Dynamics of Family Violence

In this Section:
1) What is Abuse? - K.G. Wilson, Ed.D.
2) Dispelling Myths - K.G. Wilson, Ed.D.
3) Why Doesn't She Just Leave?
4) The Cycle of Violence
5) Signs to Look For in a Battering Personality

DYNAMICS OF FAMILY VIOLENCE

“Battering is predominantly directed by men toward women but can occur in any type of intimate relationship and is most often part of a process by which the batterer maintains control and domination over the victim.”  (Texas Health & Human Services Commission, Family Violence Program Shelter Center Provider Manual.)

     While the information provided in this section primarily identifies the victim as female and the batterer as male, men can be victims of battering by men or women in the context of intimate partner relationships.  Women can be perpetrators of abuse against male or female partners in the context of intimate partner relationships.  The most important aspect to remember when learning about the dynamics of family violence is that batterers, whether male or female, tend to engage in similar behaviors and abusive tactics in their efforts to control, dominate, intimidate, and threaten their victims.

*The following information was taken from the book When Violence Begins at Home by K.G.Wilson, Ed.D. Pp 8-16.  SPECIAL THANKS to Dr. Wilson for allowing us to use these pages from her book on our website.  The book is available in our library for staff/volunteers to read.

Physical Abuse

Physical abuse is any use of size, strength, or presence to hurt or control someone else. Although some of these behaviors are clearly more dangerous than others, all show a lack of respect and an attempt to control the other’s behavior. It is not necessary to use physical violence often to keep a partner in a constant state of fear. A batterer may actually use violence infrequently, as a last resort.

Abuse Involving Physical Contact Between People
Pushing Pulling
Slapping
Biting
Choking
Shoving
Grabbing
Pinching

Spanking
Kicking
Spitting
Hair pulling
Arm twisting
Forced kneeling
Burning
Shooting
Stabbing
Restraining
Backhanding
Pushing into/pulling out of a car
Banging partner’s head on wall or floor

Abuse of children
Abuse of animals
Hitting partner while she’s pregnant
Standing or sitting on partner
Pinning partner against wall
Forcibly carrying partner
Punching with a fist
Attacking with an object or a weapon
Murder

Abuse Involving the Use of an Object
Throwing things
Breaking personal items
Driving recklessly
Trying to hit partner with car
Slamming doors
Tearing clothes
Breaking objects
Punching walls or doors
Sweeping things off tables or drawers
Kicking furniture, car, or walls
Threatening with an object
Threatening with a weapon
Kicking furniture, car, or walls

Abuse Involving the Use of Size or Presence
Chasing
Unplugging phone

Stalking
Standing behind car to prevent driving away
Taking car keys
Sabotaging car
Taking credit cards, money, checkbook
Trapping
Clenching Fist as a threat
Standing in a doorway to prevent exit
Locking partner out of house
Abandoning partner in dangerous places
Refusing to help partner when she is sick, injured or pregnant

Emotional Abuse

      Emotional abuse is any use of words, voice, action, or lack of action meant to control, hurt, or demean another person. This type of abuse is usually harder to define than physical abuse. At some time in their relationship almost all couples shout or scream things that they later regret. Emotionally abusive relationships, however, are defined as involving repeated hurtful exchanges with a disregard for the partner’s feelings.
       While some emotionally abusive relationships do not involve physical abuse, all physically abusive relationships contain some emotional abuse. Emotional abuse is so much more than name-calling. One of the dangers of this type of abuse is that it is frequently subtle and insidious.
       Many battered women describe emotional abuse as equally as, if not more, damaging as physical abuse. According to one battered woman, “If you get beaten you at least have the bruises to prove it. With emotional abuse all you know is how much it hurts inside. That’s where the scars are. How can you show that to someone?   It comes down to your word against his.”

