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Domestic violence did not begin with any one family — and understanding it requires looking at both human behavior and the systems surrounding it.
Domestic violence can include physical violence, sexual violence, stalking, psychological aggression, coercive control, isolation, financial control, threats and other behaviors used within intimate relationships.
Some people immediately recognize what is happening to them. Others may live inside it for years before having language for what they are experiencing.
Our goal is not to tell survivors what their experiences mean.
Our goal is to listen, document, study, verify and understand.
SOMETIMES YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO CALL IT
“Not recognizing the name of what is happening does not mean it isn’t happening.”
WHEN YOU DON’T RECOGNIZE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE — AND THE SYSTEM MAKES YOU QUESTION IT.
From one survivor’s perspective, when institutions that were expected to respond to domestic violence did not respond as expected, it created another layer of confusion.
If this was domestic violence, why wasn’t law enforcement responding?
If a child was being harmed, why wasn’t the child-protection system responding as expected?
If domestic violence was occurring within a military family, why wasn’t the system designed to address it providing protection?
The lack of an expected response can create another layer of uncertainty for a survivor:
If this is domestic violence, why isn’t the system responding the way I was told it would?
Am I misunderstanding what is happening?
Why does what I am experiencing seem different from what I was taught would happen when someone asks for help?
These questions raise an important research question: How can an institution’s response—or failure to respond—affect a survivor’s ability to recognize, understand and make sense of domestic violence, coercive control and abuse?
How can an institution’s response—or failure to respond—affect a survivor’s ability to recognize, understand and make sense of domestic violence, coercive control and abuse?
Understanding domestic violence may require us to study not only what happens inside an abusive relationship, but how people learn what treatment they should accept — and what happens when the systems they trust reinforce that confusion.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS NOT RARE
MORE THAN 1 IN 3 U.S. WOMEN
The CDC’s 2023/2024 national survey found that 34% of U.S. women — nearly 43.5 million — had experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime.
These numbers are estimates, not a complete count. The CDC notes that the survey represents the noninstitutionalized U.S. adult population; some populations therefore are not represented in these estimates.
MORE THAN 1 IN 6 U.S. MEN
The same survey estimated that 17% of U.S. men — approximately 20.7 million — had experienced these forms of intimate-partner violence during their lifetime.
COERCION AND CONTROL MATTER TOO
Nearly 1 in 3 women and more than 1 in 5 men reported psychological aggression by an intimate partner during their lifetimes.
WHAT DO THESE NUMBERS REPRESENT?
The CDC’s 2023/2024 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey estimated that more than 1 in 3 U.S. women (34%, or nearly 43.5 million women) and more than 1 in 6 U.S. men (17%, or approximately 20.7 million men) experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetimes. These figures help show that intimate partner violence affects millions of women and men, but they do not represent every form of abuse a person may experience.
The CDC separately measures psychological aggression, which includes expressive aggression and coercive control and entrapment. Nearly 1 in 3 U.S. women (30.2%) and more than 1 in 5 U.S. men (22.3%) reported psychological aggression by an intimate partner during their lifetimes.
Coercive control can involve behaviors such as isolation from family and friends, controlling money, monitoring someone’s whereabouts, threats, destruction of important belongings and making decisions that should belong to the other person. Understanding domestic violence therefore requires us to examine not only individual acts of violence, but patterns of behavior that can restrict another person’s freedom, choices and independence.
COERCIVE CONTROL: LOOKING AT THE PATTERN
Research on coercive control examines how repeated behaviors can work together as a pattern of power and control. Research by Dr. Emma Katz has also examined how children may experience coercive control directly, including restrictions involving relationships, movement, activities, resources and everyday freedom.
UNDERSTANDING COERCIVE CONTROL REQUIRES LOOKING AT THE PATTERN — NOT ONLY THE INDIVIDUAL INCIDENTS.
RESEARCH & FURTHER READING
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HAS A HISTORY
We cannot understand today’s systems without examining where they came from. For much of American history, abuse within marriage was often treated as a private family matter, while married women had substantially fewer legal rights and protections than they do today.
