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Domestic
Violence
February 17

Performed by: Marisa

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I. What is domestic violence?

Domestic violence is any act that will serve to inflict suffering

physical, sexual or mental, directly or indirectly. Such as
deception threats, coercion having the effect of intimidating the
victim, humiliating refusing the dignity, sexual autonomy,
physical integrity, mental and moral or undermine their
personal security, your self-esteem, thus reducing their physical
capacities and intellectuals.

II. Who is the most affected by domestic violence?

Victims can be of any age, gender, race, culture, religion, education,

employment, or marital status. The phenomenon of domestic violence
is transversal to all social classes, affecting more women than men. It
is a phenomenon that also affects children and the elderly.

III. What types of domestic violence exist?

Emotional violence: any behavior of the partner that aims to make

the other feel fearful or useless. Usually includes behaviors such as:
threatening children; hurt the pets; humiliate the other in the
presence of friends, family or in public, among others.
Social violence: any behavior that attempts to control the partner's
social life, for example by preventing them from visiting family or
friends, cutting off the telephone or controlling calls and telephone
bills, locking The other at home.
Physical violence: any form of physical violence an abuser inflicts on a
partner. It can translate into behaviors such as: punching, kicking,
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strangling, burning, inducing or preventing the partner from getting

medication or treatments.

Impacts
http://www.cej.mj.pt/cej/recursos/ebooks/outros/Violencia-Domestica-
CEJ_p02_rev2c-EBOOK_ver_final.pdf

Physical Consequences

o They are the most visible. They can cause fractures, disability, visual,
hearing, motor and even death;

Emotional Disturbances

o They are varied and often pointed out by the aggressors as the
reason for them, aggressors, to become uncontrollable and
aggressive. They affect:

Intellectual disturbances and memory of victims (and their children):

nightmares, confusion, difficulties of concentration and memorization,
negative image of oneself (of incapable, of weak, of dependent, of
inferior to others);

Relational disturbances: Other people see themselves as potential

aggressors whom they can not trust, or as superior people who have
no interest in knowing them;

Depressive symptomatology: depression, shame, isolation (even from

family and close friends), self-blame, devaluation of self, lack of
confidence and feelings of impotence;

Anxiety and avoidance disorders such as: hyper vigilance, fear,

phobias and panic attacks, sleep disturbances, eating disorders and
sexual dysfunctions.
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Financial Consequences

o Poverty / difficulties due to lack of financial participation of the

aggressor, by financial exploitation (control of assets, destruction of
assets).

Professional Consequences

o Often a victim of domestic violence is prevented from working or, if

working, being exploited financially by the abuser.

o It is usually harder to integrate professionally and keep the job by:

Absenteeism (due to injuries, lack of support in the management of

children's lives);

Lower maturity - due to lack of attendance, unavailability and

inflexibility of schedules, lower income and lower career ascension;

Dismissal - motivated by the offenses made by the aggressors in the

work place, by the absences to the work;

Abandonment of the profession - by imposition of the aggressor, by

fragility or by continued absence and difficulty of integration;

Need for protection - in the face of persecution by the aggressor at

the place of work and in the movements between him and the
residence.

Consequences in Children:

o Learning from aggressive behavior - it is estimated that children of

violent couples are 2 or 4 times more likely to have behavioral
problems;

o Possibility of future difficulties of behavior adaptation in intimacy

relations;

o Greater difficulty in social integration;

o Ambivalent feelings towards parents;

o Greater probability of developing psychic illness;

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o Emotional suffering.

Consequences in the Family:

o Family Disaggregation;

o Various needs (economic, health, social insertion);

o Communication disruption, family breakdown, reproduction of

working models.

In the Company:

o Social costs;

o Economic costs:

o Political costs.

Some numbers:

o At least 80 million women in European Community countries have

suffered from domestic violence;

o Domestic violence with greater incidence in Azores. The Azores

continue to have the highest rate of domestic violence in the country.
The most recent data of the Attorney General of Lisbon point to an
average of 11 reports per month;

o In 1999, the United Nations General Assembly designated November

25 as the International Day for the Elimination of All Forms of Violence
against Women (Resolution 54/134) and called on governments,
international organizations and NGOs to organize Day, as a way of
drawing public attention to the problem. The choice of this day is
based on the date when, in 1960, the three Mirabal sisters, political
activists in the Dominican Republic, were brutally murdered by
Dictator Rafael Trujillo. From then on, 25 November becomes a date of
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great importance, especially for those who suffer or have already

suffered violence. It is intended, therefore, to alert the society to the
various cases of violence against women, in particular cases of sexual
abuse or harassment, physical and psychological mistreatment;

o The World Health Organization (2003) states that the academic

sector, public health specialists and society as a whole are obliged to
develop interventions to reduce violence in any form;

Opinion

I and domestic violence, unfortunately I can give the opinion and the real
testimony, because I lived it and felt in different ways and generations,
directly and indirectly.

