What Is DV (Domestic Violence)? Forms, Federal Laws, and Help

Domestic violence, often shortened to DV, is a pattern of abusive behavior one person uses to gain or keep power and control over an intimate partner or family member. It covers far more than hitting. Federal law and most states recognize physical, sexual, emotional, psychological, economic, and technological abuse as forms of domestic violence, and the conduct can occur in marriages, cohabiting relationships, dating relationships, and between people who share a child, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.¹

The Violence Against Women Act defines it as “the use or attempted use of physical abuse or sexual abuse, or a pattern of any other coercive behavior committed, enabled, or solicited to gain or maintain power and control over a victim, including verbal, psychological, economic, or technological abuse that may or may not constitute criminal behavior.”² That last clause matters. Behavior can be part of domestic violence even when the single act, taken alone, would not be a crime.

The pattern is what distinguishes domestic violence from an isolated argument or one-time assault. The Power and Control Wheel, developed by the Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs in Duluth, Minnesota, is the framework most widely used by advocates and law enforcement to map how physical force, intimidation, isolation, economic restriction, and psychological manipulation interlock to maintain dominance over a partner.³ Under that framework, abuse is not caused by stress, substance use, or anger. It is a choice to control another person.

Prevalence is substantial. The CDC reports that more than one in three women and more than one in six men in the United States have experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime.⁴ The FBI’s five-year special report covering 2020 through 2024 counted more than 1.1 million domestic violence victims reported to police and more than 11,000 domestic violence murders during that span.⁵

The Forms Abuse Takes

Abusers typically use several of these at once. Recognizing the categories that leave no bruises is often the first step toward naming what is happening.

Physical abuse. Hitting, slapping, shoving, grabbing, biting, strangling, denying medical care, or forcing the use of alcohol or drugs.¹
Sexual abuse. Coercing or forcing sexual contact without consent, including marital rape, attacks on sexual body parts, forcing degrading sexual acts, or sharing intimate images without permission.⁶
Emotional and psychological abuse. Constant criticism, name-calling, gaslighting (making the victim question their own perception of reality), threats of harm to the victim or their loved ones, destruction of property or pets, and forced isolation from family, friends, work, or school.¹
Economic abuse. Controlling access to money, credit cards, or bank accounts; sabotaging employment; running up a partner’s debt; exploiting powers of attorney; or refusing to pay child or spousal support. The National Network to End Domestic Violence reports financial abuse appears in 99% of domestic violence cases and is a primary reason victims struggle to leave.⁶
Technological abuse. Using apps, GPS tracking, internet-connected devices, social media, or cameras to monitor, stalk, harass, impersonate, or control a partner.¹

Who Counts as a Domestic Partner Under the Law

Domestic violence is not any conflict between family members. State statutes specify the relationships that qualify. The typical list includes spouses, former spouses, cohabitants, co-parents, and dating partners. California, for example, defines a “cohabitant” as two unrelated adults living together for a substantial period in a relationship characterized by shared finances, property, or public identification as a couple.² The qualifying relationship, combined with the defined act or pattern of abuse, is what triggers domestic violence law rather than ordinary assault or harassment law.

Warning Signs

Domestic violence rarely begins with a punch. Early patterns to watch for in a partner’s behavior include:

Rushing the relationship. Pressuring a partner to move in together, marry, or combine finances quickly, and ignoring requests to slow down.⁷
Isolation. Insisting a partner stop seeing friends or family, quit a job, or drop out of school.
Excessive jealousy and monitoring. Demanding to know a partner’s location at all times, checking their phone, or making constant accusations of cheating.
Criticism and belittling. Name-calling, dismissing achievements, or telling a partner no one else would want them.
Financial control. Taking a partner’s money, running up their credit card debt, or sabotaging their employment.
Refusal to accept responsibility. Blaming the partner for the abuser’s own behavior, or attributing every failed past relationship to the other person.⁷

Signs may also show in the person being abused: unexplained injuries with vague explanations, social withdrawal, missing work frequently, visible anxiety or fear around a partner, or having no access to personal funds.⁸ Children living in a home with domestic violence may become aggressive or withdrawn, show declining grades, have nightmares, or develop stress-related physical symptoms.

