Surviving Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

The home should be a place of love, safety, security, and protection for family members; however, for millions of children and women, it is a place of violence, trauma, and death as a result of child abuse and domestic violence, which is enabled by a multiplicity of factors. At the core of child abuse and domestic violence are the victim and perpetrator, causes and consequences, and society’s inability to comprehend its devastating impact. There is no single approach to prevent this egregious human rights violation, and no single root cause can be cited. However, society has a civic duty and responsibility to create ways to restore victims’ human dignity, enable cultures of peace, and rehabilitate offenders. This chapter looks at an Advocates journey from surviving to thriving, the importance of incorporating a bottom-up, multidimensional coordinated approach that is service-oriented, healing, and family-centered, trauma-informed, data and evidence-driven that engages community stakeholders in preventing and ultimately working to eliminate child abuse, domestic and intimate partner violence.