IT'S NOT OK FOR A FAMILY MEMBER OR A BOYFRIEND TO HIT YOU!

Forty percent of girls age 14 to 17 report knowing someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend.

(Children Now/Kaiser Permanente poll, December 1995)

In a national survey of American families, 50% of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children.

(Strauss, Murray A, Gelles, Richard J., and Smith, Christine. 1990. Physical Violence in American Families; Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families. New BGrunswick: Transaction Publishers)

Approximately one in five female high school students reports being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner.

 (Jay G. Silverman, PhD; Anita Raj, PhD; Lorelei A. Mucci, MPH; and Jeanne E. Hathaway, MD, MPH, "Dating Violence Against Adolescent Girls and Assoc. Substance Use, Unhealthy Weight Control, Sexual Risk Behavior, Pregnancy, and Suicidality," Journal of the American Medical Assoc., Vol. 286, No. 5,2001)

Forms of domestic violence

Forms of abuse include emotional/psychological,

physical, and sexual.

Emotional / psychological abuse…

...accompanies and frequently precedes physical abuse. It affects                                                                        

victim’s sense of self and of reality. Emotional / psychological abuse includes:

• ignoring the victim’s feelings
• withholding approval as a form of punishment
• putting down the victim’s abilities as a parent, lover, worker
• telling the victim about own sexual affairs
• jealousy.
• demanding all the victim’s attention
• creating and maintaining economic dependency
• withholding money
• isolating from social contacts
• humiliation in front of family members, others
• blaming the victim for own misfortunes and mistakes
• yelling
• hostile jokes about the victim’s gender
• insults
• threats of physical violence and retaliation
• threats of abuse of children
• threats of getting custody of children

Physical abuse…

...begins with relatively minor assaults and grows more violent 

and targeted with repetition. Physical abuse includes:

• pinching
• squeezing
• pushing
• shoving
• jerking
• pulling
• shaking
• slapping
• biting
• hitting
• punching
• kicking
• choking
• strangling
• using objects to perpetrate violence
• using weapons (brass knuckles, knives, guns)

  Sexual abuse...

...is the use of emotional, psychological and physical violence in

 sexual relations.  Sexual abuse includes:

• forcing sexual contact
• forcing intercourse
• using blackmail in sexual relations
• using sex as a reward or punishment
• rape, including boyfriend-girlfriend or spouses

FAMILY   SHOULDN'T  HURT