What Is Domestic Violence? The bodily abuse and damage to women are authentic. Ann Jones, author of Next Time She'll Be Dead, Battering and How to Stop It, writes: "According to the National Clearinghouse on Domestic Violence, more women are treated in emergency rooms for battering injuries than for rapes, muggings, and traffic accidents combined. Untold numbers of women suffer permanent injuries—brain damage, blindness, deafness, speech loss through laryngeal damage, disfigurement and mutilation, damage to or loss of internal organs, paralysis, sterility, and so on. Countless pregnant women miscarry as a result of beating, and countless birth defects and abnormalities can be attributed to battery of the mother during pregnancy. So many battered women have been infected with HIV by batterers who force them into unprotected sex, in some cases deliberately, to prevent their having sex with other men, that the National Centers for Disease Control have identified a direct link between battering and the spread of HIV and AIDS among women. And every day at least four women die violently at the hands of men who profess to love them." These circumstances come together in families where men are physically, emotionally, sexually, financially, and verbally abusive toward their partners and children. The term "battered women" simplifies the problem, as if only women were suffering, but millions of children are living in violent households, where they witness the beatings and abuse of their mother — a form of abuse in itself. Men who batter are unpredictable. A volatile mix of alcohol, drugs, jealousy and intimidation may exist. Some batterers are still living with the women they originally abused. Others are surreptitiously monitoring or stalking their ex-partners. Some physically abusive men are highly dangerous or potentially lethal. Accordingly, intervention and monitoring by a certified batterer intervention agency, usually in concert with the legal system, is crucial. < Back