Mind Moves/Marie Murray:The battered face, the black eye and the bruised and broken body: these are the images we have of domestic violence.
But there is another form of violence that is less visible, more manipulative and more difficult to prove. That is financial abuse, where one partner limits and controls every penny the other partner spends.
This demeaning practice is far more common than public discussion would pretend. And while it is often part of a domestic abuse pattern, it is also practised independent of other violent behaviours. Sometimes this financial bullying is erratic and may be interspersed with generous whims, making it more difficult to define and to challenge. Yet it bears the hallmark of humiliation through power and control, which distinguishes all forms of violence.
It has been said that financial abuse is an aberrant form of violence more prevalent among the wealthy, that the evidence of affluence is apparent, but the secret of well-heeled hell is hidden. This places the victim of this practice in the extraordinary situation where others may perceive that person to be pampered and privileged and be unaware of the emotional and personal poverty with which each day is lived.
Clinical practice suggests that husbands are the primary perpetrators of this financial bullying upon their wives. However, financial abuse may manifest itself in any situation where one partner holds the purse strings and wishes to control the other by those strings as a way of wielding power, venting aggression, controlling the other or coping with pathological jealousy.
Victims of financial bullying who have young children are unlikely to leave the marriage having no apparent cause for complaint in the eyes of others. How does a woman in a beautiful home, in a desirable area, driving a luxurious car, whose children attend expensive schools, prove she is a victim of financial bullying?
There are many ways in which a person may be financially abused in marriage. The classic is receiving minimum money daily to be accounted for by detailed receipts. Sometimes the car is filled weekly with precisely the petrol required for shopping and school runs, causing panic if parking requires more circumnavigations than the quota allows. So extreme are financial bullies, that removal of fuses are reported, disconnecting the family from all sources of entertainment and comfort. Common is removal of the TV lead and timing household heating so that the family shivers until the perpetrator is home. More common is unplugging the phone so calls may not be made and none received. Isolation is the trademark of spousal abuse.
Financial abuse victims are often silenced by their social standing; by the public generosity of their partners; by erosion of their confidence; and by their fear of disbelief. What complaint would be understood: that one was an unpaid slave to the pathology of another, poor in the presence of wealth, expected to show grovelling gratitude for the necessities of daily life?
Pathological meanness has many explanations, from fear of poverty to extreme ideology: that wives are not to be trusted and children to be controlled. Sometimes morbid jealousy motivates. Money is the mechanism of escape and poverty, the most effective prison. Sometimes substance or gambling addictions are financed by family funds.
Meanness may arise through fear of being exploited, of working as an unappreciated provider for the profligacy of others. But often meanness is manipulative: the family is deprived in order to finance an affair or generosity depends on sexual favours converting intimacy into necessity, prostituting the relationship and diminishing the spouse. The results of financial abuse include emotional depletion and loss of self-esteem, embarrassment at having to refuse invitations one cannot reciprocate or making excuses for a cold house and disconnected phone.
It may intrude on the children's relationship where one parent provides the treats and the other is without resources. It paints a confusing picture of marriage and provides a role model of female powerlessness and subservience.
Like all abuse it incites self-blame and feelings of worthlessness because of one's actual penury when the relationship ends. Evidence of the abuse may be difficult to provide in legal proceedings, the invisibility of the grievance undermining the veracity of the experience.
For those who leave financially abusive marriages, it is during the divorce proceedings that their spouse's meanness may become visible, most violent and most vengeful: the mechanism of post-divorce retribution and control. It may take the form of refusal to meet divorce agreements, delay of maintenance payments, withholding school fees and continuing financial control at a distance. It may involve lavish expenditure on children during access visits and punitive deprivation in their conditions of living at other times.
Marital therapy requires greater recognition of financial abuse. Mediation is often the site where the final financial manipulations are attempted. It is important that the legal system does not inadvertently support it and that forensic financial discovery is not prohibitive for those who require it.
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview.