Kaleidoscopic UK

Supporting children and adults who have been exposed to Domestic Abuse.

Kaleidoscopic UK

Supporting children and adults who have been exposed to Domestic Abuse.

ABOUT DOMESTIC ABUSE

The UK government’s definition of domestic abuse is “any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality.”

As we know, abuse can encompass many forms including but not limited to the following. Click on each for defintions and examples:

Coercive Control

Control of another person’s behaviour by using force or threats, or by causing fear: Coercive control as part of domestic abuse can be punishable by law, even if it stops short of physical violence.

Examples:

Isolating you from friends and family
Monitoring your time
Depriving you of your basic needs
Stopping access to support services, like specialist support / medical services
Monitoring you using online communication tools/ spyware
Taking control over aspects of your everyday life, where you can go, who you can see/be friends with
What to wear/no makeup
When you can sleep/eat

Gaslighting

Gaslighting refers to trying to convince someone they’re wrong about something even when they aren’t. Tricking or controlling someone by making them believe things that are not true, especially by suggesting that they may be mentally ill.

Most commonly disagreeing with someone or refusing to listen to their point of view/telling them theirs is pointless. Making them believe a different viewpoint/question their own sanity.

Examples:

Stalking

The crime of illegally following and watching someone over a period of time Stalking is a pattern of repeated behavior that includes unwanted attention, contact, harassment, or other conduct towards a specific person. Stalking behaviors may be committed in person, by following the victim, or by monitoring and harassing the victim electronically.

Examples:

Watching you 24/7
Following you
Randomly passing your home, work place, school at the time he/she knows your there
Trying to make contact with you via text, calling, emails or social media
Getting other people to watch for them when he/she is not around and the stalker is kept up to date with what you are doing
Leaving items at your home/sending gifts/letters/cards
Entering your property when your not home/ when you are
Threatening to hurt you or your family/friends/pets
Loitering
Gathering information about you from friends and people who know you

Financial

Economic abuse is a form of abuse when one intimate partner has control over the other partner’s access to economic resources, which diminishes the victim’s capacity to support themselves and forces them to depend on the perpetrator financially. Financial abuse is one kind of coercive control, where the abuser uses money to control their partner. One in five adults in the UK have been a victim of financial abuse. Financial abuse can take a variety of different forms within relationships, whether by partners, family members or carers and may manifest itself as financial control, dependency, exploitation or sabotage.

Examples:

Financial abuse rarely happens in isolation, most cases include other abusive behaviours to threaten and reinforce the financial abuse also occur.
Financial abuse involves a perpetrator using or misusing money. This limits/controls your activities and freedom.
Using credit cards without permission, putting contractual obligations in their partner’s name, and gambling with family assets
Not paying child maintenance/withholding money
Victims can be left with no money for basic essentials like food or clothing.
Preventing access to bank accounts, or any independent income
Debts that have been built up by abusive partners set against your name/property.
Even when you have left the home, financial control can still be exerted by the abuser with regard to child maintenance and non- payment.
Stopping you from studying or working
Forcing you to work while they refuse to
Making you hand over your salary and any benefits
Forcing you to ask for money for household expenses
Insisting on seeing receipts for every expense
Not allowing you to spend money on yourself or your children
Continually returning to court after separation with the aim of depleting resources

Trauma Bonding

Trauma bonding occurs as the result of ongoing cycles of abuse in which the intermittent reinforcement of reward and punishment creates powerful emotional bonds that are resistant to change.

Patrick Carnes developed the term to describe “the misuse of fear, excitement, sexual feelings, and sexual physiology to entangle another person.”

Examples:

If you have been trauma bonded, the first step is to recognize it. Go no contact to reconnect with reality.

Get support to break it properly. Through self-awareness, self-care and reality can we cut the cords that continue to keep us bound to them. Highly manipulative people don’t respond to empathy or compassion.

Physical

Physical abuse is any intentional act causing injury or trauma to another person by way of bodily contact. Alternative terms include physical assault or physical violence, and can also include sexual abuse. Physical abuse may involve more than one abuser, and more than one victim.

Examples:

Hitting with hands or objects
Slapping and punching
Kicking
Shaking
Throwing objects
Poisoning
Burning and scalding
Biting and scratching
Breaking bones
Drowning
Making up the symptoms of an illness/causing you or anyone else to become unwell.
Pushing
Pinching or biting
Choking
Backing you into a corner
Pinning you down
Pulling your hair
Holding you captive
Breaking down a door to get to you
Preventing you from eating or sleeping
Locking you out of the house
Forcing your car off the road
Abandoning you in dangerous places
Keeping you from getting medical care
Spitting on you
Using or threatening to use a weapon against you
Driving at unsafe speeds to intimidate you
Refusing to help you when you are sick, injured, or pregnant
Withholding medications or medical treatment · Animal cruelty towards pets · Stalking
Sexual acts

When referring to physical abuse, we are not talking about self-defence. Self-defence, or reactive violence, is a response to violence to you. The result of reactive violence doesn’t create dominance or control in the relationship.

