Superior Court >Self- Service Center >Glossary Behaviors of an Offender, Abuser, Batterer Abuse is about power and control, and involves physical, emotional, and sexual tactics to control another person. You may be at risk of being abused if the following occur:

• Intimidation: Do you make your partner afraid by your looks, actions, gestures? Do you smash things, or destroy your partner's property or punch walls?
• Isolation: Do you want to control what your partner does, who you see and talk to, where you go?
• Emotional: Do you put your partner down or make your partner feel bad about themselves? Do you call your partner names, make your partner think they're crazy, or play mind games?
• Economic: Do you try to keep your partner from getting or keeping a job? Do you make your partner ask for money, give you an allowance or take your money?
• Sexual: Do you force your partner to have sexual conduct against their will or do or say things which makes him/her feel uncomfortable?
• Using children: Do you make your partner feel guilty about the children, use the children to give messages, use parenting time as a way to harass your partner?
• Threats: Do you make or carry out threats to hurt your partner physically, or emotionally, to damage your partner's personal property? Or to harm your partner's pets? Or to take the children, or to commit suicide, or to report your partner to Welfare or other government agencies or not pay your bills or child support unless your partner does what you want?
• Using Privilege: Do you treat your partner like a servant, making all the "big" decisions and acting like the "keeper of the castle?"
• Physical Abuse: Do you act like this: pushing, shoving, choking, hitting, punching, kicking, grabbing, twisting arms, tripping, biting, beating, throwing your partner down and using a weapon against your partner.