Domestic violence is the abusive behaviour shown by one partner towards the other

The abuse can be physical, mental, emotional, sexual or the combination of all these. Domestic violence can also mean endangerment, criminal coercion, kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, trespassing, harassment, and stalking. So, domestic violence isn’t just limited within physical dominance.

Domestic abuse may be frequent or infrequent depending on the type of relationship. But no matter what, domestic violence once started will take its ugly course and increase with time. The victim of the crime goes through undefinable depression and terror of what the next episode could be notwithstanding how often he/she becomes a victim of the violence.

The most common victims of domestic violence are the women. The male-dominated society has always oppressed the supposedly feeble womenfolk. However, this abuse may also be imposed on the male by any female in an intimate relationship, by women on women or by men on men.

TYPES OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Sexual: Forcing a person to engage in sexual activities against their will is an act of aggression.
Physical: This type of violence includes causing feelings of intimidation, pain, injury or whatsoever which cause physical degradation of a person.

Emotional: Emotional abuse can also be termed as psychological abuse or mental abuse. This includes deliberately doing something to humiliate a person in public or in private, controlling what a victim can or cannot do, hurting the victim’s self-worth or self-esteem or even threatening or intimidating a person.

Verbal: This is a type of mental abuse which deals with using language to oppress a person. It can also be referred to threatening, profanity can also be included in this act.

Economic: When one intimate partner controls the others access to economic sources and deprives the person of his/her economic rights, economic violence is said to be done.

History of law on domestic violence

Men have exercised violence against their wives as their right from centuries. People deemed physical violence on the wives as a “well-being” for the wives. They intended to discipline their wives by beating them up like animals. It was supposed that violence was a measure of corrective discipline and chastisement for the wives.

In 1977, the British common laws embrace the law of taking up the “rule of thumb”, which spoke of beating the wives with a rod not much thicker than his thumb.

Earlier, the United States approved the violence of men on their wives. According to the US Commission on Civil Rights, 1982, if no permanent injury has been inflicted then the husband and the wife were recommended to settle their dispute by not going public.

Over the course of ensuing century, men’s use of violence went basically unfettered. No jurisdiction now permits the husband to use violence against his wife in any circumstances. He cannot strike his wife or assault her in any case.

Laws against domestic violence

The law is a tool which helps the oppressed in achieving their due rights and constrains the oppressors. It assists the battered women and children in living lives free of violence. It provides an overview of the laws designed to end the violence, provide a safeguard to the battered women and children for their better future, mandate compensation for the losses made by the abuse, and offer resources essential for independent and violence-free living.

The grandmother of domestic violence law is the civil protection order. Any course of violent conduct by one party towards the other in an intimate relationship which demonstrates significant adverse impact on the party’s contribution is said to be able to be trialled by a judge.

The trial judge is given the responsibility of assessing the contribution of one party in the respective cases. This sort of behaviour is termed as “negative contributions”. “Negative contributions” refers to the conduct occurred during the course of the marriage and had a discernible impact on the contribution of the other party.

The wife’s parenting and homemaking contributions were made hard by the husband’s abuse and the denigration of her and her children.

You do not need to stay silent. Because the crime isn’t your fault, it is the degraded mentality of the people involved in these types of domestic violence. Never forget that there are alternatives to living in a violent environment.

Raise your voice against domestic violence, help yourself and the others who are the victims in the same way. Domestic violence is a common reality in our society. Most people do not realize it as the victims tend to remain silent throughout the oppression.