Types of domestic abuse

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• Physical abuse
  • Kicking, punching, pinching, slapping, dragging, scratching, choking, biting, pushing, stabbing burning, scalding, poisoning, strangling (including the use of non-fatal strangulation)
  • Using or threatening to use weapons
  • Acting violently towards your family members or pets
  • Causing you physical harm by denying access to medical aids or equipment
  • Harming you whilst performing ‘care’ duties (especially relevant for disabled victims) including force feeding, withdrawal of medicine or over-medication.
• Creating isolation
  • Limiting outside involvement such as family, friends and work colleagues
  • Not allowing any activity outside the home that does not include her or him
  • Constant checking up on your whereabouts .
• Verbal abuse
  • Verbally humiliating you (both in private or around others)
  • Yelling and shouting at you
  • Making fun of/laughing at you
  • Blaming you for their failures
  • Mocking your characteristics (for example, disability, gender, sexual orientation, physical appearance)
  • Mocking your “sexual performance” including in front of friends, work colleagues and on social media.
• Using threats
  • Threatening to use violence against you, your family members or pets
  • Threatening to use weapons
  • Threatening to enlist family members/friends to attack you
  • Destroying your personal and treasured items
  • Threatening to remove your children and/or telling you that you will never see them again or telling you that they will take them abroad without your permission
  • Threatening to get you institutionalised/committed
  • Threatening to reveal or publish private information (including threatening to publicise your sexuality, if this is not widely known).
• Emotional and psychological abuse
  • Withholding affection and giving you ‘the silent treatment’ as a means of hurting you 
  • Turning your children and friends against you
  • Stopping you from seeing friends or relatives
  • Repeatedly belittling and insulting you, including in front of others
  • Depriving you of sleep by keeping you awake/stopping you sleeping
  • Wilfully preventing you from seeing your children
  • Manipulating your anxieties or beliefs
  • Telling you that you are to blame for the abuse and injuries 
  • Persuading you to doubt your own sanity or mind (including “Gaslighting”)
  • Telling you that you are not a “real” mother/father
  • Denying the abuse committed against you ever happened or trying to minimise it
  • Telling you that your bruises, cuts and injuries are not serious
  • Falsely accusing you of having affairs and/or constantly looking at other people
  • Mocking your “sexual performance” including in front of others.
• Using power and control
  • Telling you what to do and expecting you to obey
  • Telling you that you will never see your children again if you leave
  • Using force to maintain power and control
  • Not accepting responsibility for their abusive behaviour/s 
  • Continually and purposefully breaching family court orders
  • Forced marriage.
• Economic/financial abuse
  • Totally controlling your/the family’s income
  • Not allowing you to spend any money unless they ‘permit’ you to do so
  • Making you account for every spend
  • Running up bills such as credit/store cards in your name
  • Purposely defaulting on payments
  • Setting up false companies, accounts or credit cards with your details
  • Deliberately forcing you to go back to the family courts as a means of costing you additional legal fees
  • Refusing to contribute to household income
  • Interfering with or preventing you from regularising your immigration status so you are economically dependent on the perpetrator
  • Preventing you from claiming welfare benefits, force someone to commit benefit fraud or misappropriating such benefits
  • Interfering with your education, training, or employment
  • Not allowing you access to mobile phone/car/utilities
  • Damaging your property
  • Denying you food or only allowing you to eat a particular type of food.
• Sexual abuse
  • Sexual harassing and pressuring you to engage in sexual acts, including with other people
  • Using sexually degrading language
  • Rape
  • Forcing you to have sex (or commit a sexual act) against your will
  • Making unwanted sexual contact and demands
  • Forcing you to make or watch pornography
  • Deliberately hurting you during sex
  • Pressurising or tricking you into having unsafe sex
  • Telling you that they have used contraception when they have deliberately not.
• Making false allegations
  • Telling the police, friends, families, your employer and others (or threatening to) that you are the one committing the domestic abuse when it is them that is abusing you
  • Making false allegations that you have committed a crime as a means of discouraging you from disclosing.
• Stalking
  • Following you to and from work
  • Checking your email and phone calls
  • Regularly sending unwanted gifts
  • Making unwanted or malicious communication.
• Social media
  • Stalking you online
  • Placing false and malicious information about you on your or others’ social media
  • ‘Trolling’ you
  • Monitoring or controlling your email and phone calls (including work email and calls)
  • Circulating private sexual photographs and films without your consent ("revenge porn")
  • Hacking into, monitoring or controlling email accounts, social media profiles and phone calls
  • Blocking you from using online accounts, responding as you, or creating false online accounts
  • Using spyware or GPS locators on items such as phones, computers, wearable technology, cars, motorbikes and pets
  • Hacking internet enabled devices such as PlayStations or iPads to gain access to accounts or trace information such as your location
  • Using personal devices such as smart watches or smart home devices (such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home Hubs) or hidden cameras to monitor, control or frighten you
  • Using social media to intimidate you.
• Coercive or controlling behaviour
  • Isolating you from your friends and family
  • Depriving you of your basic needs
  • Monitoring your time
  • Monitoring your online communication tools or using spyware
  • Taking control over aspects of your everyday life, such as where you can go, who you can see, what to wear and when you can sleep
  • Depriving you access to support services, such as specialist  support or medical services
  • Repeatedly putting you down such as telling you that you are worthless
  • Enforcing rules and activity which humiliate, degrade or dehumanise you
  • Forcing you to take part in criminal activity
  • Neglecting or abusing children to encourage you to self-blame and prevent disclosure to authorities
  • Criminal damage (such as destruction of household goods)
  • Preventing you from having access to transport or from working
  • Controlling or monitoring your daily activities, including making you account for your time, dictating what you can wear, when you can eat and so on
  • Isolating you from family and friends, intercepting messages or phone calls or refusing to interpret
  • Intentionally undermining your role as a partner, spouse or parent
  • Preventing you from taking medication or over-medicating you, or preventing you from accessing health or social care (especially relevant for victims with disabilities or long-term health conditions)
  • Using substances to control you by making you dependent on them.

  More information

  For more details on coercive and controlling behaviour, please visit the Women's Aid website.

• Honour-based abuse

  Honour-based abuse is any type of abuse committed against a person to protect or defend the perceived 'honour' of a family or community.

  More information

  Further details about honour-based abuse is available on the Crown Prosecution Service website.