Over the coming four weeks Narcissistic Abuse Rehab will mark Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2024 with special content designed to honor victims, uplift survivors, and raise awareness about this issue. Data suggests that one in three women and one in four men have been victims of intimate partner violence, including physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. 1 2 Furthermore, a staggering number of children, ranging from 3.3 to 10 million, are exposed to domestic violence within their own families annually.3
Even though domestic violence impacts millions of people around the world across of gender, age, race, and socioeconomic status, it remains poorly misunderstood and marginalized. Most people’s understanding of domestic violence is limited to its observable expressions–bruises, fractured teeth, and broken bones. But the reality is that many survivors endure forms of abuse that leave no visible scars.
Beyond The Violent Incident Model
Groundbreaking research by the late Dr. Evan Stark found that the violent incident model through which most people understand domestic violence is dangerously inadequate. 4 Nearly all domestic violence and femicides occurs in the context of coercive control–a pattern of acts used by one person subjugate another person. Coercive control, psychological abuse, financial manipulation, and isolation are often at the heart of domestic violence, and these forms of abuse can be just as damaging, if not more so, than physical violence.
This month, we’ll be publishing a series of topical content aimed at educating, informing, and empowering our readers and listeners to better understand the complexities of domestic violence. We will deep dive into what coercive control looking like during and after entrapment-based relationships have ended. We will also hear from the world’s leading experts on the challenges victim-survivors face in family court. Throughout October, we’ll be covering the stories, legal insights, and strategies that survivors and advocates alike need to know.5
Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2024
- October 1, 2024: Exploring “FRAMED: Women in the Family Court Underworld” with Dr. Christine Cocchiola and Amy Polacko.
- October 2: TBA
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Bibliography
- UN Women (2023) The Shadow Pandemic: Violence Against Women During COVID 19. United Nations. ↩︎
- The Hotline (2024). Domestic Violence Statistics. National Domestic Violence Hotline. ↩︎
- Moylan CA, Herrenkohl TI, Sousa C, Tajima EA, Herrenkohl RC, Russo MJ. The Effects of Child Abuse and Exposure to Domestic Violence on Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Problems. J Fam Violence. 2010 Jan;25(1):53-63. doi: 10.1007/s10896-009-9269-9. PMID: 20495613; PMCID: PMC2872483. ↩︎
- Stark, E. (2012) “Looking Beyond Domestic Violence: Policing Coercive Control”. Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations 12(2):199-217. DOI:10.1080/15332586.2012.725016 ↩︎
- Certainly! Here’s how you would cite the podcast episode in Harvard style:
Wakefield, M. (Host) 2024, Exploring “Framed: Women in the Family Court Underworld” with Dr. Christine Cocchiola + Amy Polacko, The Narcissistic Abuse Rehab Podcast, Episode 22, October 1, 2024. ↩︎
Manya Wakefield is a narcissistic abuse recovery coach, coercive trauma specialist, and the developer of the Coercive Trauma Recovery Method™ and TENEL™ (Traumatic Exposure to Narcissism in Early Life) — proprietary recovery frameworks built from seven years of direct professional work with survivors of coercive control, narcissistic abuse, and Adult Children of Narcissists. Both frameworks have been reviewed by Dr. Michael Kinsey, PhD, clinical psychologist, New School for Social Research. She is the founder of Narcissistic Abuse Rehab, a global social impact platform launched in 2019 to support survivors through evidence-based recovery frameworks. Manya is the author of Are You In An Emotionally Abusive Relationship (2019), a resource used in domestic violence recovery groups worldwide. Her original research contributions include the Global Coercive Control Legislation Index (2020) — the first systematic index of its kind on the web — and the Global Femicide Legislation Index (2026), comprehensive legal references used by advocates, legal professionals, and policymakers internationally, cited in peer-reviewed publications including the Southern Illinois University Law Journal, Palgrave Macmillan, and the University of Agder. Her expertise has been featured in Newsweek, Elle, Cosmopolitan, HuffPost, Parade, and YourTango. She hosts the Narcissistic Abuse Rehab Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music. All content on this site reflects Manya's direct professional experience working with survivors of narcissistic abuse and coercive control, her published research, and her ongoing advocacy work.
