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

by Rachel Louise Snyder

We live in a culture in which we are told our children must have a father, that a relationship is the ultimate goal, that family is the bedrock of society, that it’s better to stay and work out one’s “issues” in private than to leave and raise kids as a single mother.

They stay in abusive marriages because they understand something that most of us do not, something from the inside out, something that seems to defy logic: as dangerous as it is in their homes, it is almost always far more dangerous to leave.

“Most tactics used in coercive control have no legal standing, are rarely identified with abuse and are almost never targeted by intervention.”

The abuser has, over the years, slowly cut off whatever escape routes—family, friends, community—may have once existed for them. And ultimately, coercive control is about stealing someone’s freedom entirely.

Another crucial element of coercive control is isolation of a victim from her own family.

Leaving is never an event; it’s a process.

“We now know it’s the ones who don’t show up in court, who don’t renew the restraining orders, who are in the most danger.”3