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The toll
Abuse does not end when the shouting stops. It follows people into clinics, classrooms, payroll offices and courtrooms for years afterwards. Everything below is measured, and every source is named.
Intimate partner violence is associated with injury, unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted infection, and long-term conditions including chronic pain and cardiovascular disease. Women who have experienced partner violence are significantly more likely to report poor general health years after the violence ends.
World Health Organization, Violence against womenDepression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, sleep disorder, alcohol use and suicidal thinking are all raised among survivors. This is not weakness. It is what prolonged fear does to a nervous system.
World Health Organization, Violence against womenChildren who grow up around domestic abuse carry higher rates of behavioural difficulty, school disruption and later mental ill health. Exposure to violence in the home is counted internationally as an adverse childhood experience.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Adverse Childhood ExperiencesSurvivors lose days, jobs, references and savings. The CDC puts the estimated lifetime cost at $103,767 per female victim and $23,414 per male victim, and the lifetime economic burden of intimate partner violence in the United States near $3.6 trillion.
CDC, NISVS intimate partner violence data briefDomestic abuse is one of the leading drivers of homelessness among women and children. Leaving frequently means losing a home, a school place, a congregation and a support network in a single week.
United Nations Women, Facts and figuresGlobally, around 137 women are killed every day by a partner or a family member, and roughly 60 per cent of all female homicide victims are killed by someone they know. Fatality is the end of a pattern that was almost always visible earlier.
UNODC and UN Women, femicide estimatesRead this part carefully
Everything on this page describes what untreated, uninterrupted abuse does. It is not a prediction about any one person. Survivors recover health, work, confidence and family life every day, and they do it fastest when somebody helps early with the practical things: a safe bed, a lawyer, a phone that is not being tracked, a month of groceries. That is the whole of our work.
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