Domestic violence can affects anyone. Domestic violence is a pattern of behavior used to establish power and control over another through emotional attack, fear, and intimidation. Domestic violence or battering, often, includes the threat or use of violence; this violence is a crime. Battering occurs when one person believes he/she is entitled to control another. Domestic violence affects people in all social, economic, racial, religious, and ethnic groups; whether the couple is married, divorced, living together, or still dating. Another reality is that abusers and their victims can be gay, strait, young, or old. Violence develops from verbal, physical, emotional, financial, and sexual abuse. Most domestic violence victims are women by men, but that doesn’t suggest that others cannot be battered or are perpetrators of abuse -- such as women on men, or same sex abuse. Battering or domestic violence, is now mutual and it is not a ‘couple’s quarrel’. Disagreements arise occasionally in all relationships, but battering involves every aspect of a relationship. While physical violence is the “enforcer” or the criminal act, other behaviors erode the partner or victim’s sense of self, self-determination, and free will; this is ultimately lethal for many women.Often batterers possess a low self-esteem and gain a sense of power by means of humiliating and controlling their partner. Control techniques can include verbal insults intended to bring down the partner’s self-esteem, threats meant to scare the partner into obedience, or mind games aimed at making the victim feel unsure and weak. Batterers who use physical abuse push, slap, pinch, grab, or use other demonstrations of physical strength to show that they have power in the relationship and to keep the partner from exercising control over their own life. Abusers often show extreme possessiveness of their partner, wanting there t...
