How the Law Can Protect Victims of Domestic Violence
When people hear about domestic violence, they mistakenly associated that violence with violence between a married couple. However, domestic violence is a term that covers a broad range of violent acts or abusive behaviors that take place in any relationship. It could be the relationship between spouses, it could be the relationship between non-married individuals, it could be the relationship between parents and children, or it can be children abusing their parents, or it can even include violent acts between children and grandparents.
Defining Domestic Violence
Domestic violence describes a pattern of behavior where one person in a relationship attempts to maintain power over or control over another intimate partner. The tools that a perpetrator of domestic violence use include physical abuse, economic abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and psychological abuse. The goal, whether conscious or unconscious, of a person who commits domestic violence is to isolate, threaten, humiliate, blame, or injure their victim.
Domestic Violence Affects All Communities
Domestic violence knows no boundaries. It is present in every community, and it occurs in every national, racial, economic, religious, and gender group. The mixture of emotional and physical abuse that domestic violence creates can leave a person with psychological trauma that will affect them for the rest of their lives. In some cases, domestic violence ends in death.
Some examples of domestic violence include:
• Controlling how money is spent in the home down to the last detail
• Using intimidating looks or actions to scare the victim
• Monitoring the victim and trying to control where they go and who they can associate with
• Preventing the victim from being able to make decisions for themselves
• Telling the victim that if they do not act in a certain way, their children, their parents, or their friends will be hurt
• Using weapons such as knives and guns to intimidate the victim
• Destroying the victim's property
• Forcing the victim to engage in sexual activities when they do not want to or they are not comfortable with the act
How the Law Protects Victims of Domestic Violence
Domestic violence law creates criminal rules designed to punish individuals who choose to emotionally or physically harm both those within their family or those who have a close relationship with them. There are federal laws that are designed to aggressively deal with domestic violence, but most domestic violence cases are dealt with on a state level.