Domestic violence was also historically treated by much of the criminal-justice system as a private family matter rather than something requiring meaningful government intervention.
American law inherited legal traditions in which married women’s legal independence was severely restricted under coverture. Historical legal doctrine also included a marital-rape exemption grounded in the concept that marriage was understood to create irrevocable consent to sexual intercourse. Legal scholars trace that doctrine back centuries.
Major changes in shelters, policing, prosecution and law came largely through advocacy and reform movements during the twentieth century, culminating federally in measures including the Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
What beliefs and practices disappeared — and what attitudes may have survived after the laws changed?
This is one of the questions My Turn To Speak intends to examine through history, psychology, sociology, criminology, anthropology, economics, neuroscience and victimology.
We are not beginning with a predetermined conclusion. We are following the evidence.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE DID NOT BEGIN WITH US
When people experience domestic violence or abuse, it can be easy to believe the problem exists only within themselves, their partner or their family.
But behaviors involving power, ownership, forced obedience, violence, sexual control, economic control, restriction of movement and separation of families also appear throughout American history — including within systems that were once authorized and enforced by law.
SLAVERY, CONTROL & THE DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE
Under American slavery, human beings were legally treated as property. People could be bought and sold. Their labor and movement could be controlled. Families could be separated through sale, and violence was used to maintain an institution based upon forced labor and the denial of individual autonomy.
The domestic slave trade created a commercial system for transferring enslaved human beings between enslavers. Historical records still contain bills of sale documenting mothers, fathers and children being assigned monetary values and legally transferred as property.
This history also involved children. Smithsonian collections contain original bills of sale documenting the sale of children, mothers with their children, and entire family groups.
MARRIAGE, WOMEN & LEGAL CONTROL
American law also inherited the doctrine of coverture from English common law. Under coverture, a married woman’s independent legal identity was severely restricted. Historically, coverture limited married women’s ability to own and control property, enter contracts and act independently in many legal matters.
American law also historically recognized a marital exemption from rape laws. Legal scholarship preserved by the U.S. Department of Justice traces that doctrine to the idea that marriage constituted continuing consent to sexual relations.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE WAS TREATED AS A PRIVATE MATTER
For much of American history, domestic violence was often treated by law enforcement and the criminal-justice system as a private family matter rather than a matter requiring government intervention. That approach continued well into the twentieth century.
A 1985 criminal-justice paper preserved in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs library reported that police nonintervention had been the dominant response to wife abuse. Police training had focused largely on mediation or referral rather than arrest, prosecutorial attitudes reinforced those practices, and judges often treated spouse abuse as a private matter.
The researchers identified another consequence of that response: “Failure to arrest perpetrators is a signal that no crime has occurred.”
That observation raises an important question for our research today: What happens to a survivor’s understanding of domestic violence when they report what is happening, but the response of the system appears to tell them that no crime occurred?
Beginning in the late twentieth century, advocacy, research and legal reforms increasingly challenged the treatment of domestic violence as a private matter. In 1994, Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the first comprehensive federal law focused on domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking. The Department of Justice says VAWA was designed in part to improve the responses of law enforcement, prosecutors and courts to crimes historically treated as private matters.
THE LAWS CHANGED. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BELIEFS?
Ending a law does not automatically tell us what happened to the behaviors, beliefs, social norms and institutions that developed while that law existed.
That leads to questions My Turn To Speak is now investigating:
What happened to beliefs about ownership, obedience and authority after the laws changed?
How were ideas about control inside families passed from one generation to another?
Which harmful beliefs disappeared?
Which changed form?
Which may have been reinforced by other institutions or environments?
How do children learn what relationships, authority, discipline and power are supposed to look like?
How do institutions reinforce harmful behavior — and how can institutions instead interrupt it?
We are not beginning with a predetermined conclusion.
We are beginning with documented history and following the evidence forward.
FOLLOW THE RESEARCH WITH US
My Turn To Speak is developing HOW WE STUDY HARM: History. Human Behavior. Systems. Science. Solutions.
