In domestic violence, batterers have ongoing access to their victims, know their daily routines and vulnerabilities and can continue after violent episodes to exercise considerable physical and emotional control over their daily lives. In addition, these batterers have knowledge of their victims (such as prior medical conditions, allegiance to their children) which they use to target their assaults (for example, withholding medications, threatening to harm the children), which increases the trauma and fear for the victims.

Victims of domestic violence not only deal with the specific trauma (such as a head injury) and the fear of future assaults by a known assailant, but must also deal with the complexities of an intimate relationship with that assailant. Many batterers believe that they are entitled to use tactics of control with their partner, and too often find social supports for those beliefs. It is the “family” nature of these relationships that sometimes give the batterer social, if not legal, permission to abuse. Unlike victims of stranger violence, victims of domestic violence face social barriers to a separation from their batterer as well as barriers to other strategies for self-protection.

Domestic violence, as defined here, does not include other types of intimate or family violence, such as child abuse/neglect, child-to-parent violence, sibling violence and elder abuse (unless the abuser is the intimate partner of the victim). While other types of family violence may result in the same kinds of physical injuries and psychological damage found in domestic violence cases, the dynamics are different.

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