Rethinking Child Custody, Domestic Violence - Rutgers NJAES ...

involves sexual humiliation or the coerced performance of shameful acts. Isolation tacticsextend from enforced separation from family, friends or helping professionals tovoluntary isolation as a way to placate a jealous partner. Control tactics may extend fromregulating a victim’s access to vital resources (such as money, food, sex, clothing,transportation or means of communicating) to rules governing self-care (dressing, eatingor even toileting), family maintenance (cooking, cleaning and the like) and parenting(how children are disciplined, cleaned, schooled, etc.). Importantly, control tacticstypically center on the performance of women’s default gender roles, such as how apartner cooks or cleans, relationships with others, particularly potential lovers, andcaretaking. Studies in the U.S. and England reveal that 40-89% of women who arephysically assaulted by their partners are also kept from socializing, seeing their families,or leaving the house to name just a few of the many constraints imposed by abuse(Tolman, l989; Rees et al. 2006; Stark, 2007). In one well-designed study, more than halfof the men arrested for domestic violence acknowledged they had taken their partner’smoney as well as assaulted them, for instance. (Buzawa et al., l999).The pattern of physical assault in these cases is also different than the dominantmodel leads us to expect. Well over 90% of all domestic violence incidents are relativelyminor from a medical or criminal justice perspective. This is even more true in cases ofcoercive control where the typical pattern involves frequent or routine, but typically lowlevel violence such as pushes, slaps, hair pulling, kicks, grabbing and so on, events thatare likely to remain invisible if radar is set to pick up only injurious violence. Thesignificance of these events lies in their cumulative effect on a person’s sense of