Diane Stuart, coordinator of the governor's domestic violence council, wants Utahns to understand that other kinds of abuse occur before physical abuse.
"There are precursors," she said.Not every emotionally abusive relationship will go on to become physical abuse, she says. But every physically abusive relationship has elements of emotional abuse as well.
Recently, in a survey conducted for the Governor's Commission for Women and Families, the interviewers asked questions about economic abuse, isolation, coercion and other types of non-physical abuse.
Stuart supplied the interviewers with definitions of abuse.
The definitions were developed in Duluth, Minn., by violence prevention specialists. The Duluth model looks like a bicycle wheel, Stuart explains. Each of the types of emotional abuse are spokes, supporting the rim of the wheel, which is labeled physical abuse.
The study was funded by a federal grant targeted at learning more about violence against women. So, there were no questions asked about other kinds of abuse, Stuart explains. But the new definitions can be applied to many family situations. Wives can emotionally abuse their husbands. Parents can intimidate children. Children can threaten elderly parents. Here are the definitions:
- Coercion and threats: Someone making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt you or other members of the household, threatening to leave, threatening to commit suicide, making others do illegal things.
- Intimidation: Someone making other household members afraid by using looks, actions, gestures; smashing things; destroying property; abusing pets; and/or displaying weapons.
- Emotional abuse: Someone putting others down, calling names, making others think they're crazy, playing mind games, humiliating others, making others feel guilty.
- Isolation: Someone controlling what others do, whom they see and talk to; limiting outside involvement; using jealousy to justify actions.
- Denial and blame: Someone making light of the abuse and not taking concerns about it seriously, saying the abuse didn't happen, shifting responsibility for abusive behavior, blaming the other person.
- Use of children: Someone making the mother feel guilty about the children, using the children to relay messages, using visitation to harass the mother, threatening to take the children away.
- Male privilege: A male treating female household members like servants, making all the major decisions, acting like the master of the castle, being the one to define men's and women's roles.
- Economic abuse: Someone preventing the women from getting or keeping a job, making her ask for money, giving her an allowance, taking her money, not letting her know about or have access to family income.