What is family and domestic violence?
Family and domestic violence can take many forms and may be known as different things such as relationship violence or intimate partner violence.
Family and domestic violence is not limited to physical abuse. Other forms of family and domestic violence can include but are not limited to:
- Economic or financial abuse: behaviour that is coercive, manipulative or unreasonably controls a person in a way that denies their personal or financial independence – often in a way that involves fear or intimidation, for example by coercing a person to hand over control of assets and income or forcing a person to put bills under their name and then not taking financial responsibility for them
- Emotional or psychological abuse: behaviour that does not demonstrate respect for someone's feelings, opinions and experiences – for instance, name-calling or ridiculing someone, or threatening to institutionalise a person
- Sexual abuse: any actual or threatened sexual contact without consent
- Threatening or coercive behaviour, and/or
- Any other behaviour that controls or dominates you and causes you to fear for your safety or wellbeing, or that of someone else. For instance, isolating a person from their family or friends.
