No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

by Rachel Louise Snyder

I want to stop here in this moment and acknowledge how easy it would be to blow past, how important it is to really understand. The Danger Assessment is one thing that gives an idea of risk, a kind of mathematical calculation of a life in which there are infinite variables. Martina’s question is the kind of drilling down detail that many don’t think to do—police, advocates, even attorneys. They ask for the facts, the play-by-play of a violent moment, but they may not ask what the person was thinking or feeling in that same moment. But Martina learns, from Grace’s answer, not only about Byron’s dangerousness, and his carelessness with another life, but also about Grace’s vulnerability. She thought she was going to die. This is sometimes where the discrepancy comes from when people say victims aren’t aware of the dangerousness of their own situations: it’s not so much that they’re unaware as that they don’t know they know. A kind of cognitive dissonance. Martina will underscore then what Grace knows, but may not be fully aware of: that she can trust her own gauge of danger.