The NI Government’s strategy “Tackling Violence at Home” (2005) defines domestic abuse as follows:

“Domestic violence is the use of physical or emotional force or threat within close adult relationships in a way that causes harm or distress to victims.  In addition to actual or threatened physical or sexual assault and damage to property, domestic violence includes non-physical intimidation, such as persistent verbal abuse, emotional blackmail and enforced social or financial deprivation.  Having abused once, perpetrators usually persist, intensifying and escalating the maltreatment”

Northern Ireland Office Policy Statement 1995

What does it involve?

Domestic abuse can include physical, mental, sexual and financial abuse;

• Physical abuse can include slapping, punching, strangling, using weapons, scalding, burning.
• Mental abuse can include humiliation and degradation, threats against the woman or her children, keeping her short of money and isolating her from friends and family.
• Sexual abuse can include being forced to take part in sex acts, being sexually assaulted with objects and being raped.
• Financial abuse can include misusing or depriving a victim of money, or using money as a further means of control.

Whatever form it takes, domestic abuse is rarely a one-off incident. More usually it's a pattern of abusive and controlling behaviour through which the abuser seeks power over their victim. Domestic abuse is often serious and sustained and can be life threatening. There is evidence that domestic abuse escalates in frequency and intensity over time, and may increase at specific points in a woman's life (such as, for example, during pregnancy and following the birth of a child) or at particular times (such as separation or divorce). At its most extreme, women may be murdered by their partner.

Witnessing the abuse of their mother is emotional abuse of children and there are links between domestic abuse and all forms of child abuse.  

The Home Office has recommended a multi-agency approach to tackling domestic violence, recognising that many domestic violence cases never reach the criminal justice system.