CONTENTS

About This Course

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to the Issues
2. Understanding Alcohol Abuse
3. Understanding Violence Against Women
4. Alcohol and Domestic Violence
5. Alcohol, Sexual Assault, and Rape
6. Prevention and Early Intervention
7. Screening and Assessment
8. Diagnosis and Treatment
9. Legal and Ethical Issues

Supplements
Fact Sheets
Videos
Resources

Silence Hurts
Alcohol Abuse and Violence Against Women

Common Characteristics of Alcohol Abuse and Domestic Violence

Alcohol abuse and domestic violence share certain characteristics:

• They both can be passed from generation to generation.
• Both involve denial and minimization of the problem.
• Both may involve isolation of the perpetrator and the victim or family.
• Both revolve around power and control.¹

Alcohol-abusing women and women who have experienced domestic violence report similar experiences. Both may demonstrate:

• Isolation, shame, and guilt
• Behaviors that others describe as bizarre or dysfunctional
• Traumatization
• Initial denial of the problem
• Loss of support systems and fear of losing children as a result of admitting their problem
• Low ego strengths
• A belief that the problem will just go away
• Impairment of their ability to make logical decisions
• Involvement in the criminal justice system, either as a victim or as an offender
• A tendency to seek services only when in crisis
• Several returns to the substance abuse or to a relationship where battering continues before making lasting change²

Women of all ages can become victims of physical, emotional, psychological, economic, and sexual abuse. A woman who becomes a victim is at risk of abusing alcohol and other substances to cope with the pain and shame. Some abusive partners force women to drink or do drugs under the threat of further physical violence if they refuse.³ Many women are not aware that alcohol and drugs put them at risk for violence.

Destructive drinking and violence in the home can exist before a couple gets married. Bad habits (abusive drinking or verbal or physical abuse) are often established earlier in life. In abusive relationships where there is also destructive drinking, the principal issue is the need of one partner to exercise power and control over the other.⁴ This need to control is also found in abusive relationships when there is no destructive drinking.

Men who abuse their partners at home do not often get into fights elsewhere. Abusive men need power and control, so they focus on the person whom they see as weaker and more vulnerable. This is usually their female partner or a child. Men abuse alcohol in an attempt to maintain control, even though, ironically, alcohol has the opposite effect: The man loses control the more he drinks.