If you feel you may be a victim of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE or visit your installation Fleet and Family Service Center, Marine Corps Community Services or Naval Criminal Investigative Service for information on options and available resources.
Defining Domestic Violence
Using Emotional Abuse
Putting you down
Making you feel bad about yourself
Calling you names
Making you think you’re crazy
Playing mind games
Making you feel guilty
Using Male Privilege
Treating you like a servant
Making all the big decisions
Acting like the “Master of the Castle”
Being the one to define men’s and women’s roles
Using Economic Abuse
Preventing you from getting or keeping a job
Making you ask for money
Giving you an allowance
Taking your money
Not letting you know about or have access to family income
Using Coercion and Threats
Making or carrying out threats to do something to hurt you
Threatening to leave you, to commit suicide, to report you to welfare
Making you drop charges
Making you do illegal things
Using intimidation
Making you afraid by using looks, gestures, or actions
Smashing things
Abusing pets
Displaying weapons
Using Children
Making you feel guilty about the children
Using the children to relay messages
Using visitation to harass you
Using Isolation
Controlling what you do, who you see and talk to, what you read, and where you go
Limiting your outside involvement
Using jealousy to justify actions
Minimizing. Denying. Blaming.
Making light of the abuse and not taking your concerns about it seriously
Saying the abuse didn’t happen
Shifting responsibility for abusive behavior
Saying you caused it
What Can You Do to Combat Domestic Violence?
- Become informed and know the facts. Raise community awareness by informing others. Distribute materials that tell the facts about domestic violence.
- Know the dangers of battering and where to seek help in your community. Share your time and resources with your local domestic violence program.
- Teach children that violence is not an acceptable way to handle conflicts and problems.
- Hold batterers accountable for their violence. Let them know that the community condemns this behavior.
Myths and Facts Regarding Domestic Violence
Myth #1: Few women are beaten, although a lot of them may get slapped around a little now and then.
Some women do get slapped or hit and leave the violent situation immediately. But most often battering escalates once it starts. Battering brutally violates a woman’s rights over her body and her life. It can involve severe violence or the threat of violence, physical or mental torture, use of weapons, and sexual assault. It is not an isolated act but a pattern or power and control over another. Men who batter usually deny their behavior to themselves and to others. Battering may escalate into murder. In a Kansas study, 85% of domestic homicides involved prior police summons; in 50% of these cases police had been called five times before the murder happened.
Myth #2: Battering is a family matter.
No act which can leave another permanently injured physically or mentally, or which can lead to death is a “family matter.” Assault is assault. Rape is rape. Murder is murder regardless of the relationship between people. These are criminal acts.
Myth #3: Battering happens only in “problem” families.
To identify a “problem” family assumes that most families are “normal”. This ignores the statistics on woman abuse. Battering cuts across all lines: cultural, social, economic, religious, educational, ethnic, etc… The myth that only “problem” families experience violence encourages police, court personnel, and social services workers to explain away violence by finding “problems” such as drug or alcohol abuse, stress, or dysfunctional background, all of which may be factors in abusive situations but do not actually cause the abuse. The reality is that men who are abusive when under the influence of drugs and alcohol also batter when they are sober and rational.
Myth #4: She asked for it.
Of all the myths this is the most degrading and insensitive, yet many battered women are accused of deserving or asking for abuse, often from those to whom they turn for help. They are asked what they did to provoke the violence and to change their behavior in order to avoid abuse. They are depicted as wanting to be physically abused and dominated and therefore the cause of the violence.
Myth #5: It can’t really be that bad or she would leave.
The assumption that women can easily leave abusive situations fails to look at reality. Many women are economically dependent and the primary caretaker of the children. Until shelters came into existence in the late 1970’s there were few places a woman and her children could go for refuge and assistance. Even if a woman finds emergency shelter, it is just that: what about the long range implications of her leaving for herself and her children? Furthermore, her feelings about the relationship and her fear must be dealt with. If she does get a job, she will probably earn less than the man she left. Day care is expensive if it is available at all. Finally, she must face the loneliness of leaving old connections with family and friends who encourage her to stay for the sake of the children.
Myth #6: Isn’t domestic violence mostly a low-income or minority issue?
Domestic violence occurs among all sectors of society. It happens to people of all racial, economic, and religious groups. For example, police in the mostly white, upper-class Washington, DC suburb of Montgomery County, MD, received as many domestic disturbance calls as were received in the same period in Harlem, New York City. However, low-income battered women are more likely to seek assistance from public agencies, such as shelters and hospital emergency rooms, because they have fewer private resources than middle- and upper-income women. They are therefore more likely to be counted in official reporting statistics. In at least 90% of incidents of adult battering, the victim is a female battered by a male partner. Women of every kind have been battered at the hands of doctors, lawyers, judges, police professionals, clerics, teachers, coal miners, etc… Middle and upper-class women often have other options open to them, like a few days away in a hotel, and are less likely to seek assistance from public agencies and shelters. Many women are afraid of damaging their husband’s career or reputation and are pressured to “keep up appearances” at all costs, especially for the sake of the children. Others may have the skills and resources that give them access to financial independence, making them less dependent on social service agencies and less likely to be evident in statistics involving battering compiled by service agencies.
If you feel you may be a victim of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE or visit your installation Fleet and Family Service Center, Marine Corps Community Services or Naval Criminal Investigative Service for information on options and available resources.