We will examine American history alongside criminology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, neuroscience, victimology and other relevant disciplines.
We will examine the experiences of people who were harmed, the behavior of people who caused harm, and the institutions and environments surrounding both.
Understanding why harm occurs does not excuse it. Understanding it gives us information we can use to prevent it.
Our process:
LISTEN → DOCUMENT → VERIFY → STUDY THE HISTORY → FIND THE ROOT CAUSE → APPLY THE SCIENCE → DESIGN A SOLUTION → TAKE ACTION → MEASURE THE RESULTS → ADJUST WHEN THE EVIDENCE TELLS US TO.
EXPLORE THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
WHEN THE PERSON CAUSING HARM HOLDS INSTITUTIONAL POWER
Domestic violence can occur in every profession, community and background. People who experience domestic violence — and people who cause harm — can be of any race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, profession, education level or socioeconomic status. A person’s profession or background does not tell us whether they will cause harm.
No profession should be presumed harmful. No profession should be exempt from examination.
Some occupations do, however, raise additional questions for research because they involve institutional authority, specialized training, access to weapons, command structures or positions of public trust. When domestic violence occurs in these circumstances, researchers can examine not only the behavior of the individual, but how the surrounding institution identifies, records, prevents and responds to that behavior.
For a survivor, there may also be an additional contradiction when someone whose public role is associated with protection, safety, duty or service causes harm within an intimate relationship — particularly when the survivor then turns to the institution surrounding that person for help.
Studying that institutional response is not an accusation against everyone who works within the institution. It is an examination of how systems respond when harm occurs.
Domestic violence committed by law-enforcement officers presents a particular accountability question because the institution employing the accused person may also be part of the system a survivor would ordinarily contact for assistance.
No profession should be presumed guilty. No profession should be exempt from examination.
RESEARCH & SOURCES
Our work is grounded in established research, government reports, historical evidence and the experiences people share with us. These sources provide a starting point for understanding domestic violence, how it affects people, and how institutions identify, record, prevent and respond to it.
NATIONAL INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE DATA
CDC — National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2023/2024 Intimate Partner Violence Data Brief
“The CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey provides national and state prevalence estimates for intimate partner violence. The survey examines physical violence, sexual violence, stalking and psychological aggression by intimate partners.”
HOW THE NATIONAL DATA IS COLLECTED
CDC — National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey Reports & Methodology
“Understanding the research method matters. CDC publishes the methodology and documentation behind NISVS so readers can examine how participants were sampled, how experiences were measured and how national estimates were calculated.”
DOMESTIC ABUSE IN MILITARY FAMILIES
U.S. Government Accountability Office — Domestic Abuse: Actions Needed to Enhance DOD’s Prevention, Response, and Oversight
“GAO found that the Department of Defense recorded more than 40,000 domestic-abuse incidents involving servicemembers, spouses or intimate partners during fiscal years 2015–2019 that met DOD criteria. Seventy-four percent were categorized as physical abuse. GAO also identified gaps involving data collection, reporting, prevention, response and oversight and made 32 recommendations.”
WOMEN VETERANS & INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — Intimate Partner Violence
“The VA reports that approximately one-third of women Veterans experience intimate partner violence during their lives. VA research and programs also examine the effects of intimate partner violence and approaches to prevention, intervention and support.”
WHY DATA & OVERSIGHT MATTER
U.S. Government Accountability Office — DOD Domestic Abuse Oversight
“GAO found that DOD did not have complete and accurate data for all domestic-abuse allegations and had not collected comprehensive data on domestic-violence allegations and related commander actions despite a statutory requirement. These findings demonstrate why complete data, transparent reporting and independent examination of institutional responses matter.”
RESEARCH IS PART OF THE PROCESS — NOT THE END OF IT.
Published research can tell us what has already been documented. Community reports can identify questions that may not yet be adequately studied. My Turn To Speak uses both to determine what needs further investigation. Individual submissions are reports, not automatically verified facts. We look for corroboration through additional accounts, documents, public records and established research before drawing conclusions.