Family and Domestic Violence
Family and domestic violence is more than physical abuse. It is behaviours that are used to coerce, control, or create fear for another person within a family or intimate relationship.
Definition of Family and Domestic Violence
Family and domestic violence is often a pattern of different abusive behaviours, that a person uses over time, to control and harm someone, and it often includes coercive control.
It can include physical violence, sexual violence, financial abuse, stalking and harassment, isolation, emotional and psychological abuse, spiritual abuse, and honour-based violence.
Family and domestic violence can happen to anyone, and it is never the victim-survivor’s fault. It can occur in:
- Past or current intimate relationships, regardless of gender or sexuality.
- Relationships involving carers of people with medical needs, disabilities, or the elderly.
- Relationships with relatives, carers or guardians.
Coercive Control is Family and Domestic Violence
Coercive control happens when a perpetrator uses patterns of abusive behaviours to control another person and exert power over them, which creates fear, impacts the person’s self-esteem or confidence, and denies their liberty and autonomy.
Forms of Family and Domestic Violence
Emotional/Psychological Abuse
Emotional abuse is any behaviour that makes you feel worthless and put down, such as:
- Mind games.
- Manipulation.
- Insults.
- Threats.
- Verbal putdowns used to humiliate, degrade, or embarrass.
- Gaslighting, for example, denying, changing, or manipulating the truth to make you doubt your memories, perceptions, and experiences.
- Love bombing, where one person tries to influence and manipulate another person by using over-the-top displays of attention and affection. Love bombing can happen at any stage of a relationship, though it commonly occurs in the early stages of a relationship.
Physical Violence
Physical violence is any violent behaviour or threats of violence. It can be directed at you, your children, other family, friends, pets, or property. It might be:
- Pushing.
- Slapping.
- Punching.
- Choking.
- Kicking.
- Harming or threatening to harm pets or possessions.
- Physical threats.
- Using weapons and any other behaviour that is intended to cause harm.
Sexual Abuse and Violence
What is sexual assault/abuse? Sexual assault can be defined as any unwanted sexual activity that a person has not consented to or not been able to give consent to. It refers to a broad range of sexual behaviours that make the victim feel uncomfortable, frightened or threatened. Sexual assault includes any sexual activity carried out against the will of a person through the use of violence, coercion or intimidation.
Sexual violence is about power and control, and it can happen to anybody. It involves any type of sexual contact, activity, act, or behaviour that is committed against a person’s will, and without consent. Sexual violence can include:
- Sharing, or threatening to share, intimate photos or videos.
- Expecting someone to have sex as a way to ‘make up’, or show they forgive their partner.
- Using false information to ‘trick’ someone into having sex with them, or to participate in sexual acts or behaviours.
- Comments or behaviours that intend to make someone feel guilty for saying no to sex.
- Holding demands or expectations about when sex should happen, or how often it should happen.
If a victim-survivor ‘appears’ to comply with any form of sexual activity because they are pressured, coerced, or fearful, this is not considered to be providing consent. These behaviours are criminal offences.
Social Isolation
Social isolation or social violence is keeping you away from friends, family, work and/or other social opportunities. This could also include:
- Excessive questioning, including about a person’s whereabouts, who they are seeing and speaking to, or what they are doing.
- Monitoring internet use and social communications.
- Being aggressive towards men who are viewed as ‘competition’ and acts of jealousy.
- Isolating someone from their friends, family, work and/or other social opportunities.
- Preventing contact with people who speak the same language and share culture.
- Spreading lies through support networks to discredit the victim.
Financial Abuse
Financial abuse is behaviour limiting your access to money. This might look like:
- Controlling the money and decisions around its use.
- Denying someone access to money, including their own.
- Demanding that the family lives on inadequate resources.
- Incurring debts in your name.
- Making significant financial decisions without consulting you.
- Selling your possessions.
- Stealing money.
Technology-facilitated Abuse
Technology-facilitated abuse is when someone monitors what you do online. This may include:
- Using technology (such as mobile devices) to monitor, stalk and track movements.
- Sending abusive text messages/emails or harassing with phone calls.
- Sharing or threatening to share intimate images without consent.
- Pretending to be you, when engaging with other people or posting online.
- Contacting you, whilst pretending to be someone else (for example, setting up a fake social media profile, or dating profile, that is under another person’s name).
Religious and Spiritual Abuse
Spiritual abuse is keeping someone away from places of worship or forcing them to participate in spiritual or religious practice that they do not want to be involved with. It may also include:
- Ridiculing or putting down your beliefs and culture.
- Preventing you from belonging to or taking part in a group or ceremony that is important to your spiritual beliefs, or practising your religion.
- Manipulating religious teachings or cultural traditions to excuse the violence.
Join Us in Ending Family and Domestic Violence
Join the Alliance and take action against family & domestic violence in the Binjareb (Peel) region.
