The Causes Of Domestic Violence

Prior to the 1800’s, the majority of legal systems regarded ‘wife beating’ as a way in which a husband could assert his dominance and authority over his wife. Within the 1970’s, attention to domestic violence began with the woman’s movement, principally through the introduction of feminism and women’s rights. In recent years however, the way domestic violence is viewed has changed. Previously, domestic violence only occurred within marriage, predominantly against wives and therefore formalised through the use of a marriage contract. Within modern society, domestic violence can now refer to

State (Miccio, 1999). Through the rule of thumb, any conduct that resulted in black eyes, welts, and split lips constituted no violation of the law. Husbands would not be prosecuted if they beat their wives with a stick no thicker than the diameter of their thumb. This rule of thumb, in effect, gave husbands the right to use physical force as a means to control their wives behavior and women were left at the mercy and control of their husbands. In 1870 the “subtle chastisement” law in the United States ended, but women saw little improvement in the prevalence of domestic violence (Ball, 2002).

The prevalence of domestic violence in the United States is that it is occurring far more often than many individuals would choose to admit. This form of violence is by no means new and culturally the problem itself does not discriminate, there is no specific criteria that completely omits one from becoming a victim of domestic violence. The dynamics of domestic violence consist of the aggressor utilizing violence to maintain dominance and control over the victim. The victimization that is consistent with domestic violence can come in various forms including, physical, sexual, psychological, mental/emotional, and financial. Domestic violence victimization is a cycle that usually is difficult to terminate by many victims as well as aggressors. Individuals involved in abusive relationships continue to remain in them for various reasons such as, maintaining financial stability, desire or hope that things will change overtime, fear that their abuser, will further harm them for leaving the relationship, embarrassment of their situation, or there may be children involved and the victims wants to avoid some of the harsh realities associated with a broken home. Oftentimes domestic violence victims blame themselves for the violence encountered by their abusers, figuring that if they do things differently the next time, maybe they won’t be victimized again by their partner. Conversely, violence committed by abusers is often self-driven and hinges on very minor actions executed by the

Domestic violence is a single act or a pattern of cruel acts in any relationship that a partner uses to get or keep power and control over another partner. The violence can be sexual, physical, economic, emotional, or psychological actions or threats of actions that impacts another person. Any actions that manipulate, intimidate, isolate, humiliate, terrorize, frighten, threaten, coerce, hurt, blame, wound, or injure someone can be domestic violence (The United States Department of Justice).

Moreover, In various states, a domestic disturbance is a violation of the state. The leading cause of injuries in the United States is domestic violence which is affecting society. A majority of American couples will encounter a domestic violence incident once in their lifetime while in a relationship. Statistics reveal that a third of the nation regarding women is homicide victims that are murdered by former husbands or a spouse. A percentage of self-destruction attempt concerning battered women is at the twenty-six. Research shows that women who are not married are expected twenty-five percent more to encounter a domestic disturbance.

The early 1800’s most legal systems accepted “wife-beating” as a husband’s right and a part of his entitlement to control his wife in every way, Female activists caused a drastic change, because by the end of the 19th century, most courts denied that husbands had any right to chastise their wives. Ever since the 1980’s domestic abuse is the most reported crime on file compared

Domestic violence is any spousal altercation or interfamilial conflicts of sufficient nature to justify law enforcement intervention. Domestic violence occurs when a current or an former intimate partner that applies domination and controls a relationship through; physical, sexual, or psychological abuse following in psychical or emotional trauma to the victim. There are many other forms of domestic violence that includes; sexual violence, verbal abuse, stalking, dating violence, and very rare but extremely hard on the parents children abusing their own parents.Domestic violence exist in all cultures, faiths, age group, race, and sexual orientations. Domestic violence can happen between many married and unmarried couples, who live in many different countries, towns, cities, some couples that live together or separately, even couples that have been married before or dated have been abused. Sometimes even between heterosexual and

What is domestic violence? According to research “Domestic violence is the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control perpetrated by one intimate partner against another” (NCADV.ORG, 2015). In this essay there will be comparisons made with other countries and also be explained how they relate to America. Let’s start with America, which has four major parts of domestic violence. Physical violence is probably the most common offense in the United States. Most of the victims of serious physical violence usually don’t report it or participate in surveys out of fear for retaliation. Intimate partner violence covers all major parts of domestic