When the Danger Is Highest

Roughly one in five homicide victims in the United States is killed by an intimate partner.⁴ Certain factors sharply raise the risk of lethal violence, and advocates use structured screening tools to flag them.

The Danger Assessment, developed by researcher Jacquelyn Campbell, is a 20-item weighted questionnaire scoring risk from variable to extreme danger. It weighs the abuser’s unemployment, stalking behavior, access to firearms, prior arrests for domestic violence, and threats to harm children, among other factors. Validation studies show strong predictive accuracy for attempted femicide.⁹ A shorter 12-question tool, the Lethality Assessment Program originally developed in Maryland, lets officers at the scene of a domestic violence call screen a victim and connect them by phone to a hotline advocate on the spot. The approach grew from a sobering finding: only 4% of victims later killed by a partner had contacted a hotline or shelter during the prior year.¹⁰

Non-fatal strangulation is one of the strongest single predictors of future homicide. A 2008 Johns Hopkins University study found victims who survived strangulation by a partner were 750% more likely to later be killed by that partner. All 50 states now classify domestic-violence-related strangulation as a felony.¹¹¹² Penalty structures vary; some states elevate the charge further when the victim is pregnant, under a certain age, or the offender has prior convictions.

Federal Laws That Apply

The Violence Against Women Act

VAWA, first passed in 1994, is the main federal framework for domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. It funds grant programs through the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women and the Department of Health and Human Services, and has been reauthorized in 2000, 2005, 2013, and 2022.¹³ Each round added protections. The 2000 version added dating violence and legal assistance. The 2005 version added prevention programming and housing protections. The 2013 version expanded protections for Native women, immigrants, college students, and public housing residents.¹⁴ The 2022 reauthorization, signed on March 15, 2022, strengthened housing protections, created funding for culturally specific services, established a Gender-Based Violence Prevention Office within HUD, and expanded tribal jurisdiction over non-Native offenders.¹⁵

Federal Criminal Statutes

Three statutes directly target domestic violence crossing state lines: interstate travel to commit domestic violence (18 U.S.C. § 2261), interstate stalking including cyberstalking (18 U.S.C. § 2261A), and interstate travel to violate a protection order (18 U.S.C. § 2262). Penalties range from five years’ imprisonment when no injury results to life imprisonment if the victim dies.¹⁶

Firearm Prohibitions

Federal law bars two categories of domestic violence offenders from possessing guns. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), a person subject to a qualifying domestic violence restraining order that includes a court finding of a “credible threat” cannot possess firearms while the order is in effect. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence is barred from possessing firearms.¹⁶

The restraining-order provision was upheld in United States v. Rahimi, decided June 21, 2024, in an 8-1 ruling. The Court held that when a court has found an individual poses a credible threat to another’s physical safety, that person may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. The majority pointed to historical “surety laws” and “going armed” statutes as analogous precedents and rejected the argument that modern firearms regulations must be exact replicas of founding-era laws.¹⁷

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of June 2022 closed what was known as the “boyfriend loophole,” extending the misdemeanor firearms ban to people convicted of abuse against a current or recent former dating partner, not just spouses, cohabitants, or co-parents. First-time offenders convicted under that dating-partner provision face a five-year prohibition rather than a lifetime ban and may regain gun rights after remaining offense-free. The provision applies only to convictions after the law’s June 25, 2022 enactment date.¹⁸

Tribal Jurisdiction

For decades, the 1978 Supreme Court decision in Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe prevented tribal courts from prosecuting non-Native defendants for crimes on tribal lands. VAWA 2013 partially reversed that by recognizing tribal Special Domestic Violence Criminal Jurisdiction. VAWA 2022, effective October 1, 2022, expanded that jurisdiction to cover sexual assault, stalking, sex trafficking, child violence, obstruction of justice, and assaults on tribal justice personnel. Tribes exercising this jurisdiction must provide free counsel for indigent defendants, use law-trained judges, and draw jury pools that include non-Indians.¹⁹

