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

by Rachel Louise Snyder

In a local New Jersey article covering the incident, the police chief said the incident followed a “domestic situation.”2 This, too, is part of the problem. The language we use to describe what is, by any measure, a crime. Domestic disputes, domestic violence, private conflicts, volatile relationships, mistreatment, domestic abuse. All of these are passive constructions, eradicating responsibility not only on behalf of the abuser, but on behalf of law enforcement as well. That domestic violence is a crime shouldn’t be obscured, not least of all by those charged with protecting the public from violence. In my view, although I use the term “domestic violence” in this book because it is the most commonly used reference for what I am investigating, a far more accurate term, and one that captures the particular psychological, emotional and physical dynamics, is “intimate partner terrorism.”