Sex!Life! - Relationships - Violence, abuse and bullying

Violence, Abuse and Bullying

Abusive relationships can take many forms and bruises and broken bones are not the only consequences of being abused.

Verbal Abuse

Verbal abuse is the use of words to attack. This may take the form of arguments, criticisms, constant snide remarks or even long silences or lack of communication.

Bullying

Bullying happens in lots of places in our community. It is wrong!. In fact bullying can be present in the workplace and in many relationships. According to Evelyn Field, author of Bully Busting (Finch Publishers), there are two sorts of bullies. The malicious bully likes to see their victim suffer and will belittle their victim publicly.

The non-malicious bully doesn't even think they are hurting anyone. "It's just a bit of fun," they say. But the end result is the same. The victim feels vulnerable, depressed and intimidated. Bullies are often the result of violent or abused relationships. So if there is a child at your kid's school who is a bully, it is possible that they are learning their behaviour from their parents or from someone at home.

The Abused Becomes the Abuser

There is research that shows that witnessing parental violence is the biggest predictor that children will become violent with their partners as adults.

For many thousand of kids and teens their homes are war zones. Their parents (or stepparents) bash, hit and occasionally even murder each other.

The Australian Institute of Criminology published a paper in 2001 revealing that one quarter of young Australians have seen an incident of physical domestic violence against their mothers or stepmothers. For half of these children it was a one-off occurrence, but for the remainder it was a more common phenomenon.

The study also revealed that 22% of young people saw their mothers lash out at their male partners.

If you believe that you are in a violent situation either at work, school or home or you know someone who is contact the Centre Against Sexual Assault on 9344 2210 (24 hours) or 1800 806 292.