This survey may be under the radar, but it’s making waves. Having garnered an unprecedented response when it was first published, “Health Issues After Domestic Violence” is being accessed internationally and completed by people all over the world.
Designed to assess the full extent of the effects of domestic violence, for both men and women and to understand better what could be done to support these victims, this survey is a hugely important component in tackling this issue.
If you have a moment, and it’s relevant to you, please think about doing the survey – it’s very short. For those of us lucky enough not to have to have experienced such things, please do share this survey with your networks if you can.
Many thanks to the super clever and courageous @ABeautifulMind1 for sharing this survey with us.
Researching Reform 
I hope anyone for whom this is relevant will participate and complete the survey. Anything that raises issues where the quality of people’s lives have been significantly affected by this deserves support.
What people often forget is that ‘domestic violence’ does not simply cover physical abuse. As your poster ‘Never be bullied…’ suggests, DV can (and it may be more often does) take a psychological and emotional form, leaving wounds and scars that will never be physically seen or treated, but with serious and long-lasting health effects. Someone close to me has just completed (she hopes) a five year battle through the courts with her ex-husband, who spent a number of years abusing her on an emotional and psychological level during the marriage. Although he left her in 2009, she has just spent the past five years living and re-living this through an almost constant stream of court hearings (both financial and child-related), which would be stressful in themselves but have had the effect of essentially allowing the abuse to continue, with barely a single consideration from anyone that this really is an abuse case. This person barely understands themselves that they have been seriously abused, although to any objective observer it should be as plain as a pikestaff. Which woman wants to admit to herself that she has been the victim of domestic abuse? Nobody wants to be a victim, and feel vulnerable. The court has made no allowance for it in this person’s case, because all it sees are the ‘relevant issues’ pertaining to whatever application or hearing is taking place on that day. This is not to blame the court system, but it is just a fact, and what I would like to see is rather more awareness of the issue of emotional and psychological abuse, the kind of scenarios which may just start an alarm bell ringing about it, and a greater awareness on the part of those who deal with marriage breakdowns (from solicitors to judges) that even if this is not an issue that is on a neon sign, there are certain cases which suggest without too much thought that this just might be one. It is all about balance and awareness, and it really doesn’t take too much to achieve them.
Raising and maintaining awareness is vital, so thank you for your own contribution to this process, N.
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Thank you Mark, for your kindness and your insightful thoughts. The law does seem to be moving in the direction of acknowledging emotional abuse, as we see with the new guidelines on DV and of course, the new criminal sanctions for child neglect. The criminal element of the latter is another matter, but the idea that abuse can be verbal is a welcome step to understanding a global phenomenon.
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Strange you mention e-motional abuse Natasha.
It is deemed a crime against children but it is a crime against adults?
You brought to mind also the training of judges re mothers being too e-motional.
In Ireland mothers are not given full disclosure to reports like in UK- so no chance to rebut anything. Sometimes your solicitor is also denied the chance to read it. You still in 2014 are not allowed a copy of reports before the courts. Why? because in Ireland mothers are still deemed feeble minded and we might become e-motional on reading the reports.
So in DV cases, we are deemed feeble minded, less evolved than our perpetrators and so many DV victims – only females get institutionalized.No one bothers about trauma or emotions.
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Hi C, yes, under the new guidelines it is. They’re on my blog, you can find them by searching for DV…..
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Wow, brilliant
Yes the legal abuse during court proceedings is worse that the abuse before hand, because our guard is down and we naively believed we were safe and we found we were being re-traumatized by professionals who are supposed to have DV knowledge.
Dr Karin Huffer is so versed on this. I hope this is of use to you.
When I found it, I was suddenly able to understand better and begin to heal.
http://www.ejfi.org/DV/dv-55.htm
Judges and solicitors have little knowledge in DV dynamics – but sadly they believe they do when they attend a one day course etc.
I found they did not even have the language – like institutional grooming of professionals.
Psychiatrists are not trained in DV like DV advocates so why are they called experts?
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Thank you. shared worldwide now.
