At LWA, we like to separate fact from fiction to help everyone understand the true nature of domestic abuse and how it affects individuals. Here are some of the most common prejudices that women who have suffered abuse encounter:

MYTH: "No-one should interfere in the domestic affairs between couples."
REALITY: Domestic Abuse is a CRIMINAL OFFENCE.

MYTH: "It only happens in working-class / problem families."
REALITY: Domestic abuse is about power and control. It happens irrespective of age, class, disability, lifestyle, race and sexuality. It happens in families with and without children, it happens between people who are married and who are not. Domestic abuse is no higher in one particular family unit than another.

MYTH: "It can't be that bad or she'd leave."
REALITY: Women stay in abusive relationships for many reasons ranging from love to terror. There are practical reasons also why she may not leave: she may have nowhere else to go, or no money to feed herself and her children. She may be locked in the house for days at a time and perhaps most importantly, it has been shown that women are most at risk from abusive partners at the moment of leaving. At this stage she may have a very real fear for her life.

MYTH: "It's just the odd domestic tiff."
REALITY: Emotional and psychological abuse can and does include depriving someone of money for food and clothes, depriving her of sleep, sexual humiliation, constant criticising and undermining her self-worth, threats to kidnap her children and threats to kill her. Physical abuse can and does include rape, punches, pulling hair, setting on fire, kicking, using objects or weapons to mutilate her and even death.

MYTH: "It only happens when he drinks."
REALITY: Domestic abuse cannot be blamed on alcohol consumption. Some men may have been drinking when they are violent but many men have not. Alcohol is a convenient excuse for both abusers to use and for society to use to explain the abusers' behaviour.

MYTH: "Violent men just can't control themselves."
REALITY: Most violent men are able to control themselves not to abuse in public or in front of other people, not to cause injuries where they will show and only to be physically violent to women and children. This is not uncontrolled behaviour. Domestic abuse is not just about physical violence. It is a systematic pattern of controlling behaviour ranging from controlling household finances to not allowing woman to leave the house.

MYTH: "They must come from violent backgrounds."
REALITY: Many men who are violent towards their families or partners come from families with no history of violence. Many families in which violence occurs do not produce violent men. The family is not the only formative influence on behaviour. Blaming violence on men's own experience can offer men who abuse an excuse for their own behaviour, but it denies the experiences of the majority of individual survivors of abuse who do not go on to abuse others.

MYTH: He says "I'll never do it again."
REALITY: If he's done it once, it's easier to do it again and the next time it's often worse.