Sexual

Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is abusive sexual behaviour by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using force or by taking advantage of another. When force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser / molester. The term also covers any behaviour by an adult or older adolescent towards a child to stimulate any of the involved sexually. The use of a child, or other individuals younger than the age of consent.

Examples:

Being touched in a way you don’t like without giving permission or consent on your body
Being flashed by someone/exposing themselves to you online or offline
Forced to have sex (intercourse),
Made to look at sexual pictures or videos
Made do something sexual or watch someone do something sexual
Bribed to have sex/threatened
Rape, attempted rape or sexual assault
Non- consensual masturbation of either or both persons
Non- consensual sexual penetration or attempted penetration of the vagina, anus or mouth
Any sexual activity that the person lacks the capacity to consent to
Inappropriate looking, sexual teasing or innuendo or sexual harassment
Sexual photography or forced use of pornography or witnessing of sexual acts
Fear of retaliation/consequences, we can all be hesitant when trying something new in the bedroom,but engaging in a sexual act and feeling uncomfortable yet fearing telling your partner about your discomfort.
Rough sex when you don’t want it, choking, slapping, spitting
Stealthing (Non-consensual condom removal) is the practice of removing or damaging a condom during sexual intercourse, when you have only consented to condom-protected sex.
Recording you/photos against your will when unclothed
Having sex with you or touching your body without your knowledge (such as asleep or drugged)
Coercing you to do what they want by threats/ fear for someone else
Coercion to do what they want for reward/normal

Abuse can happen at any point in a relationship including after it ends. Abuse knows no gender, race, religion, colour or sexual orientation it is rife throughout. Although the statistics prove women are most likely to be at most risk of abuse between the ages of 20-30. *safelives fact.

Domestic abuse describes any type of abuse that is used to control and obtain power. It can include physical, sexual, psychological, verbal, emotional, gas lighting, trauma bonding and financial abuse. If someone changes their behaviour because they are frightened of how someone (usually a partner) will react, this is the biggest sign or red flag that they are being abused.

Many people experience domestic abuse in it’s different forms and sometimes without ever being physically abused. Non-physical forms of abuse can be as destructive and as undermining as physical violence. Kaleidoscopic UK believe the ‘bruises you can’t see are the ones that can last a lifetime’ and that the violence can be a bi-product of the control.

England and Wales collects statistics each year from many different sources to collate numbers. As we know this is not reflective of the ‘true’ stats as many adult and child victims never report any abuse at all. It is estimated that 1/3 remain un-reported.

Is the person you or someone you love with jealous or possessive?
Do they accuse you/them of affairs or lying?
Are they charming one minute and nasty the next?
Do they have sudden changes in mood?
Do they stopping you from seeing your family and friends?
Do they manipulate you with compliments or threats?
Do you feel isolated or alone?
Do they constantly criticize you or humiliate you?
Do they embarrass you?
Do they make fun of you in front of family/friends or in public?
Do they make you unsure of your own judgment?
Do they control your money or access to it scrutinised?
Do they tell you what to wear or insult things you like to wear?
Do they tell you who you can see or they don’t like of your family/friends?
Do they tell you you’re useless or other names?
Are you scared of upsetting them and how they might react?
Are you pressured into having sex with them/promised things if you do?
Do they check your movements or social media/calendars?
Do they use anger/threats or frighten you to get what they want?
Are you blamed for their problems?
Are you constantly questioned about the children’s activities/movements?
Do you feel the need to manage the children around them to keep them quiet/well behaved/spotless?
Are you told you are mad/crazy/imagining things?
Do you fear/dread going home?
Are you worried if you don’t answer their calls/messages?
Do you stay away from family/friends as it saves issues?
Do you miss them even though they are vile to you?
Are you told your too sensitive/they are only joking/to lighten up?
Do they lie and then say you got it wrong when challenged?
Do they use your children as a tool/call you a bad mother/threaten you with social services?

If you answered yes to some of these questions you/your loved one might be in an abusive relationship. You are NOT alone, we have all experienced this too and are here to support you. It is not your fault, it is NOT love and you DONT deserve it. You can have a life free from abuse.

Please see our survivor services and support numbers.

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Kaleidoscopic UK

Kaleidoscopic UK

ABOUT DOMESTIC ABUSE

The UK government’s definition of domestic abuse is “any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality.”

As we know, abuse can encompass many forms including but not limited to the following. Click on each for defintions and examples:

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