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

by Rachel Louise Snyder

Back when the women’s movement brought domestic violence into the national consciousness, shelter seemed the most viable answer to the problem. Get the victim out of harm’s way. Many states still did not have laws against battering one’s wife. Intimate partner violence was seen as a private family matter and what research existed around domestic violence still carried a residue of such incidents being the fault of victims inciting their abusers. It would be decades before the idea of men being held accountable for their violent behavior even became part of the national conversation. Creating shelters was the first nationally coordinated attempt to address intimate partner violence, and throughout the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, even well into the ’90s, it was more or less the only solution offered to women in dangerous situations.