Continuum Scale
- Joking & insults
- Ignoring and minimizing feelings
- Withholding emotional support as punishment
- Yelling & name calling
- Belittling, repeated insults & degrading comments
- Targeted insults or labels
- Humiliation (private and then public)
- Blaming and accusing
- Demanding all attention
- Resentful of children and marriage
- Threats against the children or marriage
- Degrading the role of partner
- Lack of cause and effect
- Questioning victim’s sense of reality and sanity
- Depression
- Nervous breakdown
- Complete isolation and/or withdrawal
- Mental illness
- And finally driving the victim to suicide
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- Refusal to meet the physical needs of dependents
- Push or shove
- Choke or beat
- Jerk, slap, bite, or punch
- Shake or bruise
- Withhold affection or sex
- Hit, punch, or kick
- Targeted hitting
- Repeated hitting
- Use of objects as weapons
- Restraining victim while hitting or punching them
- Abuse during pregnancy
- Sleep deprivation
- Lacerations or broken bones or knocked out teeth or internal injuries
- Use of weapons
- Disabling or disfiguring
- And ultimately, murder
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- Sexual jokes or demeaning gender remarks
- Jealousy or assuming victim is sexual with others
- Unwanted touching
- Criticism of sexuality
- Name calling with sexual epithets
- Forced to look at or engage in pornography
- Demanding monogamy from victim while batterer behaves promiscuously
- Demanding sex
- Humiliation
- Forceful or uncomfortable sex or rape
- Demanding sex after childbirth or surgery
- Rape resulting in permanent injury
- Rape with imprisonment
- Rape with murder
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- Uses gender myths and roles
- Degrades culture, religion, nationality, profession, or gender of victim
- Destroys or damages victim’s property
- Demonstrates strength and power
- Controls major decisions
- Forced economic dependence
- Controls money and finances
- Denies access to work or gets victim fired
- Threatens to hurt victim’s extended family
- Eliminates support system
- Alienates victim’s friends and family
- Tells victim they (the abuser) controls them and their destiny
- Complete isolation
- Threatens to hurt children
- Abuses children
- Incest with children
- Destroys the family pet
- Deprives victim of food, sleep, medicine, or medical care
- Convinces victim they are hysterical, paranoid, psychotic, mentally ill, or suicidal/homicidal
- And ultimately, suicide
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