Types of Verbal Abuse
Threatening to kill
Threatening to use violence
Making threats to children
Accusing partner of unfaithfulness
Calling names like whore, bitch, and slut
Leaving nasty messages on answering machine
Making insinuations
Making statements like:
“You’re dumb”
“You’re stupid”
“You’re ugly”
“You can’t do anything right”
“No one else would have you”
“Whose baby is it?”
Yelling
Using insults
Being Sarcastic
Name calling
Sneering
Growling
Criticizing
Ignoring
Humiliating
Laughing at partner
Insulting family or friends
Threatening family or friends

Emotionally Abusive Actions
Being irresponsible with money
Controlling access to money
Displaying intense jealousy
Isolating partner from family and friends
Keeping partner up all night
Checking up on partner
Taking others’ possessions
Making faces
Manipulating with lies
Threatening to divorce
Having affairs
Constantly questioning partner about activities
Not working
Keeping partner from working
Threatening to take custody of children
Denying access to phone
Threatening suicide
Threatening to harm self

Sexual Abuse
        Sexual abuse is any sexual behavior meant to control, manipulate, humiliate, or demean another person. This is a confusing area for many people. For too long women have been taught that sexually submitting to the husband is a wife’s duty. Historically, women have had little say as to when, where, how, and with whom they engaged in sex.
       Sexual violence is common in abusive relationships. Sex in these relationships is often used as a means to exert power over the female partner and to further shame and humiliate her. Frequently women are raped after a beating. Sexual deviancy, too, often occurs in these relationships. One battered woman reported being tied and bound with barbed wire while her husband and his friends repeatedly raped her.

Types of Sexual Abuse
Unwanted touching
Sexual name calling

Unfaithfulness
False Accusations
Withholding sex as a punishment
Forced sex with partner
Hurtful sex
Insisting partner dress a more sexual way than she wants
Forcing partner to strip when she doesn’t want to
Forced sex with someone other than partner
Forcing partner to watch others
Rape with object
Forced sex with animals
Unwanted sadistic sexual acts

WHY DOESN’T SHE LEAVE HIM?
By Ann Jones

It’s time to put that question to rest.

It’s reached the point where I hate to tell people I write about battering. And in any social gathering, the reaction is almost always the same. Usually a woman proclaims to everyone within earshot, “I’d never put up with that!” And invariably someone takes me aside and says, “I’m very sympathetic to those poor women, of course, but what bothers me is, why don’t they just leave?” One of these days, when I’m asked that question again, I may haul off and batter the questioner myself.

It’s not that I can’t answer it. Various experts have been answering that question for generations. In the 1920’s, social workers explained that battered women were mentally retarded. In the 1940’s, psychologists found a new answer: Battered women don’t leave because they are masochists. They “like” it. Outraged by that theory, feminists in the 1970’s came up with new ones. Battered women don’t leave because they can’t support themselves and their kids, they’re isolated from friends and family, and they’ve been terrorized into a state of “learned helplessness” by repeated beatings.

Now these “modern” answers emphasizing individual psychology have be superseded by a more practical one. It’s illustrated by the case of Lisa Bianco in Indiana. Her ex-husband was in prison for assaulting her and kidnapping the children. But he got a day pass for good behavior, drove to Lisa’s home and clubbed her to death. Lisa’s grieving mother told TV reporters: “People ask, “Why don’t battered women leave?” They get killed. That’s why.”

True enough. Since a batterer is dependent on the woman he batters for his sense of power and control, losing “his” woman is like losing himself. That’s why he’s much likely to kill her (and perhaps himself) if she leaves than if she stays and “takes it.”

According to the FBI, current or former husbands and boyfriends murder more than 1,400 women every year. Every day there’s a new headline: Man slays estranged wife. Murdered woman had protective order. Often, he kills the kids, other relatives, her friends, or innocent bystanders too. Yet people still have the nerve to ask, “Why doesn’t she leave?”

What bothers me most about ‘that’ question is that it’s not a real question. We’ll never find an answer that’s good enough to lay it to rest because it’s really an accusation. It passes judgement. It implies that violence is the problem of the woman who suffers from it, and hers to solve. It ignores the fact that battering is a crime and insists that the crime victim walk away and forget about it. It transforms an immense social wrong into a personal transaction. At the same time, it pins responsibility for the violence squarely on the woman who is the target.

