What Is Intimate Partner Violence?

What is Intimate Partner Violence?

Intimate partner violence does not refer exclusively to physical violence. It also includes emotional abuse, financial abuse, and coercive control, which will be defined separately. The spectrum of tactics used include threats, intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation, minimization, and denial of harm. A common strategy used by perpetrators of violence is “DARVO”; they deflect, attack the victim for attempting to hold them accountable, and then will lie and make false allegations against the victim, thus reversing the role between victim and offender. Intimate partner violence often continues post-separation as the child is used as a tool by the perpetrator to continue to exert power and control over the victim. The perpetrator is not motivated by the child’s best interest, but rather a desire to maintain power and control over the victim.

Domestic abuse is more than an issue between two adults; it goes to the heart of the offender’s parenting and affects the child, as well as the victim’s parenting. Children cannot be safe if their primary parent is not safe. This is true not only for physical violence but also for psychological abuse and coercive control, which have equally grave impacts on vulnerable children. With domestic violence, not only is there an increased risk of physical harm to the child, but also an abusive parent is likely to use the children to further their abuse of the victim parent. For example, they may speak negatively about the victim, undermine her parenting, hold the children hostage or abduct them. The resultant negative effect on the children, both short and long-term, cannot be underestimated.

Intimate partner violence is different from other crimes. It does not happen in a vacuum. It does not happen because someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time. One’s home and their family is supposed to be sacred territory, the “haven in a heartless world”. This is part of what makes the violence so untenable. It’s violence from someone you know, from someone who claims to love you. It is most often hidden from even one’s closest confidantes, and on many occasions, physical violence is far less damaging than emotional and verbal abuse.