- Physical Abuse: This involves physical contact intended to cause feelings of intimidation, pain, injury or any other physical suffering or bodily harm. It includes:
- Being hit, beaten, slapped, punched, choked, burned, pushed or shoved in a way that results or could result in injury
- Forcefully isolating the victim from friends and family
- Confining the victim or,
- Forcing the victim to engage in drug or alcohol use or illegal behaviour against their will and possibly creating dependencies
- Sexual abuse: This covers situations where the perpetrators force or threaten the victim to participate in unwanted sexual activity against the victim’s will. It includes:
- Marital or spousal rape
- Forcing or manipulating another into having sex or performing sexual acts
- Forcing unsafe or degrading sexual acts
- Using physical force to compel a person to engage in a sexual act against another person’s will
- Using physical force, weapons or objects in non-consensual sexual acts
- Involving other people in non-consensual sexual acts
- Exposing, suggesting, attempting or completing a sexual act involving a minor and,
- Exposing, suggesting, attempting or completing a sexual act involving a person who is unable to understand the nature or condition of the act, unable to decline participation, or unable to communicate unwillingness to engage in the sexual act
- Psychological Abuse: This includes:
- A pattern of coercive or controlling behaviour, which could include insults, intimidation, humiliation, harassment or threats, name-calling, yelling, blaming, shaming, ridiculing, disrespecting, and criticising
- Controlling the victim
- Threatening to commit suicide
- Being threatened with murder
- Being intimidated, threatened or harmed with a knife, gun or other object or weapon
- Using religious or spiritual beliefs to manipulate, dominate, and control and,
- Threatening to take away or hurt the victim’s children
- Financial Abuse: Here, one partner controls the other partner’s access to economic resources. This is to diminish the victim’s ability to support themselves, which makes the victim dependent entirely on the perpetrator. This includes:
- Stealing or taking the victim’s money, salary or checks
- Controlling finances or refusing to share money
- Rigidly controlling finances and limiting the amount of resources the victim can access
- Withholding money or credit cards
- Exploiting the victim’s economic resources
- Monitoring how the victim spends money
- Destroying the victim’s property
- Spending the victim’s money without their consent
- Creating debt, or completely spending the victim’s savings to limit available resources
- Preventing the victim from working, attending school or choosing their own career and,
- Sabotaging the victim’s job
- Neglect: This denotes the failure to provide the basic necessities of life i.e. food, clothing and shelter and any other omission that results in a risk of serious harm
Source: Citizenship and Immigration
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