When I was a child I listened to and watched the discussions between my

parents, my father aggressed my mother physically and verbally often, until
I was six years or so, I tried to stay in my world and wondered why he would
do that ?! At one point I started to intervene, I would put myself in the
middle of the two and try to keep my father away from my mother as much
as possible so as not to hurt her because I could not bear to see her crying,
it was horrible the sound of the chapped on her face and the Innumerable
profanities he addressed to her.
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When I was in school, I was afraid of going home, and then I went through
the shame stage because my parents would be like this?! Did most of my
colleagues go through the same?? What could you do to hide it?? Nothing
because I was often playing in the street and could get my friends to hear
the screams ... It was simply humiliating, frustrating the impotence in which
I and my brothers had because it really was not in our hands to change that
scenario.

I saw my mother many times leaving home with me and my brother and
thought that the nightmare would end but later came back, out of fear,
unable to support himself and us, and after a few days everything returned
to the same.

When I reached adolescence, I began to notice something even more

serious about sexual violence, I heard my mother crying during the night
and like any adolescent, curiosity was stronger than fear and I went to peek
and realized that after a day of A lot of work and sometimes maltreatment
my mother was forced to have relations always and in the way that my
father wanted ... Much more could say but I think this is enough.

Well, all this grew up in a young woman who was revolted by everything
with sex, with her parents, with my father for what I had done with my
mother for allowing... At seventeen I started my sex life and thought that I
had to discover by force what was in the sex of so good or bad ... but I did
not think it was something so spectacular, in the development of the
situation I went through the situation of being forced to do It for a boyfriend
who brutally did it... After all I was living the same of my mother as I could
allow it, but in fact it had happened!! I ended the relationship and I thought I
was a heroine because I had the courage... At the age of nineteen I fell in
love with a person who wrote me verses and offered me flowers that he
waited for me to take the first step, and from that relationship was born my
first daughter.

I thought I was going to have a perfect marriage, but actually we were the
two new ones and things began to fade, and when I found out the
arguments of jealousy had already turned into physical violence, I just
wanted that boy I had fallen in love with Only for me, that there was
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scarcely any of that, but in fact the night work began, and as a consequence
and unhappiness the frustration, I screamed at him and in response he beat
me, beat me humiliated me made me feel more despicable Of women, I felt
cheated, ugly, powerless. So many times I took a beating for just claiming
what was rightfully my husband, but in fact I continued to fight for it against
everything and everything ... often forgetting that I already had the most
important thing with my daughter...

Now I understood my mother, there I was going through the same, and let
her go, there I was a frustrated woman hurt, unhappy, an incomplete
mother, there I was to make my daughter live the same as I condemned one
day

This lasted 4 years until finally I realized that I had to end up with myself
mainly but also for my greatest treasure my daughter.

Today I look back with a lot of regret, and with wounds that will never heal,
with many teachings and know one thing still today I can not feel hate, but I
know that much in my life is based on this past unfortunately ...

Today I am extremely happy to know that there is already the courage to

denounce these crimes, which already have the capacity to punish them,
and I hope that unlike me, none of my daughters ever subject themselves to
any of them, physical or verbal, Nor sexually, what I am telling you is that
being a woman is much more than being a wife and being a very special
human being... That we do not win any prizes but that we can prevent these
aggressors from feeling victorious.

In my experience, domestic violence is not only the worst of the personal

crimes that exists, it is also the threshold of human contempt, children,
women who are completely destroyed and their lives completely altered and
affected...

They are people who invent smiles, who cry in the dark, people who are
distrustful, needy, insecure, fighters but always with fears ... They grow up
and live in the revolt of why. Why with me, why is it, it's my fault??? Do I
deserve this ... are issues and wounds that neither twenty nor thirty years
can erase or even bring answers, are human beings who stop believing in
their values in their qualities ... are women who question day after day their
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self-esteem, not by Not to have it, but because they allowed someone to
steal it...

And to all women who are mothers I say, do not allow your children to live in
this environment because, this will not make them stronger but rather make
them new victims...

There will never be a single woman but one day there may be an
army of victorious warriors!