What is Coercive Control?
Coercive control is when someone uses a pattern of abusive behaviours to take away their freedom and independence, and can sometimes make them feel afraid. People who use coercive control use many different abusive behaviours to maintain power and control.
Many abusers don’t use physical violence to hurt their partner. Using coercive control to scare, intimidate or isolate someone can seriously affect someone’s mental and physical health, employment, relationships, financial security and sense of autonomy. It makes them feel trapped, powerless and alone.
Anyone can experience coercive control, but it is mostly used by men against women.
Recognise the Signs of Coercive Control
People who use coercive control can be good at hiding it from others. Their abuse can be subtle and hard to spot.
Coercive control is different in every relationship and no two people’s experiences are the same. Here are examples of coercive control and some of the common red flags to look out for, but you may experience others.
Emotional Abuse
- Constantly criticising you, shaming and humiliating you to make you doubt yourself and experiences.
- Using tactics like withholding affection, silent treatment or ‘stone walling’, or ignoring you to pressure or punish you.
- Harassing or threatening you with constant communication, such as excessive phone calls or text messages, and demanding immediate responses.
- Gaslighting: denying, changing, or manipulating the truth to make you doubt your memories, perceptions, and experiences.
- Love bombing: using extravagant gifts, excessive compliments and affection to manipulate and trap someone.
Isolation
- Stopping you from seeing your friends and family.
- Controlling who you see and where you go.
- Making jealous accusations when you communicate or spend time with other people.
- Preventing you from participating in your community and building connections.
- Controlling your access to your phone or internet usage.
Monitoring and Tracking
- Stalking you by physically following you, or monitoring your devices without your knowledge to track your location (for example, using apps to access your location, or attaching a tracking device to your car).
- Monitoring your communication with other people by going through your phone, emails, or forcing you to have conversations on speaker phone.
- Setting up hidden cameras and listening devices in your home or car.
- Checking your emails, texts, or social media to monitor your activities, relationships and whereabouts.
Financial Control
- Giving you an allowance and strictly monitoring what you spend; this is different to having a shared and mutually agreed upon budget, where you have a say in what you do or don’t spend.
- Not allowing you to have a bank account, and controlling your access to money and financial independence.
- Telling you what you can and cannot buy.
- Taking out loans, maxing out credit cards, or taking other measures that damage your credit history, or allow the perpetrator to steal from you.
- Stopping you from working and earning your own income so you are financially dependent.
- Pressuring you to sell your independent assets or persuading you to do this under false pretences.
Financial control can present as a ‘good financial decision’ at first. For example, a perpetrator might encourage you to sell your car, or even sell your property, under the premise that you live together and only need one vehicle / don’t need an investment property.
Once you have sold the car, they restrict your access to the shared vehicle, or once you have sold your property, they restrict your ability to leave by making you believe you have nowhere to go.
Controlling Decisions and Limiting Freedom
- Controlling your physical appearance through what you wear, eat, drink, and how much you exercise.
- Denying your access to basic needs including clothing, food, sleep, bathroom use, or medical care.
- Forcing you to take care of domestic duties, such as cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children and family members.
- Stopping you from expressing your gender or sexuality.
- Creating rules that you must follow and threatening punishment if you break them.
Sexual Violence
- Forcing you or pressuring you to have sex or do sexual things.
- Setting rules or demands about when and what types of sexual activities you must perform.
- Taking photos or videos of someone naked or during sex, with or without consent, to threaten or humiliate them.
- Withholding sex or using sex as a weapon.
There are times when a victim-survivor may appear to ‘comply’ with sexual acts or behaviours because of fear, or other forms of emotional and psychological control or pressure. This is not considered as providing consent. Any time a victim-survivor cannot exercise their own free will, the acts are considered sexual assault or rape.
Cultural and Spiritual Abuse
- Stopping you from following your religion or cultural practices.
- Belittling your spiritual or cultural beliefs or practices.
- Not allowing you to speak your cultural language.
- Preventing you from connecting with your spiritual or cultural community.
- Pressuring or forcing you to conform by saying you are ‘Caucasian’ or ‘Australian’, instead of acknowledging your cultural or heritage identity such as Aboriginal, or Italian-Australian (for example).
- Stopping you from allowing your children to recognise, acknowledge or identify with your own culture or family heritage.
Children and Parenting Related Behaviours
- Manipulating co-parenting arrangements or support payments after ending a relationship.
- Turning your children against you.
- Threatening to contact, or contacting, social services with false allegation that you have neglected, abused or threatened the safety of your children.
- Threatening your child to control or intimidate you.
- Abusing you in front of your child, so they witness and experience the abuse.
- Continued criticism of your parenting choices and capabilities.
- Accusations that you are a bad parent based on unreasonable expectations; for example, saying you are not being a parent to your child, because you place your child in childcare or babysitting arrangements whilst you are at work.