What is domestic abuse?
Domestic abuse is not just physical violence. Each type of abuse is as serious as the other, no one deserves to experience any kind of abuse. If you have concerns about your relationship, contact us.
What might it look like for you?
- Walking on egg shells
- Constantly on edge
- Can do nothing right
- Being told its your fault
- No longer feel like yourself
- Personal circumstances being used against you
- Feeling exhausted and worthless
- Decisions being made for you
- Being told you are not a good parent
These are only some of the ways that people who have experienced domestic abuse have said they feel.
Warning signs
Some of the common warning signs of abuse are set out below.
Types of abuse
These are some examples of the types of abuse that people may experience. Click to expand.
- Calling you names, insulting you or continually putting you down
- Gaslighting
- Refusing to trust you and acting jealous or possessive, accusing you of cheating
- Trying to stop you from seeing family or friends
- Wanting to know where you go, who you call and who you spend time with
- Demanding to know where you are every minute, putting rules in place in terms of how long you have to answer to calls or texts
- Trapping you in your home and preventing you from leaving
- Making threats to hurt you, your children or others you care about including pets
- Giving you the silent treatment
- Blaming you for the abuse or denying that it has happened
- Cheating on you
- Telling you what to wear, whether you can wear makeup or not
- Telling you that you can’t do anything right,
- Threatening that they will have the children taken from you if you leave,
- Telling you that you have no rights in this country
- Making you feel like a bad parent, telling the children not to listen to you
- Threatening to hurt themselves
- Threatening to tell your secrets
- Stopping you having access to money or bank accounts
- Giving you money and making you tell them how you have spent it
- Stopping you from working or limiting the hours you can work
- Taking out debt in your name or making you take on debt for them
- Refusing to give you money towards household bills when they live with you
- Refusing to pay maintenance for children when the relationship has ended
- Threatening your immigration status
- Watching your social media accounts i.e. keeping track of who likes your
posts, who messages you - Sending you negative or insulting messages
- Using technology to keep an eye on you
- Sending you explicit pictures and demanding you send them in return
- Constantly texting you and making you feel you can’t be separated from your phone
- Insisting that you give them your passwords
- Revenge porn
- Calling you sexual names
- Pressuring you into having sex or performing sexual acts
- Having sex with you without your consent (Rape)
- Hurting you with objects during sex
- Involving other people in sexual activities with you against your will
- Ignoring your feelings regarding sex
- Forcing you to watch pornography or to participate in the making of it
- Withholding contraception
- Threatening to share photos of you
- Pulling your hair, punching slapping, kicking, biting or choking you
- Pushing and shoving you around
- Stopping you from sleeping
- Controlling what you eat
- Hurting you with objects or weapons for example throwing the remote control at you, threatening you with scissors
- Forcing you to use drugs or alcohol
- Harming your children or family
- Regularly giving unwanted gifts
- Making unwanted communication
- Damaging property
- Repeatedly following you or spying on you
- Showing up unexpectedly (work, social events, appointment)
- Threats
How we can help
Domestic abuse is not just physical violence. Each type of abuse is as serious as the other, no one deserves to experience any kind of abuse. If you have concerns about your relationship, contact us.
Women's Support
Our Women’s Support Service provides 1:1 emotional and practical support.
Women's Groups & Learning
Educational programmes with peer support and bringing women together.
Refuge
Safe and Comfortable accommodation with tailored support.
How You Can Help
We welcome all forms of support from simple donations to organising events. From coffee mornings to volunteering. Any help really can make a difference.
How can we help you?
We strive to ensure that our services are easy to access throughout Perthshire and we provide tailored support to individual needs.
Success stories
We’re extremely grateful for those who have bravely shared the following stories, which highlight how we can help.
Your refuge gave me the first and only opportunity to escape the abuse my children and I were still part of. As I lived near the children’s father I felt I couldn’t escape them not seeing him, and after a year of being around him with the kids every Saturday my mental health completely plummeted.
I would like to thank you. As a victim of abuse I found it really helpful and learned a lot. I can now recognise abusive personalities and avoid to put myself in abusive relationships in the future. It helped me understand what I’ve been living in and why it was so wrong. Also I have learned to see early signs of abuse. Thank you so much to Women’s Aid Perth for letting supporting me in my native language of Polish. There are so many women who will get benefit of it as they struggle with English and also talking about feelings in my own language is more comfortable.
Our partners
A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradise
