Domestic Violence

 In my first blog post I talked about domestic violence and my personal experience with it. I talked about my mother and father's relationship and how to my mom everything seemed normal. My second blog post was about an interview I did with my mother. She experienced domestic violence in her home while she was younger and again when she was adult.

This blog post is about my agent of change. For my agent of change I had the kids at my moms school take a pledge against domestic violence. A girl at my mom’s school who is only 15 years old had to have a restraining order against her boyfriend because he got drunk and punched her in the face.

I had the kids at my mom’s school take this pledge because they need to be aware of domestic violence. I know some of them have seen it firsthand with their parents but I thought that raising awareness would be something good for them. The pledge basically asks that you pledge to never raise a hand to your partner or abuse them in any way whatsoever.

This is a girl in one of my mom’s classes who signed the pledge

30 kids and 15 adults took the pledge against domestic abuse. I found this on the Women Against Abuse website. Women Against Abuse is an organization that helps anyone who needs help after getting out of a domestic violence situation or help getting back on their feet after getting out.

Many women and men experience things such as financial abuse from their partner. Financial abuse is a method abusers use in order to control their partner. It limits the victim's access to their own money. They can gradually take more and more control of their partner's money leaving the victim helpless in the relationship.

Most of the time when people speak about domestic violence you hear about men hitting their wives or you don't really hear  about it at all.   

I would like to complete my you and the world project by saying that domestic violence is overlooked a lot of the time. Both men and women suffer from domestic partner abuse. There is not only abuse physically but mentally as well, in some situations abuse can be one partner having all the control in a relationship. Domestic abuse is never the victim's fault but in some relationships there are signs that it is an abusive relationship. Signs include your partner being extremely jealous of your other relationships. Making you feel bad about having friends or controlling where you go and who with.

A really big sign of an abusive relationship is when all the blame for everything is assigned to one partner. Blame for anything that goes wrong should not all be assigned to one partner. Being constantly blamed for having feelings is another method of mental abuse. Abuse comes in many different ways and need to be recognized. Mostly physical abuse is what people see but, different forms of verbal and mental abuser can also be damaging.

Annotated bibliography