The question also gets us –out and social institutions-off the hook. If battered women could solve the problem simply by walking away, then why should we do anything? And how can we expect the police or courts or doctors or social workers to take action? (They’d like to help, buy hey-what can they do? Why doesn’t she just leave?) Even some feminists, weary of what they call “victim feminism,” insist that the battered woman take responsibility for herself. She made her bed, they say; now why doesn’t she pick up and leave? (After all, ‘they’ wouldn’t put up with it.)

Worse, by blaming the woman who suffers from violence, the question diverts our attention from the man who inflicts it. Through the decades, the “experts – mostly male - have discussed her low intelligence but not his. They’ve used research grants provided by out tax dollars to study her masochism but not his sadism, her “low self-esteem” but not his pathological aggression, her “learned helplessness” but not his studied assaultiveness..

Experts have answered, “Why doesn’t she leave?” So often that “battered woman’s syndrome” has become an everyday phrase. But why is there no “battering-man’s syndrome”? And why-when every day the news brings another story of a man who traced down and killed the woman who left him-does no one ever ask the ‘real’ question”, “what’s wrong with him?” “Why didn’t he stop beating her?” “Why don’t we make him stop?”

But no. The first question, and often the only question is “Why doesn’t she leave? And while we busy ourselves asking or answering that victim-blaming question, men continue their violence undeterred.

Lost in this shell game is one simple principle: that every American has a constitutional right (not to mention a ‘human right’) to live free from bodily harm. Assault violates that fundamental right. No matter whether the assaulted woman is mentally retarded or masochistic or financially dependent isolated or “helpless.” No matter whether she stays or goes, assault is still a crime.

Thirteen years ago, a battered woman called a radio stalk show to set me straight on this point. I’d been advising women in the audience to pack up and leave abusive partners. “Why should I leave?” The caller asked. “It’s my house. I worked for it. I painted it. I clean it. I’m not committing any crimes here. Why don’t you tell ‘him’ to leave?”

Now that’s a good question.

Ann Jones is author of the international best seller, Women Who Kill. Her latest book, Next Time, She’ll Be Dead, was published recently b Beacon Press. WOMAN’S DAY 06/07/94.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The views expressed here are the author’s not necessarily those of WOMEN'S DAY. You may not agree with them. But controversy is what Talk Back is all about.

The Cycle of Violence

Research in domestic violence demonstrates a cyclical pattern to the violent episodes.  In which her book, The Battered Woman, Lenore Walker identified three distinct phases, which occur in abusive relationships.

1.      The Tension-Building Phase -  In this phase, the abuser instigates minor incidents of physical or emotional violence, which gradually build in severity.  Many women describe this phase as a period in which they are “walking on eggshells”.  Attempts to control or postpone the abusive behavior by keeping the children quiet, complying to all the abuser’s request to keep him happy, and preparing specials are some examples.  This stage may last from minutes, days or months to, occasionally, several years.  Eventually, the tension escalates, as the batterer becomes increasingly frantic, jealous, and brutal.

2.      The Acute Battering Incident – Follows the tension-building phase.  At this point, the batterer appears to be completely out of control.  It is impossible to predict the type of violence, when or where it will occur, or its severity.  The phase usually lasts from two to twenty four hours but may occasionally continue for days or weeks.  Many women fear for their lives and often for their safety of their children and other family members.  In some instances the woman may actually have triggered the response by exerting her authority in order to get rid of the tension rather than prolong it further.

3.      The Honeymoon Phase -  This period follows an eruption of physical violence or extreme verbal abuse and is characterized by the batter’s expression of loving behavior toward the woman.  All his actions are for reconciliation at this time.  He may apologize, promise that it will never occur again, and even offer to go to counseling.

