AN OPERATIONAL DEFINITION
What is Domestic Violence?
A PATTERN of harmful behavior
in which an intimate partner, family member, or household member
gains and maintains POWER and CONTROL over their target.
Domestic Violence Is…A CRIME
Domestic Violence Is…Physical Abuse:
Pulling target’s hair, hitting, scratching, shoving, tripping, kicking, biting, restraining, slapping, choking/strangling, cutting, using a weapon against, starving target, not letting target sleep, etc.
Domestic Violence Is…Emotional Abuse:
Verbal abuse (e.g. insults, targeting insecurities, ridiculing, mocking, belittling, threats); intimidation (breaking things, punching a hole in the wall, hurting pets, towering over target); isolation (trying to control who target talks to or hangs out with), restricting or controlling activities/hobbies (what target wears, where they can go, what they do in their free time), minimizing the abuse, denying the abuse, or blaming the abuse on the target or unrelated factors, etc.
Domestic Violence Is…Sexual Abuse:
Pressuring or forcing target into sexual activities against their will, making target wear sexual clothing, punishing target when they rejects their advances, trying to control target’s reproductive choices, stealthing, forcing target to make or watch porn, sexual harassment, flaunting infidelity, etc.
Domestic Violence Is…Economic Abuse:
Taking target’s money, keeping them from getting or keeping a job, preventing them from going to school or graduating, making them ask for money, sabotaging target’s credit, blocking target’s access to their bank accounts, restricting target’s access to transportation, etc.
Domestic Violence Is…Stalking
Following target and/or placing them under surveillance thereby causing that person to be in reasonable apprehension of immediate or future bodily harm, showing up to places uninvited, using a 3rd party to gather information on someone, going through target’s messages, monitoring their activity on and offline and punishing them for activity they don’t approve of, tracking target’s location, spam messaging or calling someone in a harassing manner.
The purpose of all abuse is to take advantage of an uneven power dynamic to control the victims behavior by the inducement of fear.
The Violent Facts
According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence… 41.5% of all IL women and 25.9% of all IL men will experience physical violence, sexual violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
In 2022, the Illinois Domestic Violence Hotline reported…37,236 calls – an average of 102 calls per day.
In 2022, the Chicago Police Department reported…62 domestic violence related homicides in the city, a 38% increase from 2021. There were also 79 non-fatal domestic violence related shootings.
According to the CDC, homicide is one of the LEADING causes of death for women under 44. Nearly HALF of all female homicide victims are killed by a current or former male intimate partner. According to everytownresearch.org, 46% of mass shootings are DV related.
Though Chicago’s population is only composed of 29% of people who identify as Black…75% of all non-fatal domestic violence related shootings and 66% of domestic violence related homicides in 2022 impacted Black victims.
Domestic Violence causes…more injury to adult women than cancers, heart attacks, or strokes combined.
Boys who witness abuse…of one parent by another are, as adults, 700 times more likely to physcally abuse their partners. If boys are also physically abused themselves, they are 1,000 times more likely to physically abuse a future female partner.
Victims of Domestic Violence
Get information and tools to help you and your family cope by clicking the button below.
For immediate help, call our 24-hour Crisis Line: (800) 360-6619.
“I am anything that I want to be and not because somebody told me but because I believe in myself.”
Sheila, Survivor
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