See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Violence

by Jess Hill

A strong justice response is exactly what domestic violence perpetrators least expect. As a later evaluation would find, weak justice responses lead perpetrators to believe they are ‘immune to consequences’ and make the victim feel ‘incapable of seeking help’. When this belief is reinforced for offenders time and again, they feel free to abuse with impunity. As one High Point police officer said, when you ‘see some [offenders] with eight or nine [protective order] violations against them … you are like, how can that happen in our court system? How can someone be charged eight or nine times with different victims, not just one victim, and they are still on the street?’