4.   Denial is central to continuing the cycle of violence.  Both partners may rationalize the seriousness of the incident and will minimize its effect.  Pretending the abuse never happened or that it will never happen again, allows both partners to remain in the abusive relationship.

This cycle of violence in the relationship makes it even more difficult for the woman to leave her mate.  During the loving phase, he is contrite and remorseful, and she feels his very real distress.  He is also courting her at this time and she is getting now the benefits marriage is supposed to provide.  In addition, she is in a state of shock as a result of the acute battering incident.  Battered women suffer the same kind of effects after an assault as other disaster victims—earthquake, fire, and flood—suffer after a catastrophe.  She may be in a state of shock for a period of time, she may withdraw, become apathetic, not care about feeding or grooming herself or her children.

Many individuals working in the family violence movement prefer to utilize the Power and Control Wheel to describe family violence rather than the Cycle of Violence.  At Panhandle Crisis Center, staff and volunteers find both tools useful in aiding victims and the general public in understanding the dynamics of abuse.  When describing the Cycle of Violence, most victims are surprised at how much their relationships resemble this cycle. It is often a moment of insight for victims in identifying the unhealthy cycle many have experienced for months or years.  It is also useful in helping family and friends understand that the victim is struggling with hope during the honeymoon phase that the offender really will change this time.

The Power and Control Wheel emphasizes that even while such a cycle may be occurring in some family violence relationships, the power and control exhibited by the offender is present to some degree at all times based on the abusive nature of the relationship. Even during the honeymoon phase, victims may continue to experience economic coercion, intimidation, manipulation, and batterers may even use children to influence decisions in an effort to prevent the victim from leaving the relationship.

Many women are interested in ways they can predict whether they are about to become involved with someone who will be physically abusive. Usually battering occurs between a man and a woman, but battering also takes place in same-sex relationships. Below is a list of behaviors seen in people who beat their partners; the last four signs listed are battering, but many women do not realize that this is the beginning of physical abuse. If a person exhibits several of the other behaviors, say, three or more, there is strong potential for physical violence. The more signs a person has, the more likely the person is a batterer. In some cases, a batterer may have only a few behaviors that the woman can recognize, but they are very exaggerated (for example, will try to explain the behavior as a sign of love and concern); a woman may be flattered at first. As time goes on, the behaviors become more severe and serve to dominate and control the woman.

