Editor’s note: This is the first in a four part series on domestic violence. The second part of the series will run in late August with the series culminating in October, which is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

To outsiders, an abusive relationship could seem like a black and white situation.

But, experts on domestic violence say those relationships are complicated, all shades of gray.

Someone may see a couple where one of the partners — statistically more often than not the man — is abusive and the other a victim as rocky, tumultuous, volatile or dysfunctional.

But, that’s not how experts define it. It goes well beyond the surface, well beyond the visible bruises and apparently petty arguments, and is about far more than what outsiders may think.

“The way we talk about domestic violence behaviorally is that we see it as a pattern of coercion and assaultive behaviors that one person uses to gain power and control over their intimate partner,” said Merril Cousin, executive director of the King County Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

“It goes so much beyond (physical violence) and really what is central is this issue of the use of coercion power and control. It’s this pattern of one person using this range of tactics to get control over their partner.”

Victoria Throm, founder of the Covington Domestic Violence Task Force, provides assistance to victims in that role as well as her position with the city of Covington as a Human Services Specialist for the city. It’s one of the many hats she wears.

“Most people, I would imagine, think of domestic violence as strictly physical,” Throm said. “The biggest denial is when it’s emotional.”

And Throm, a survivor herself, identifies closely with the denial of the other aspects of abusive behavior that occurs in such a relationship.

“I was that way,” she said. “I’ve had people recently say to me, ‘He didn’t hit me, so, it’s not abuse.’ To me that’s probably the area that’s the most difficult to understand because they don’t physically harm them. It’s so subtle and it just wears you down. Your self-esteem is gone.”

Throm explained there are no cut and dried answer to what domestic violence looks like because “it is very complicated. Every story is unique, so, there are so many facets. There’s not just one pat answer or description. Control and manipulation are the keys.”

Sometimes the abuse can surprise outsiders, Throm said, because abusers can live a double life.

“These abusers, men and women — most of the cases of abusers are men, but that isn’t always the case — these guys can be charming in public and they could be totally different at home,” she said. “They can be very selective.”

And Throm said that smart women who are well educated and have good jobs in positions of power can find themselves in abusive relationships.

“It’s not just low income,” she said. “That is another stereotype that is very wrong is that it affects only low income (families).”

It goes back to the idea that the abuser feels compelled to control his partner, said Keith Beach, founder of the Jennifer Beach Foundation which was started in Covington and is now based out of Auburn.

“The model throughout history to keep people down is to keep them dumb and to keep them poor and abusers know that,” Beach said. “They can take the smartest woman around and continually demean her…to keep her not informed of what’s going on in society… demanding that someone reports every penny that they spend and where they spend it. But, mostly for a way to show power over another.”

Beach added that he had heard a statistic that women on average will attempt to leave an abusive relationship five to seven times before she finally breaks it off.

“I think you become blind,” he said. “I met a woman who had been through a couple relationships that had been abusive and she decided to just give up on having relationships.”

Instead, Beach suggested she revise her “checklist for a relationship,” an approach she hadn’t thought of because she had become so focused on the kinds of relationships she had been drawn into in the past.

STATISTICS AND EXAMPLES

Cousin said she believes on both a local and national level society has come a long way in the past 30 years.

“People used to think this was a fairly rare occurrence,” Cousin said. “If someone got beat up by their partner, they must have done something to deserve it. People now really recognize that domestic violence is a big problem… and that really using violence against an intimate partner is not OK.”

There is not as much awareness, however, of all the different kinds of coercive behavior abusers can use that range from threats to controlling and monitoring everything the partner does.

Throm said she had a client come to her who left her cell phone in her car because her husband was tech savvy.

“He had cameras set up in their house,” Throm said. “She was certain he had bugged her phone. She was certain that he had put a GPS unit on her car. He knew every place she’d been.”

And that is just one example of the kind of coercive behavior abusers use to maintain control of their victims.

Cousin said that on a national level, statistics show that an estimated 25 to 30 percent of women are victims of domestic violence.

“Usually there is, if not overt violence, the thread of implied violence,” she said. “The actual physical violence may be sporadic, but these other kinds of violence could be going on all the time. And a lot of what we consider abuse… doesn’t get reported to law enforcement.”

A 2006 survey of female patients of Group Health providers showed that 44 percent said they “had experienced intimate partner violence in their lifetime.”

HOW THEY HELP,

In Covington, the city partners with the YWCA and the Domestic Abuse Women’s Network, DAWN, and provides funding for services, Throm said.

A part-time community advocate, Milena Chausheva, runs a support group in Covington as part of the services the YWCA provides.

DAWN has the only confidential domestic violence shelter in south King County, Throm said, and according to statistics provided by the agency it received 78 calls in 2009 from Covington clients.

“That number ranges in the 70 to 90s each year,” Throm said. “I post flyers for (domestic violence) help with tear-off numbers in all bathrooms at the city building. Since we have done that, the number of calls has increased yearly.”

Additionally, the Covington Domestic Violence Task Force that Throm heads up provides direct services to victims, ranging from motel vouchers when shelters are full, food and gas vouchers, among other assistance.

“To date we have provided 92 bed nights for women and their children until they could get into shelter or transitional housing,” Throm said. “I partner with the YWCA and DAWN staff to send an advocate to the motel to work with the victim. The Purple Light Nights campaign raises the funds to provide these services.”

Purple Light Nights is an annual event in Covington that Throm started four years ago that has spread across the country and is gaining traction internationally. It is observed in October in conjunction with National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

The Jennifer Beach Foundation offers a few programs and Beach said his non-profit also partners with the YWCA.

Beach, who is an accountant, offers a financial literacy class for survivors and thus far the class has helped 184 women.

“That’s been an area where we’d had success,” Beach said. “We’ve had women enter college, go into job training, find new housing arrangements. The biggest part is the self-esteem and self-confidence and building them because they’ve been put down for so long.”

One woman, a student in the class, had come to equate her net worth and her personal worth. She defined herself by her credit score.

“We had to stop and tell her that it’s just a number and it doesn’t define who she is as a woman, as a mother, as a daughter,” Beach said. “I told her, ‘There isn’t anything you can’t do.’ She said, ‘No one has ever told me that before.’ Now she’s actually working on publishing a book of poems.”

Another program his foundation offers is a Kids Camp for children who grew up in domestic violence where parents are also welcome to attend.

The idea, Beach said, is to teach the children who come out of those environments there are other ways to handle problems than getting angry, out of control and lashing out.

“The result that we have is the children and the mother leave with tools,” Beach said. “We try and knock down those barriers.”

Next up for Beach is teen awareness, something the foundation has just started working on, to help stop these behaviors in kids before they get into adult relationships.

The King County Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Cousin said, is an umbrella over 40 members organizations “that somehow either provide services to victims, abusers or children of domestic violence or somehow work against domestic violence.”

“Our region, I think, has more organizations and more of a variety of services available than many other places in the country,” Cousin said. “There is help out there. Anyone that is concerned about their own safety or concerned about feeling threatened or powerless in their relationships, they can call the (state) domestic violence hotline. They don’t have to be ready to walk out the door. They can just call and talk to someone about what’s going on and find out what kind of help is out there.”

Cousin also said that people should not be afraid to help if someone comes to them when trying to get away from an abuser.

“What we know about domestic violence survivors is that they are most like to turn to family or friends,” she said. “They can be an incredible resource and (survivors) don’t have to go it alone.”

The Washington state domestic violence hotline is 800-562-6025.