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Anywhere Is Better Than An Abusive Home.
Abuse is not love. It is control.
Mamta Bhatt, a 28-year-old Virginia nurse and mom to a 1 year old baby, disappeared in the end of July. Her 37-year-old husband, an IT tech and former member of the Army Reserve, Naresh Bhatt did not report her missing for almost 8 days.
Bhatt was later arrested Aug. 22 and charged with concealing a dead body after searches of their home turned up evidence of a murder according to court records. Mamta’s remains have not been found yet.
According to the CDC, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men will experience physical violence by their intimate partner at some point during their lifetimes. Annually, domestic violence is responsible for over 1500 deaths in the United States.
- Nearly 1.5 million high school students nationwide experience physical abuse from a dating partner in a single year.
- Nearly half (43%) of dating college women report experiencing violent and abusive dating behaviors.
Dr Angela Arnold, a psychiatrist specializing in Women’s Mental Health in Atlanta states — “The single most dangerous time for a woman is from the time they get pregnant to 1 year post partum . Homicide and suicide are the number one way a woman dies other than any other medical complication they can have.”
Domestic violence is about repeated and sequential patterns that happen again and again. At the root of abuse and domestic violence is coercive control.
Coercive control is trapping someone in a relationship. They are in a mini hostage situation within their own home. All abuse tactics like violence, financial abuse, isolating them from support, stalking work together to create the compliance subjugation and entrapment.
A 2017 study conducted by Dr. Jane Monckton Smith, criminology at the University of Gloucestershire, suggests that abusive relationships that lead to the death of the victims can be tracked through an 8 stage progression of control and physical domination.
- A pre-relationship history of stalking or abuse by the perpetrator.
- The romance developing quickly into a serious relationship.
- The relationship becoming dominated by coercive…