JEALOUSY. At the beginning of a relationship, an abuser may say that jealousy is a sign of love. Jealousy has nothing to do with love. It is a sign of possessiveness and lack of trust. The abuser may question his partner about who she talks to, accuse her of flirting, or be jealous of time she spends with family, friends, or children. As the jealousy progresses, he may call her frequently during the day or drop by unexpectedly. He may refuse to let her work for fear she'll meet someone else, or even engage in behaviors such as checking her car mileage or asking friends to watch her.
CONTROLLING BEHAVIOR. At first the batterer will say this behavior is due to his concern for her safety, her need to use her time well, or her need to make good decisions. He will be angry if the woman is "late" coming back from the store or an appointment; he will question her closely about where she went and who she talked with. As this behavior progresses, he may not let the woman make personal decisions about the house, her clothing, or even going to church. He may keep all the money or even make her ask permission to leave the house or room.
QUICK INVOLVEMENT. Many battered women dated or knew their abuser for less than six months before they were married, engaged, or living together. He comes on like a whirlwind, claiming, "you're the only person I could ever talk to", or "I've never been loved like this by anyone." He will pressure the woman to commit to the relationship in such a way that later the woman may feel very guilty or that she's "letting him down" if she wants to slow down involvement or break off the relationship.
UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS. Abusive people will expect their partner to meet all their needs. He expects a perfect wife, mother, lover, friend. He will says things such as "if you love me, I'm all you need, and you're all I need." His partner is expected to take care of everything for him emotionally and in the home.
ISOLATION. The abusive person tries to cut his partner off from all resources. If she has male friends, she's a "whore." If she has women friends, she's a lesbian. If she's close to family, she's "tied to the apron strings." He accuses people who are the woman's supports of "causing trouble." He may want to live in the country, without a telephone, or refuse to let her drive the car, or he may try to keep her from working or going to school.
BLAMES OTHERS FOR PROBLEMS. If he is chronically unemployed, someone is always doing him wrong or out to get him. He may make mistakes and then blame the women for upsetting him and keeping him from concentrating on the task at hand. He may tell the woman she is at fault for virtually anything that goes wrong in his life.
BLAMES OTHERS FOR FEELINGS. The abuser may tell his partner "you make me mad," "you’re hurting me by not doing what I want you to do," or "I can't help being angry." He is the one who makes the decision about what he thinks or feels, but he will use these feelings to manipulate his partner. Harder to catch are claims, "you make me happy," or "you control how I feel."
HYPERSENSITIVITY .An abuser is easily insulted, claiming his feelings are "hurt," when in actuality he is angry or taking the slightest setback as a personal attack. He will "rant and rave" about the injustice of things that have happened, things that are just a part of living (for example, being asked to work late, getting a traffic ticket, being asked to help with chores, or being told some behavior is annoying).
CRUELTY TO ANIMALS OR CHILDREN. Abusers may punish animals brutally or be insensitive to their pain or suffering. An abuser may expect children to be capable of things beyond their abilities (punishes a 2-year old for wetting a diaper). He may tease children or young brothers and sisters until they cry. He may not want children to eat at the table or may expect them to be kept in their rooms when he is home. Studies indicate that about 60% of men who physically abuse their partners also abuse their children.
"PLAYFUL" USE OF FORCE IN SEX. An abuser may enjoy throwing the woman down or holding her down during sex. He may want to act out fantasies during sex where the woman is helpless. He is letting his partner know that the idea of rape is exciting. He may show little concern about whether the woman wants to have sex and uses sulking or anger to manipulate her into compliance. He may begin having sex with the woman while she is sleeping or demand sex when she is ill or tired.
VERBAL ABUSE. In addition to saying things that are intentionally meant to be cruel and hurtful, verbal abuse is also apparent in the abuser's degrading of his partner, cursing her, and belittling her accomplishments. The abuser tells her she is stupid and unable to function without him. This may involve waking her up to verbally abuse her or not letting her go to sleep.
RIGID SEX ROLES. The abuser expects his partner to serve him. He may even say the woman must stay at home and obey in all things-even acts that are criminal in nature. The abuser sees women as inferior to men, responsible for menial tasks, and unable to be a whole person without a relationship.
DR. JEKYL/MR. HYDE PERSONALITY. Many women are confused by the abuser's sudden changes in mood. She may think he has some sort of mental problem because one minute he's agreeable, the next he's exploding. Explosiveness and moodiness are typical of men who beat their partners. These behaviors are related to other characteristics, such as hypersensitivity.
PAST BATTERING. The abuser may say he has hit women in the past, but blame them for the abuse (“They made me do it"). The women may hear from relatives or ex-partners that he is abusive. A batterer will abuse any woman he is with if the relationship lasts long enough for the violence to begin~ situational circumstances do not make one's personality abusive.
THREATS OF VIOLENCE. This includes any threat of physical force meant to control the partner: "I'll slap your mouth off," I’ll kill you," "I'll break your neck." Most people do not threaten their partners~ abusers will try to excuse their threats by saying "everybody talks like that."
BREAKING OR STRIKING OBJECTS. Breaking loved possessions is used as a punishment, but mostly to terrorize the woman into submission. The abuser may beat on the table with his fist, or throw objects around or near his partner. Again, this is remarkable behavior. Not only is this a sign of extreme immaturity, but there is great danger when someone thinks he has the right to punish or frighten his partner.
ANY FORCE DURING AN ARGUMENT. This may involve the abuser holding the woman down, physically restraining her from leaving the room, or any pushing or shoving. He may hold his partner against the wall, telling her "You're going to listen to me!"