No Refuge: How COVID-19 Exacerbates Domestic Abuse

By Jori Hamilton

When
the coronavirus emerged to upend our lives, we were ordered to stem the spread
by taking shelter in our homes. But what if home isn’t your safe space? What if
home is, for you, one of the most dangerous places in the world?

That
is the case for millions of men, women, and children across the globe. The
great fear is that the lockdown has only made matters far worse for abuse
victims. In fact, it is now estimated that an additional
15 million domestic violence events will occur in the US as a direct result of
the “lockdown”.

That’s
because now, all buffers have been removed. As we retreat into our homes, there
is nothing to limit the amount of time a victim is at risk from their abuser,
no work or school to escape to, no time away. And then, add to this the
financial pressures of massive layoffs, the fear of the virus, and the
increased access to alcohol and drugs that inevitably comes with more time
spent at home and you have a perfect storm of danger. But how exactly can
victims recognize their dangerous environment and what resources can they use
to protect themselves?

Isolation:
The Abuser’s Best Friend

When
the extent of the danger the coronavirus poses truly began to be realized, the
first thing nations around the world did was “lockdown”. In the absence of
viable treatments, the only best and really only way to fight the virus was to
give it no opportunity for person-to-person spread. As of mid-March, virtually
the entire United States was in quarantine. Schools, businesses, and government
offices were closed. Citizens were instructed to self-isolate in their homes
for an indefinite amount of time.

But
isolation isn’t just a tool we’ve turned to in order to protect ourselves, our
loved ones, and our communities from the spread of the virus — on the flip
side, it’s also potentially allowed more victims to be isolated with their
abusers at home, in a setting that is more difficult to escape from. Through
stay-at-home orders to protect people from infection, we have also
inadvertently isolated victims.

This
is easy to understand when one considers how it’s far easier to hurt, belittle, threaten, and terrorize
victims if there’s no one there to see. That means that over the last weeks,
assailants have been free to vent their rage, fears, and frustrations on their
victims with impunity. It also means that, systematically, the victims’ trauma
is being compounded. Their sense of power and security is being eroded, and
unless they’re being physically or sexually assaulted, they may not even
recognize they’re being abused. Sometimes, even physical or sexual aggression
aren’t enough to make victims realize they are being abused, so destructive has
the abuser been to the victim’s sense of their own power, their own worth,
their own capacity to say no.

Over
time, the psychological and emotional effects of systematic abuse
can make people forget how it felt to be treated with gentleness, kindness, or
to be handled with love and care. When a push, a pinch, a pull, or a slap
becomes the only form of touch you get from the person who’s supposed to love
you, that can come to be mistaken for love. When intimacy is never a personal
choice, violation can begin to seem normal.

Mad
at the World

It’s
estimated that 1 in 4 women experience intimate partner violence (IPV)
and as many as 1 in 7 women has actually incurred an injury at the hands of
their partner. But it’s not just women who are suffering. As many as 1 in 9 men suffer severe abuse
at the hands of an intimate partner. Current findings indicate there are especially high
rates of IPV among transgender folx, as well as men and women in same-sex
relationships.

And these alarming statistics were compiled before the pandemic that confined so many victims inside their homes with their abusers. First responders and domestic violence hotlines are already seeing a significant uptick in domestic violence reports since the lockdown.

The
threat, though, isn’t just due to isolation and proximity. It also comes from
the reality that being under quarantine is, in itself, an intense psychological
stressor. Then you combine this with soaring unemployment rates and an increase
in the use of drugs and alcohol to cope with the anxieties the pandemic is
creating, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Those who aggress against their partners and children almost always have an inability to cope with the ordinary stressors of daily life, let alone to manage an unprecedented global crisis like this one. And so feelings of insecurity, fear, and hurt manifest in anger, which all too easily becomes emotional, verbal, and physical abuse.

With that said, it’s imperative to remember that there is, of course, NO justification for abuse and it is never the victim’s fault. The choice to abuse, and the responsibility for the abuse, falls squarely and completely on the abuser themselves, no matter what stressors they may claim drove them to committing the abuse. Still, it’s important to be cognizant of how these high-stress situations, especially if these are combined with the abuse of alcohol or drugs, are precisely the conditions in which domestic violence is most likely to occur.

Peace
at Last

The
devastating cascade of violence, from frustration and fear to rage and attack,
is what makes anger management programs so vitally important, particularly
during these troubled times. But you don’t have to wait for the pandemic to end
to get help. There are tools that abusers and victims alike can do to reach
out, find safety, and restore peace in the home.

Social
networking and video conferencing technologies, for instance, are for more than
online concerts and virtual cocktail hours. You can also use them to connect
with mental health counselors as well as domestic violence experts. These
professionals can help perpetrators work through their mental health challenges
including developing strategies to help them cope with the emotions that all
too often lead to the abuse.

Likewise,
counselors can help victims protect themselves, both physically and
psychologically, from the abuse. This can include helping them to identify
situations in which abuse is more likely to occur and connecting them with
resources to get themselves to safety when the situation becomes too dangerous.

Because, virus or no virus, there is still help available. And if you are in fear for your safety, then you must get out, no matter what. As frightening and dangerous as the virus may be, there may come a time when the abuser is even more so. And that is the time to break the quarantine, to get out and get help. It is still out there, and you have the right to it, the right to find a refuge in this storm that is truly that, a refuge.

___________________________________________

If you are impacted by abuse and
need support call the National Domestic
Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
If you’re not able to speak safely, log on to thehotline.org or text LOVEIS to 1-866-331-9474