2.5 Countering Myths About Domestic Violence
2.5 Countering Myths About Domestic Violence aetrahan Thu, 08/24/2023 - 14:24There are many myths about domestic violence. Some impair effective counseling of and advocacy for a victim. Those include the following:
Myth: Victims are poor, uneducated, helpless, emotionally fragile, and only come from marginalized groups.
Fact: While some of these factors can make someone more vulnerable to abuse or being trapped in abuse, domestic violence happens to people in all socioeconomic, ethnic, and age groups and to people of all education levels and personalities.1
Myth: Real victims are helpless and are too afraid to fight back.
Fact: Anger is the prevailing emotional response to abuse. Many people subjected to abuse are strong, willful, and resilient. Most victims engage in various forms of resistance to abusive and controlling behavior, including retaliatory violence. Many purposefully minimize their victimization by describing it in terms that suggest the violence is more mutual than it is, using terms like “we fought” instead of “he attacked me.
Myth: Domestic violence perpetrators are poor and uneducated and have anger management issues.
Fact: People who abuse their intimate partners can be well-spoken, well-educated, socially adept, and charismatic. They rarely appear “abnormal” in psychological testing and are no more likely to suffer from mental illness than others in the general population.2 Most expertly manage their anger by directing it primarily to a specific safe, intended target: the intimate partner.
Myth: Victims choose to stay in violent relationships, and so they should accept the consequences.
Fact: People subjected to abuse by intimate partners are crime victims. Domestic violence can happen to anyone. There are many reasons why some victims do not immediately leave a relationship or return to a relationship. In many cases, victims do end the relationship, but are relentlessly pursued by abusive former partners who force their way back into victims’ separate homes. The complexities of the decision-making processes and the dangerous choices victims face are rarely obvious to an outside observer.3
Myth: The victim’s behavior caused the battering or assault.
Fact: The victim does not cause and cannot control the abusive partner’s behavior. The perpetrator chooses to abuse his partner regardless of her behavior.
Myth: Domestic violence perpetrators can still be good parents, so long as you separate them from the victim.
Fact: Perpetrators of abuse typically engage in a wide range of harmful parenting behaviors apart from the abuse itself.4 They are unlikely to change unhealthy parenting habits at separation.5 To the contrary, after separation, children are at increased risk of physical and emotional abuse themselves, as perpetrators try to control their victim through the children – the only continued point of contact.6