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Power and Control

In General

In addition to physical and sexual violence, abusers use a variety of tactics to establish power and control over victims/survivors. Many of these tactics have been outlined in the Power and Control Wheel 1, a visual representation of the general categories of abuse tactics.  The original 2 Power and Control wheel provided insight from men and women involved in domestic violence support groups and gives examples of these tactics within eight areas. The following is a list of those areas including both the big picture example of a tactic, followed by the examples of how they each play out.

  • Intimidation: Making her afraid by using looks, actions, gestures; destroying property; abusing pets; displaying weapons;
  • Using Emotional Abuse: putting her down; making her feel bad about herself; calling her names; making her think she’s crazy; making her feel guilty;
  • Using Isolation: Controlling what she does, who she sees and talks to, what she reads, where she goes; limiting her outside involvement; using jealousy to justify actions;
  • Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming: Making light of the abuse and not taking her concerns about it seriously; saying the abuse didn’t happen; shifting responsibility for abusive behavior;
  • Using Children: Using children to relay messages; using visitation to harass her; threatening to take children away.
  • Using Male Privilege: Treating her like a servant; making all the big decisions; being the one to define men’s and women’s roles;
  • Using Economic Abuse: Preventing her from getting or keeping a job; making her ask for money; giving her an allowance; taking her money; not letting her know about or have access to family income;
  • Using Coercion and Threats: Making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt her; threatening to leave her, to commit suicide; making her drop charges; making her do illegal things.

For Women with Disabilities

In addition to the tactics above, there are other, unique dynamics that abusers use against women with disabilities. For example, an abuser might:

  • prevent her from leaving the relationship by removing access to adaptive or assistive equipment;
  • make her reliant on him for transportation if she is unable to drive and no other accessible transportation options exist;
  • isolate her by refusing to take her anywhere,
  • isolate her from family, friends, or resources by limiting her access to adaptive and assistive technology that she needs to communicate;
  • break, steal or hide the adaptive or assistive equipment she needs;
  • exploit her economic dependence if she can’t work,
  • tell her she won’t be able to make it alone because she can’t afford it or function without him;
  • convince her she doesn’t deserve to be, or won’t ever be, in another relationship because of her disability;
  • claim that she is an unfit parent because of her disability;
  • blame her for financial problems if any of her healthcare is not paid for by insurance;
  • take advantage of services not being accessible; and/or
  • minimize her credibility to police or other concerned parties by playing into stereotypes that people with disabilities are not credible.

Specific Tactics Used Against Women with Disabilities

While these examples give you a sense of how women with disabilities can be affected, abusers can use tactics that even more specifically target a woman’s specific functional abilities and limitation. For instance: an abuser might take away the wheelchair or scooter of a woman with mobility limitations; a stalker might track his Deaf victim/survivor through her pager or TTY phone; and a perpetrator might become a relied-upon caregiver before assaulting a woman with a cognitive function limitation. There are many more specific examples of functional limitations.

1The Domestic Abuse Intervention Project after interviewing women who experience violence in support groups and men in abuser’s groups. Women were asked to identify the ways in which they felt they were controlled, and men were asked to identify the tactics used to maintain an environment of fear and control. You can find out more about the Power and Control Wheel at DAIP’s website.


2Over the years, the Duluth wheel has been adapted to the needs of various populations- including women who are Deaf. You can find the adapted wheels at the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s website