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Thank you so much, Catherine x
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There is so much to be done. it would take a book.
The lack of knowledge is the big issue.
The old Eve ill Eve liar myth.
GP’s not educated in PTSD and complex PTSD from legal abuse incurred
8 mins with a GP.
I had to ask for the trauma therapy myself because the GP had no idea and she admitted this later..
Dr Karin Huffer is brilliant on this matter and should be invited to UK to educate as she explains re the health affects and the cost to society.
http://www.fclu.org/dr-karin-huffer/
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Natasha. here is an article I wrote in 2010 illustrating how the victim is blamed and how her perpetrator works the system so well.
See how the children suffered and so called professionals were conned- institutional grooming.
I wish you could see the victim today- homeless in a shed, her own home gone to him with another victim moved in and gone too.
Children living rough, too scared to eat in the home the court ordered them to live in.
Judge and Barristers dance to the tune of abuser in domestic violence
case.
Children and Mother continue to be abused by the psychopath legally
endorsed by the system .
In my role as an independent supporter, adviser, and advocate for
children and protective parents over the last 15 years, I have encountered and observed many situations of domestic violence and the terrorizing of
mothers and children by abusive males.
As an example, my most recent case involved a mother with two children
and the abject fears, which the abuser brought into their lives. After
many years of suffering such violence in all its forms, physical, mental,
emotional, sexual and financial, the protective mother was finally able
to gather enough strength to escape with her children from the torture
and torment of their persecutor and tormentor.
Their sufferings were reminiscent of the 17th Century rather than the
21st Century. How could this be happening in today’s world – yet it is
happening every day, in every part of the country, and at all levels of social
class in our society, and with alarming and increasing frequency.
But the abuse and torture did not end with their leaving the family
home,but continued and increased. The police records show that the mother suffered extreme mental torture whereby the abuser kept telling his victims daily that he had poisoned her with arsenic and warfarin and that he added dirt to her food, that he could shoot her and she would not feel it, that he could murder and walk away. On one occasion the self proclaimed Predator from a superior race announced that he had put poison in the victims dinners, so they began to swop the plates around, with the so called poisoned plate being in front of him. He announced that he would not poison himself and threw the dinner in the bin. Whether it is true or not, it is mental abuse of the mother and children.The Police decided to do blood tests and hair analysis on the victim in the hope of putting the woman’s mind at ease and to find out why she ended up in this condition in such a short space of time.
The abused mother had gone from 10 stone to 7 stone, with her teeth all going rotten in the space of a year, causing her to look like an AIDSvictim or a druggie. Every order given by this abuser had to be obeyed. The neighbors describe the fear on the children’s faces on seeing their father drive home and run inside. The abused mother had to get permission for every penny spent in the home. As time went by the mother and children were being deprived of more and more essentials and in the end the children stopped asking, as they knew it was a futile exercise. Their dreams of horse riding and playing golf were shattered.
Ultimate control was the order of the day, even when he was working. Often it took 3 months of asking to be taken to the shops for shoes for the children before the abuser finally went. By then the whole joy had been taken out of it. The children were no longer allowed to play their pianos and compose music in the home. The mother and children were no longer allowed to sing or paint.Every positive thing the mother did for her children was knocked on the head.
The children sank deeper and deeper into despair. One day, the children conducted a court hearing at home in an effort to show the abuser what he was doing to them and their mother, in the hope that he would change.They had no idea that a psychopath never changes but only becomes worse when he realizes that their victims are awakening to truth.Pictures show the physical abuse of both children.
The mother had become so ill as to be unable to make a cup of tea.However the abuser smiled as she screamed in pain and he stepped over her,like she did not exist. If she asked for a soft-boiled egg, because of her teeth, he gave a hard-boiled one, in full knowing that she could not eat it. He then called her a pig. Then he slapped her so hard for not eating that she blanked out from the pain. When the mother asked for an explanation, the abuser said it was to teach her a lesson.
The abuser took sadistic pleasure in watching his victims squirm under his total control and only lost his cool when the terminally ill grandfather of 80 years came in for a week to help out. That week the mother gained her strength and the children experienced the joys of working and learning from their grandfather.
