have sex with him or others, forces you to watch sex acts
  • Forces you to perform unwanted sex acts
  • Forces sex after physical violence
  • Forces sex when you are sick or too soon after pregnancy/surgery
  • Forces sex with objects or weapons
  • Commits sadistic sexual acts

Economic Abuse

• Economic or financial abuse is when an abusive partner extends their power and control into the area of finances.
• Examples include:
  • Giving an allowance and closely watching how you spend it or demanding receipts for purchases
  • Placing your paycheck in their bank account and denying you access to it
  • Preventing you from viewing or having access to bank accounts
  • Forbidding you to work or limiting the hours that you can work
  • Maxing out credit cards in your name without permission or not paying the bills on credit cards, which could ruin your credit score
  • Stealing money from you or your family and friends
  • Using funds from children’s savings accounts without your permission
  • Living in your home but refusing to work or contribute to the household
  • Making you give them your tax returns or confiscating joint tax returns
  • Refusing to give you money to pay for necessities/shared expenses like food, clothing, transportation, or medical care and medicine

Stalking

• Stalking is a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear. Stalking tears away at the victim’s privacy and security through a combination of both intimidation and control.
• Examples include:
• frequent phone calls and texts
• being upset if calls and texts aren't returned very quickly
• insisting that the survivor call or text to check in frequently
• questioning about all activities
• insisting on knowing all people the survivor has contact with
• not allowing partner to keep conversations private
• not allowing partner any private or alone time, opening partner’s mail, checking their phone log or directory
• canceling appointments for the survivor (in contrast to never making appointments for the survivor)
• going through the survivor's purse or dresser
• asking others to keep an eye on the survivor
• questioning others to reconstruct partner’s movements
• following partner, not allowing partner to go alone to an activity only they are  interested in
• not allowing a partner to go somewhere the primary aggressor doesn’t want to go
• showing up unannounced or uninvited,
• showing up very late or very early,
• showing up at a workplace,
• placing private information or rumors on the internet
• placing private photos on the internet
• forwarding private communications by electronic means
• 'spoofing' contact from the survivor to third parties
• installed video surveillance, recording devices, or computer programs that track computer use.