Domestic Violence

Types

Johnson (1995) suggests that:

• Common couple violence (or "mutual battery"), arises out of a mutual argument, and both parties using physical force, it is not connected to a general pattern of control, and it usually occurs infrequently.
• Intimate terrorism (or "patriarchal terrorism") where one partner uses violence along with emotional and psychological abuse to maintain control over the other.

Related are:

• Violent resistance is used mostly by women against abusive partners. It may be one clue that a battered person is about to leave an abusive relationship.
• Mutual violent control is when both partners are violent and controlling and they possibly battle for control in the relationship. As with intimate terrorism, violence is one form of control used by each abuser.

Physical violence

Physical violence is the intentional use of physical force with the potential for causing injury, harm, disability, or death, for example, hitting, shoving, biting, restraint, kicking, or use of a weapon.

Sexual violence and incest

Sexual violence and incest are divided into three categories:

1) use of physical force to compel a person to engage in a sexual act against their will, whether or not the act is completed;
2) attempted or completed sex act involving a person who is unable to understand the nature or condition of the act, to decline participation, or to communicate unwillingness to engage in the sexual act, e.g., because of illness, disability, or the influence of alcohol or other drugs, or because of intimidation or pressure; and
3) abusive sexual contact.

Sexual vice

Sexual vice is the use of sex as a weapon to commit aggression against a partner, to take a partner's resources, and/or to gain power and control over a partner. As it is covert, politically taboo to acknowledge and almost always overlooked by domestic violence researchers, sexual vice is rarely seen in domestic violence literature. Sexual vice depends on erotic predation and abuse to commit intimate aggression often with ostensibly nice, and overtly non-violent but covertly violent seductions and/or sex acts. It is also often used against children by parents to rape their children'(s) freely offered respect and attention.

Psychological violence

Threats of physical, psychological or sexual, or social violence that use words, gestures, or weapons to communicate the intent to cause death, disability, injury, physical, or psychological harm.

Psychological/emotional violence involves violence to the victim caused by acts, threats of acts, or coercive tactics. Psychological/emotional abuse can include, but is not limited to, humiliating the victim, controlling what the victim can and cannot do, withholding information from the victim, deliberately doing something to make the victim feel diminished or embarrassed, isolating the victim from friends and family, and denying the victim access to money or other basic resources. It is considered psychological/emotional violence when there has been prior physical or sexual violence or prior threat of physical or sexual violence.

Relational aggression is form of psychological/social aggression the uses various forms of falsehood, secrecy and gossip to commit covert violence. Also known (incorrectly) as 'Female Bullying', it is often a spectacularly successful tactic because so few people know how to detect it. Women, and also men, often use it because it is covert, leaves no visible scars and can be done with a smile. It destroys or damages the target's reputation and ruins the targets relationships.

Parental alienation is another form of covert violence where children are used as a weapon of war by one parent to alienate the other parent. This covert form of domestic violence is often used by women, and sometimes men too, in high-conflict marriages. It is often devastating to the alienated spouse/parent and to the alienating/alienated children caught in the middle. In effect, it uses innocent, unwitting children to commit relational aggression by one parent against the other.

Economic abuse

Economic abuse is when the abuser has complete control over the victim's money and other economic resources. Usually, this involves putting the victim on a strict 'allowance', withholding money at will and forcing the victim to beg for the money until the abuser gives them some money. It is common for the victim to receive less money as the abuse continues.

This also includes (but is not limited to) preventing the victim from finishing education or obtaining employment.

Stalking

In addition, stalking is often included among the types of Intimate Partner Violence. Stalking generally refers to repeated behaviour that causes victims to feel a high level of fear (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). However, psychiatrist William Glasser states that fear and all other emotions are self-caused as evidenced by the wide range of emotions two different subjects might have in response to the same incident.

Spiritual Abuse

Spiritual abuse includes:

1) using the spouse’s or intimate partner’s religious or spiritual beliefs to manipulate them
2) preventing the partner from practicing their religious or spiritual beliefs
3) ridiculing the other person’s religious or spiritual beliefs