Domestic Violence Victims Leave Abusers
“More often than not, domestic violence affects a victim’s employment: An estimated sixty percent of DV victims lose their jobs as a direct result of their abuse. To better control a victim—in particular, to stop them from leaving—abusers will sometimes try to sabotage their professional lives: harassing them on the job, keeping them up all night so they’re exhausted the next day, or tampering with child care plans, said Joan Meier, a longtime domestic violence lawyer and professor at George Washington Law School. Meier told me she’s seen abusers threaten the couple’s babysitter, forcing the sitter to quit. ‘He wants [the victim] to need to use him for child care,’ Meier says. ‘The goal is to mess her up—to mess up her life and make her dependent.’ And it works. For many Americans, taking a day or two off work without advance notice will cost them their jobs.”