A domestic violence counselling service has released a jarring video re-enacting a typical call it says its counsellors receive every day.
The video was released as part of a campaign by the Full Stop Foundation in Australia, which supports victims of domestic and sexual violence.
It shows a group of people — from different races and ages — listening to the re-enacted phone call. In the call, you hear a woman talking about how her partner controls all the finances. She explains that one time she asked for money to buy food at the grocery store but he took off his pants and grabbed her hair and pulled it.
At that moment, several of the listeners asked for the recording to stop.
Full Stop Foundation CEO Karen Willis told Mumbrella, an Australian publication, that 20 per cent of domestic violence is physical, but the rest of the time it is psychological.
“Actually hearing a re-enactment of the sort of call we would get on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, really brings home the pain, confusion and the fear and the impact that that sort of behaviour has had on somebody, in a very short, concise way.”
She says the campaign is meant to highlight the less recognized forms of abuse that are out there: abusers don’t just hurt physically but hurt through emotional, mental, sexual and financial abuse as well.
“It was important for us not to say that the physical part of domestic violence is better or worse, we are trying to say all of these things are horrendous and all of these behaviours are domestic violence,” Willis told Mumbrella.
According to numbers by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, sexual assault and domestic violence are the most common crimes committed in Australia. In 2016, 71 women were killed by violence.
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