Many people experience some form of abuse in their lifetime. Interpersonal violence and abuse impact children and adults. Though people from all communities experience violence and abuse, and those who experience oppression are left more vulnerable and are targeted for abuse more often.
Interpersonal violence is called by different names. Often these types of abuse and violence are interconnected:
- Domestic Violence: also known as family violence, dating violence, Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), or gender-based violence
- Sexual Violence: sexual assault, rape, sexual harassment, street harassment (sometimes called cat-calling)
- Elder Abuse
- Stalking
- Child Abuse & Neglect
Though anyone can experience violence, it is often perpetrated against people who are made vulnerable through a historical lack of access to justice and equality. This means people who harm often target populations such as children, women, BIPOC and other communities of color, LGBTQ+, people who rely on others for caretaking, and those experiencing homelessness.
Intersection of Violence
Domestic violence, sexual violence, stalking, elder abuse, child abuse, and sexual exploitation often co-occur with one another. Domestic violence has a high overlap with other types of violence. Abusive people often use sexual violence or stalking as tactics to control the person they’re harming. Often within domestic/dating violence relationships, the abusive person might manipulate, convince, or threaten the person they’re harming into participating in the sex industry.
Within families, there is a high overlap of occurrence between domestic violence and child abuse and neglect. Domestic violence abusers often create a very complicated set of dynamics through threats of violence and lack of safety. Abusive people may use the same abuse tactics they use on adult victims within the household on the children. They manipulate children into using abuse tactics against the safe parent. It is common for people who are abusive to make threats against children in the household or threaten to take or have children taken away.
How Everyone Can Help
While not everyone needs to be an expert in interpersonal violence and abuse, everyone in our community needs to be able to understand, identify, and know how to help survivors.
Abuse often removes survivors’ power to make decisions for themselves. We can help survivors by providing resources and options for support.
Believe survivors and tell them it’s not their fault. Abuse often involves making someone believe they deserve what they’re experiencing, that it’s not a big deal, or didn’t happen in the way they remember. Telling survivors you believe them and it’s not their fault can be enormously impactful.
Violence and abuse have a ripple effect across communities, in relationships with family and friends, in workplaces, in faith communities, and more. We are here to help survivors as well the family and friends working to support them. Caring community members are welcome to call our 24-hour Crisis and Support line at (888) 654-2288 or message our confidential chat to learn how to support survivors in their lives.