This refers to a pattern of behaviours that make you feel bad, intimidated, or emotionally unsafe. These may include:

• Constantly criticising or belittling you.
• Calling you names.
• Threatening to hurt you or leave you.
• Keeping you from staying in touch with others.
• Telling you that you are worthless.
• Threatening your children.
• Denying or downplaying your experiences (gaslighting).
• Blaming you for things you haven’t done.
• Ignoring you or giving you the ‘silent treatment’.
• Excessive attention or affection to make you feel dependent (love-bombing).

This involves the use of financial methods to control you or to limit your independence. This may include:

• Preventing you from getting or keeping a job.
• Stealing from you.
• Pressure in connection with wills.
• Controlling your money.
• Denying you access to your own money.
• Monitoring your spending.
• Preventing access to bank accounts.
• Changing your banking passwords without your permission.
• Creating debt in your name.
• Destroying your possessions.

Elder abuse is when someone aged 60 or over is harmed or mistreated by someone they trust. This can include physical harm, emotional abuse, financial exploitation, or neglect. It can happen through a single act, repeated actions, or a failure to act, and it can cause harm or distress to the older person or violate their rights. Examples include ignoring their medical or physical care needs and not providing essentials like medication, proper food, and heating.

This is the general term used to describe all forms of non-consensual sexual contact. This may include:

• Being pressured to have sex.
• Being pressured to have unsafe or unprotected sex.
• Rape.
• Being touched in ways you don’t want.
• Being pressured to meet unwanted sexual demands.
• Being forced into prostitution or pornography.
• Recording sexual acts without your permission.
• Sharing recordings of sexual acts without your permission.
• Forcing you to send sexual images/recordings of yourself.

Digital dating abuse is when technology like texting and social media is used to bully, harass, or intimidate a partner. This often involves verbal or emotional abuse online. Examples include:

• Telling you who you can or can’t be friends with online.
• Sending you negative, insulting, or threatening emails, messages or DMs.
• Using social media to constantly keep tabs on you.
• Putting you down in their status updates.
• Sending unwanted explicit pictures and demanding you send some back.
• Pressuring you to send explicit videos.
• Stealing or insisting on your passwords.
• Constantly texting you to make you feel like you can’t be away from your phone for fear that you will be punished.
• Requesting constant updates, on your whereabouts and who you are with.
• Looking through your phone and checking your messages, photos, and calls, and threatening to share intimate content online.
• Screenshotting and sharing private conversations/content.
• Activating without your knowledge or forcing you to “share your location” using your phone’s GPS.