Sexual

Like physical abuse, sexual battering includes a wide range of behaviors from pressured sex when the victim does not want sex, to coerced sex by manipulation or threat of physical force, or violent sex. Victims may be coerced or forced into a kind of sex they do not want (for example sex with third parties, physically painful sex, sexual activity they find offensive) or at a time when they do not want it (for example when they are exhausted, in front of children, after a physical assault, when they are asleep, when they are not interested).

Sometimes victims will resist and then they are punished, and sometimes they comply in hopes that the abuse will end quickly. For many battered women this sexual violation is profound and may be difficult to discuss. Some battered women may be unsure whether this sexual abuse is really abuse, while for others it is clearly the ultimate betrayal.