Types of Abuse
Coercive and Controlling Behaviour
Coercive behaviour is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim.
Controlling behaviour is a range of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour.
Emotional Abuse
Using emotions to control you by criticising, embarrassing, shaming, blaming, or manipulating you. A relationship is emotionally abusive when there is a consistent pattern of abusive words and bullying behaviours that undermine your sense of self-worth and self-esteem.
Verbal Abuse
A form of emotional abuse that includes a perpetrator yelling at you, insulting you or swearing at you.
Gaslighting
An insidious form of emotional abuse where the abuser manipulates their victim into questioning their own sanity, judgements and sense of reality. The effects of this type of abuse make it even harder for the victim to leave an abusive relationship as they may not even realise it's happening. An example of gaslighting is doing something abusive and then denying it happened. This video from Dr Charlotte Proudman explains in a bit more detail (NOTE- the video has sound so mute your device if you cannot listen freely).
Financial or Economic Abuse
Restricting and controlling your access to money, gambling with family assets, taking out debts in your name, preventing you from working, and/or sabotaging your employment and development opportunities. To learn more from the experts, look at this site or watch the video (NOTE- the video has sound so mute your device if you cannot listen freely).
Physical Abuse
This is where an abuser uses physical violence to intimidate, frighten, control, hurt or punish you. It includes barging, shoving, pushing, punching, kicking, slapping, hitting, biting, pinching, pulling hair out, burning, strangling, pinning you down, holding you by the neck, restraining you, using objects to harm you, and throwing items at you.
Sexual Violence and Abuse
Sexual abuse and sexual violence is any behaviour of a sexual nature which is unwanted and takes place without consent. Using force, threats or intimidation to force you to perform sexual acts, having sex with you when you don’t want it, forcing you to have sex with other people, forcing you to look at pornography, coercion or constant pressure, and harassment to coerce you into having sex when you don’t want to. Any behaviour of a sexual nature that causes you distress is considered sexual violence or abuse.
Psychological Abuse
Sometimes called psychological violence, this is when an abuser seeks to weaken a person’s judgment and thinking. This type of abuse involves a pattern of psychological manipulation which includes an initial stage often involving constant communication and compliments designed to lure the victim into the relationship (called ‘love bombing’) and intermittent revivals of attention, affection and hope used to keep them in the relationship (called ‘dosing’).
Monitoring, and Online and Digital Abuse
Monitors your time and how you spent it. Tracks your whereabouts and movements with your phone, by checking your car’s GPS or using online communication tools or spyware. Overtly, or covertly checking your text messages and emails.
Child on Parent Violence
Child on Parent Violence (CPV) or Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse (APVA) is any behaviour, including non -physical acts, used by a young person to control, dominate, or coerce their parents by instilling fear. It is not currently recognised as a form of domestic abuse due to the cut-off age of 16 years currently specified in the domestic abuse bill.
Reproductive abuse and coercion
Also known as reproductive coercion, this is when a person controls your reproductive choices either by force, using threats, or covertly. Examples are dictating if you can use contraception, become pregnant or continue with a pregnancy, coercing or persuading someone into sex without a condom because it “feels better” to show that “you really love them”, lying about using birth control, sabotaging contraception by switching out birth control pills or putting holes in condoms, removing a condom midway during sex without consent or knowledge (known as “stealthing”, which is a form of rape), and deliberately bringing on an abortion by spiking a woman’s food or drink.