LBGTQ

Support of Domestic & Sexual Violence & Human Trafficking

The goal of these efforts is to ensure we provide:

• Tailored support and counseling for LGBTQIA+ survivors.
• Outreach with LGBTQIA+ communities in South Jersey.
• Contact with professionals who serve these communities.
• Education and prevention through community awareness.
• Training to build inclusive, affirming environments for LGBTQIA+ survivors and their significant others.
• Abusive partners in LGBTQ+ relationships use all the same tactics to gain power and control as abusive partners in heterosexual relationships: physical, sexual, emotional abuse, as well as financial control, isolation and more.

Tactics of Power and Control in LGBTQIA+ Relationships:

“Outing” a partner’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Abusive partners inLGBTQ+ relationships may threaten to ‘Out’ victims to family members, employers, community members and others.

Saying that no one will help the victim because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, or that for this reason, the partner “Deserves” the abuse.

Justifying the abuse with the notion that a partner is not “Really” lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (i.e., the victim may once have had/may still have relationships, or express a gender identity, inconsistent with the abuser’s definitions of these terms). This can be used both as a tool in verbal and emotional abuse as well as to further the isolation of a victim from the community.

Monopolizing support resources through an abusive partner’s manipulation of friends and family support and generating sympathy and trust in order to cut off these resources to the victim. This is a particular issue to members of the LGBTQ+ community where there may be fewer specific resources, neighborhoods, or social outlets.

Portraying the violence as mutual and even consensual, or as an expression of
masculinity or some other “Desirable” trait.