This act of human kindness sparked the planned exit from the abuser.The gaunt appearance of the abused mother led most of the professionals to form the wrong opinion of her. The crocodile tears of the abuser worked,leading people to pity him. Inside he was laughing at all of them, as he was succeeding in dividing and destroying the victim’s entire family. The abuser’s ring of destruction has widened and is widening by the day.
The system is allowing him to do so.
He is fully aware of what he does, mesmerizing family members and professionals alike, as he entraps all of them in his web The abuser has now managed to worm his way into getting a family member to hold the children hostage and not allow them to see their mother. The children are being used to send messages to their distraught mother that their father is going to buy some arsenic and warfarin and 2 body bags the following day. This is child abuse in itself and continued mental abuse of the mother. Text messages sent in the middle of the night, stating the children are being moved again and the mother will never see them again. One of the children has already ended up in hospital through neglect and no one in the system informed the mother, furthering her anguish.
The dominant male abuser has all around dancing to his tune only. His aim is to have his victim committed, so he can get her house and bring in another woman. After all, he has sucked the living life out of this wife and needs fresh meat to feed on. The abuser even managed to get the GP to force the mother to undergo psychiatric assessments.
A court hearing took place the other day and the abuser applied for occupation of the family home and residence of the children. It is not classified as a domestic abuse case, despite the fact that an advocate from the IDVA being present, photos of bruises on the mother and children being in the hands of the barrister. The judge, barristers etc were cluelessand running around trying to do deals, so they could scurry off home. Noone listened to the weak voice of the abused, but they all danced to thetune of the bully.So, when the abuser said the first psychiatric assessment f the victim was a fake, the judge ordered another one, but failed to makean order for the abuser to have one, showing clear discrimination of the female victim.
The victim said she felt totally violated and abused by the Judge and legal professionals. All were pushing her to agree to the demands of the abuser.One would have expected the children to be a priority in this case too, but sadly, the court- in its wisdom has ordered the children to remain hostages in a strange house, stripped of all their own possessions, pianos, computers, books, etc, as these children are home schooled and about 5 years ahead of their peers in state schooling.
In typical patriarchal fashion, the children must obey the abuser for a further 6 weeks and loose out on their education at home. There was not once ounce of human kindness in that courtroom towards the victim, except from the advocate.
The victim was a nuisance to them and they just wanted rid of her. Herweakness and frailty was held against her. The trauma caused to thechildren and mother by this experience is enormous, but the men and women of the court are clearly ignorant of this or are deliberately condoning it and colluding with a criminal.
The victims are mere numbers, pawns in a chess game and of course aslong as the abuser is on the board, the game continues and money is made.
Meanwhile the vultures circle their prey, weak from abuse, in the hope of finishing them off.
This case shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that protective parents and their children are being punished by this patriarchal system for daring to break free of violence and abuse. The system as it is, keeps the protective parent enslaved through the use of children. The only professional to see past the façade is the lady trained in domestic abuse.
In the media it speaks of all the agencies rallying around to help victims of domestic abuse, but 6 weeks down the line and the only agency in sight is an independent domestic violence agency.
Clearly it is a trap to ensnare the protective parents and their children.55% of domestic abuse victims looses their children to forced adoption in the UK.
This shows that protective parents and children are being punished for doing the right thing in trying to free themselves from abuse and violence.
The professionals need proper training so they can understand all the dynamics involved in domestic abuse. The professionals need to learn from the survivors. However, most professionals believe themselves to know it all and feel that to speak to survivors is somehow lowering themselves.
The truth on domestic abuse is rarely to be found in books. It is to be found though in talking to those who have lived through the abuse and survived.
The next time some professional reprimands a victim of domestic abuse for not coming forward sooner, hopefully, you the reader will have a better understanding of why.
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Thank you for the article, Catherine. The system still has a long way to go before it understands the nuances.
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Hi Natasha,
After my children and i suffering DV and abuse from my wife for many years, we the victims, became victimised dreadfully more as soon as police, social services, CAFCASS and family court got involved.
