Trapped at Home
Many wonder why women don’t leave abusive re-
lationships — or, even more perplexing, why when
they do leave, they come back an average of seven
times. Loss of self-esteem is one reason. But lack of
financial resources is a huge factor, too. In fact, the
leading predictor of whether a victim will leave for
good is whether she has an independent income.
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Financial abuse is such an effective form of con-
trol that most abusers (99%, according to Michigan
State University researchers) employ it in one way
or another. “Some make partners account for every
penny they spend, some ruin their wife’s credit rat-
ing and others sabotage their partner’s job— turn-
ing off the alarm clock so she oversleeps, destroy-
ing her clothes or harassing her at work,” says Judy
Postmus, Ph.D., director of Rutgers University’s
Center on Violence Against Women and Children.
The end result is that the woman becomes in-
creasingly dependent, disempowered and trapped
When Pamela Hill, 55, married her second husband
in 2000, he persuaded her to give up her job as a city
employee, sell her house and live with him and his
7-year-old daughter on his Nebraska farm. “He took
care of the finances and had me cancel my credit cards
because he had a higher credit limit,” she says. “He
was wealthy, so I didn’t think much about it until I
realized I couldn’t do anything without his say-so.”