Suffering in silence..

There can be many forms of domestic violence ranging from Physical abuse to emotional abuse, truth be told it is harder to categorise what it is. In regards to the law it is defined as an incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse ( physiological, physical, verbal, sexual, financial or emotional), but even though the law has tried very hard to categorise it, there is no way of know it has happened if no one reports it and even then it can be dismissed due to lack of evidence.

The tool that is often used to help people suffering from this type of abuse is likely to be severely slashed, Legal Aid is to be cut enough so that the Government can save £ 350m a year, which will make it increasingly harder for people with limiter financial resources to get help. The Government has implied that they are doing this for the good of the people, and that it is only used to help the " most vulnerable" people. But what constitutes as vulnerable, if you are the victim of anything, you should be considered vulnerable. The authorities have underlined what qualifies you to legal aid, only if you can prove it i.e police report, doctor report or physical abuse are you classed as the "most vulnerable". However many women will suffer at least 20 incidents of domestic abuse before reporting it to the police and many victims will be to scared to report it at all.

Does it ever occur to these people that a victim may not be able to report it, their spouse or partner may be blackmailing them in an event that they will try to alert the authorities. Many other forms of abuse exist but may not be taken seriously by the authorities, forms such as refusing the access to the telephone and the outside world, this is just as serious as it is disregarding your basic human rights, but because you can't produce any physical evidence it may be disregarded.

The long term affects of suffering from abuse can be even worse than any form of physical abuse. An individual who has endure years of abuse would very often be very nervous, suffer from low self esteem an have an even lower sense of worth, but that's not all, if children also beared witness to the event they could also be traumatised and not be able to connect with anyone because they always fear of suffering the same way their parents did.

So I ask you.. are the shot term benefits worthy considering what the long term risks may hold???