Protective Orders and State Law

Every state and the District of Columbia authorizes courts to issue protective orders, sometimes called restraining orders, in domestic violence cases. An order can require an abuser to stop all contact, stay a specified distance from the victim’s home and workplace, vacate a shared residence, surrender firearms, and attend a batterer’s intervention program. Many states also allow orders to set temporary child custody and to protect pets.²⁰

The usual process begins with paperwork filed in the county where either party lives or where the abuse occurred. Courts often grant a temporary order the same day, then set a formal hearing within one to three weeks to decide on a longer-term order. VAWA’s “full faith and credit” provision requires every state to honor and enforce a valid protection order issued by any other state.²⁰

Violating a protective order can trigger arrest and criminal charges. Police generally enforce no-contact and stay-away provisions directly. Failures to comply with financial or counseling requirements are typically handled through contempt-of-court proceedings, which can carry jail time if pursued as criminal contempt.²¹

Protections Beyond the Criminal Case

Child Custody

Domestic violence weighs heavily in custody. Courts apply a “best interest of the child” standard, and evidence of abuse counts against the abusive parent. California Family Code Section 3044, for example, creates a presumption that sole legal and physical custody should go to the non-abusive parent when the other parent has been convicted of domestic violence or committed abuse within the past five years. A judge who grants custody or unsupervised visitation to a parent accused of domestic violence must explain the reasoning on the record.²²

Children who witness domestic violence experience effects comparable to those of children who are directly abused, and the risk of direct harm to a child often rises after separation. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges also tells judges that “parental alienation syndrome” has been discredited by the scientific community and does not meet the standard for admissible expert testimony.²³

Employment

Several states give domestic violence survivors specific workplace rights. Washington requires employers to provide leave (paid or unpaid) so victims can attend court, obtain medical or psychological help, access social services, or relocate, and to provide reasonable safety accommodations such as a job transfer, changed work phone number, or added security unless doing so creates undue hardship. Retaliation against actual or perceived victims is prohibited.²⁴ Oregon requires reasonable safety accommodations from all employers and unpaid leave from those with six or more workers, enforced through the Bureau of Labor and Industries.²⁵ Massachusetts provides up to 15 days of leave within a 12-month period for employees at companies with 50 or more workers.²⁶ In all three states, documentation of victim status must be kept confidential.

Immigration

Federal law provides several immigration pathways for noncitizen survivors, recognizing that immigration status is itself a tool abusers use.

VAWA self-petition. Abused spouses, children, or parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents can petition for legal status on their own, without the abuser’s knowledge or cooperation and without needing a law enforcement referral.²⁷
U visa. Available to victims of qualifying crimes, including domestic violence, who have suffered substantial physical or mental abuse and are helpful to law enforcement. The annual cap is 10,000 principal petitioners; applicants beyond the cap may receive deferred action while they wait.²⁸
T visa. For survivors of severe human trafficking. Applicants must be present in the U.S. due to the trafficking, show that removal would cause extreme hardship, and cooperate with law enforcement, with exceptions for minors and those too traumatized to participate. The annual cap is 5,000, which has never been reached.²⁷

How to Get Help

The National Domestic Violence Hotline is the main round-the-clock national resource:

Phone: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
Text: “START” to 88788
Online chat: thehotline.org²⁹

Specialized lines include the StrongHearts Native Helpline (1-844-762-8483), the National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline (1-866-331-9474), the Deaf Hotline (1-855-812-1001), and RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-HOPE). State coalitions, reachable through the Office on Violence Against Women or the National Network to End Domestic Violence, can connect survivors with local shelters, legal assistance, counseling, and emergency funds.³⁰

Anyone in immediate danger should call 911. Advocates also warn that an abusive partner may monitor internet activity, and recommend clearing browser history after searching for help or using a device the abuser cannot access.

1
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2
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3
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17
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18
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20
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21
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24
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25
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Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Law About Employment Leave for Domestic Violence
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