The first law against spousal abuse in the United States was passed in the Puritan Colony of Massachusetts Bay. This law was passed in 1641. The colonial law was a common law, was known as the “rule of thumb”. This phase referred to a man’s authority to beat his wife with a “‘ rod not thicker than his thumb.’”(Zelcar,2013)

In the 18th century violence within the home was a typical occurrence in everyday life this is because It was a commonly held belief that wife beating was acceptable conduct. The rule of thumb in 1857 gave a man legal entitlement to beat his wife providing he used a stick that was no thicker than his thumb and it was for the purpose of remedying her behaviour. The law of coverture in 1860 confirmed this principle, that within a marriage the husband would be allowed to use physical and verbal abuse as a way of controlling his wife's behaviour.

The history of domestic violence goes back all the way to the start of mankind. Ever since lower people were taken advantage of by higher people in society. The men were much stronger than the women which resulted in the women usually being the ones abused. In the beginning, the man had every right to abuse his woman. If you stare back into the 1940’s and 1950’s you will notice that little was done to stop domestic violence. The police would get involved but would leave the situation to be resolved by the family members. As suggested in the peer-reviewed article “Domestic violence past and present” by Anna Clark, policemen would just tell the man to composed himself and the woman to stop aggravating him. For example, in the sentence “Before the 1970s, judges and police officers still saw wife beating as a trivial offense—policemen would tell husbands to calm down and wives to stop annoying them, and cases rarely came to court. Popular culture depicted wife beating as a joke, and psychiatrists saw it as a pathology of the

Domestic violence has been officially traced back to 753 BC (Icadvinc.org, 2015). During the reign of Romulus in Rome, wife beating was accepted and under The Laws of Chastisement. By law, a husband is held liable for crimes committed by his wife so this law was designed to ‘protect’ the husband from harm caused by the wife’s actions. These discriminatory laws also found its way in English Common Law. At the end of Punic wars, female were given more freedom but it was quickly taken away when Churches gained power. The famous Roman Emperor Constantine the Great had his wife burnt alive when she was no longer needed by him and yet he is addressed as someone ‘great’.

“I object to violence, because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent”, quoted by Mahatma Gandhi. Violence is defined as an unjust or unwarranted exertion of power or force to intentionally injure, damage, or destroy something or someone. Amongst the various types of violence, there is one in particular that has been causing an ongoing debate within societies across the world; this certain type of violence is known as domestic violence. Domestic violence, also known as intimate violence or family violence, is a pattern of violent behaviors that are being used by an individual in a relationship to control his or her partner.() This act of abuse can come in many different forms, such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, or psychological abuse, and can affect not only the victim, but anyone that he or she may come in contact with.

Every year in the United States, One in four women are victims of the domestic violence; however, this is only based on what has been reported to the department of justice (Stahly 2008). While men are also victims of domestic violence, women are more often the victims. Moreover, 90% of domestic violence is male initiated. In severe cases domestic violence ends with victims being murdered. More specifically, domestic violence resulted in 2,340 deaths in the United States in 2007, and 70% of those killed were females (CDC 2012). Many people think that victims have the option of leaving and many people blame victims for putting up with the abuse; what many people don 't know is, victims of domestic violence have many reasons preventing them from leaving their abusers, these reasons include, isolation, having children bounding them with the abuser and lack of financial support. "It 's never pretty when you leave an abusive and controlling relationship. The warden always protests when a prison gets shut down," says Dr. Steve Maraboli (qtd from web). Whether a victim stays or leaves their abuser, the outcomes of both situations are not always as easy as many people predict. In some situations, the outcomes of leaving may be very dangerous for both the victim and her children.

Domestic violence refers to abusive behavior in any relationship that is inflicted on a partner to gain or maintain power and control over another partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological. Domestic violence includes behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone. Domestic violence can happen to anyone, regardless of their race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender; and it also occurs in both opposite-sex and same-sex relationships; domestic violence also affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels (Justice, The United States Department of, 2017). This topic has attracted a lot of discussion and research because of its dominance and complexity. This essay, therefore seeks to look at the causes and effects of domestic violence.