From the Globe and Mail–Jacqueline Suchite Rivas of Calgary faced coercive control from her ex-husband, but she came to see the reality of her situation when she volunteered at a women’s shelter. ‘I thought abuse looked like, you come home and you’re beat every day. That’s literally what I thought,’ she says.
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Behaviours like gaslighting, intimidation and isolation from family and friends can be an early indicator of relationships that will escalate into physical violence, and even homicide. But many people don’t even recognize it as abuse. The Globe examines the effort to change that
Jacqueline Suchite Rivas thought she knew what abuse looked like. When her ex-husband hit her, that was abuse. Early in their relationship, when, she says, he pointed a gun at her and threatened her life, that was abuse.
But the rest of it? The name-calling, the jealousy, the isolation? That was just life.
When Ms. Suchite Rivas was growing up, her mother was regularly beaten by her father. Violence was normalized. Her grandmother had been murdered in her home country, El Salvador.