Universal-Womens-accesss-to-justice-Publications-Practitioners-Guide-Series-2016-ENG

190 PRACTITIONERS GUIDE No. 12
as a repeat offence, comprising of various forms of violence
over time. 510
The UN Handbook for Legislation on Violence against Women
recommends that domestic violence should be criminalized, and
legislation should include “a comprehensive definition of [the
crime of] domestic violence, including physical, sexual,
psychological and economic violence”. 511
Psychological violence
Psychological forms of violence, particularly in the context of
family or intimate partner violence, are not only harmful in
themselves and should therefore be criminalized, but also
function to make women more at risk of other forms of genderbased
violence.
Examples of psychological violence are numerous and varied,
but typical forms include:
Restricting a woman’s contact with friends or family,
isolating her and making it harder for her to seek help;
Following a woman’s movements, forcing her to explain
where she is at all times;
Intruding on a woman’s personal correspondence,
mobile phone or internet use, which may be motivated,
for example, by jealousy or suspicions of infidelity;
510
Sylvia Walby, “Tackling the gaps in research and the lack of data
disaggregated by sex concerning women’s equal access to justice”,
Seminar of the Council of Europe Gender Equality Commission, Paris,
France, 26 and 27 June 2014, URL: www.coe.int/equality-Paris2014:
Identifying domestic violence as a repeat offence is particularly
important for the purposes of tracking data on domestic violence,
because if the “course of conduct” of multiple acts of harms by male
perpetrators is not reflected, perceptions of one violent offender will
be balanced by one act of self-defence by a victim, resulting in a false
perception of symmetry between men and women’s violence in violent
relationships.
511
UN Handbook for Legislation on Violence against Women (New
York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010), page 24. See
also Istanbul Convention, above note 509, Article 3(b).