That further victimisation of the victims is still ongoing today after 5 years of social services intervention.
I was sent to prison on remand for 3 months at the start of this year for reporting serious child abuses by the abusers to the police using FaceBook to force the police to take attention instead of continually readilly accepting social services to cover it up.
Police and social services still remain desperate to cover this up because they got it all wrong at the start.
The family court judge accepted sacrificing the children and covering up hard evidence in order to cover up for his long term friends in social services and the local authority.
The children are always documented as desperate to live with me. Both children have psychological problems as a result of all this.
I have an NHS psychiatrist report stating that I suffer from severe ongoing distress at the level of combat fatigue BECAUSE of social services ( F43 level ).
So, prejudice caused the initial police negligence, which was piggy backed by social services. Then when it becomes evident, they go to extremes to cover it up, which simply extends the term of abuses.
The social workers repeatedly told the children that they were liars for reporting historic and current abuses – even against photographs and recordings giving clear evidence that supported the children. This is a dreadful psychological abuse called INVALIDATION.
Every route to getting the abuses recognised and action taken has been blocked by social services and their cronies in NSPCC, CHILDLINE, OFSTED, BARNARDOS, POLICE.
The local authority refuses to accept complaints and simply doesn’t acknowledge them. LGO say they cannot intervene in any way as it involves the family court.
These abusive people in authority have created a fortress to allow them to behave criminally with impunity. They simply bury the people complaining – including destroying their finances and gagging them with imprisonment and bail.
This is why we have an extensive reporting of children being abused and it only being reported years later. This is the core thing they are trying to investigate through parliament.
My children’s case is, unfortunately , much more common than you can imagine. Lots of people are reporting similar cases to me because I made myself visible; and here lies one of the problems – police, social workers, managers all within the childcare sector will not report their own people, and the victims do not trust them after years of institutional abuses.
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Hi, I’ve had to remove your name and contact details for legal reasons, but I’ve left your story up. I thought you would prefer it that way, than my not posting it. As for the trauma of the way the system handles cases, I wrote a piece on that a little while back. I do think it causes mental health problems and I also think it confuses social workers as they then think those problems are inherent rather than due to the nature of the process itself.
I’m sorry about your experience and the children’s.
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Yes, thank you for removing my name.
It shows the bizarre level that victims of victimisation are subject to.
It is important for people to realise the level of distress that the authorities can be responsible for.
Why doesn’t anyone in this system realise that it can, and has, caused large numbers of what can only adequately be described as severe psychological torture ( in line with UN legal and psychologists clinical descriptions) to children and adults ?
My NHS psychiatrists all said that social services are a total disgrace in damaging hundreds of thousands of children and parents mental health. They all agreed that the NHS would close social services down if they could….and that is a shocking thing to hear these professionals say with such conviction.
If the professionals know about it, and there are hundreds of thousands of victims, there must be an extraordinary level of abusive effort to keep it all under wraps. Who is responsible for this ?
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Hi 🙂 that’s actually done to protect the children involved, it’s not so much about anyone else. If the kids said they were happy being mentioned, then I would think twice, but without that direct say-so, I have to remain mindful of the law.
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Have shared on Facebook and RT’d it.
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Shared on FB and RT’d for you.
@whithernow
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Thank you so much, that’s really kind of you xxxx
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This article summarises most of the issues in domestic violence cases which come before the Family Courts.
“It is common for batterers to threaten to take children away from the battered woman by proving her to be an unfit mother (Doyne et al., 1999). Threatened or actual litigation regarding custody or visitation can become a critical avenue for the batterer to maintain control after separation (Shepard, cited in Straus 1995).”
“He may make threats to kill himself or her if she leaves him, asks for a separation or divorce. He often says, “If I can’t have you, no one will.” This behavior may persevere months or years after a separation. His criminal record can include violations of protective orders or situations where he has disturbed the peace as he pursues or harasses his partner. However, some of these men have clean records – only the partner knows about his jealousy and possessiveness.”
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