What is Reddit's opinion of No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Würgen ist eines der Merkmale, die einen späteren Tötungsdelikt unter Partnern am wahrscheinlichsten machen. Du bist in tödlicher Gefahr.

Wenn du kannst, geh. Aber bereite es heimlich vor. Und kontaktiere die Hier gelisteten Hilfsangebote. Du hast eine Option, du kannst gehen. Bitte tu das. Viel Kraft.

From the DVFR analysis:

• 1 in 4 women will suffer severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime
• 10 of the 113 intimate partner violence fatalities that occurred in Orange County between 2006 and 2017 were caused by strangulation
• This 9% figure is significant and deserves to be studied as a lethality risk and cause
• Up to 68% of abuse survivors will be victims of near-fatal strangulation by their partner
• Victims of strangulation face a 750% increase in later homicide- related death

In reading No Visible Bruises I learned a lot overall and one of the most terrifying was the role strangulation played in DV. How it's missed by nearly everyone, include the abused who may not recognize that someone putting hands around their throat is at minimum a red flag, the silent brain damage it can cause, and how it's a leading indicator of how abuse will escalate. A few passages on the subject:

99% of strangulation perpetrators are men. Those strangled to the point of losing consciousness are at their highest risk of dying in the first 24-48 hours after from strokes, blood clots or aspiration. Such incidents can cause brain injury not only by cutting off oxygen to the brain, but because they are often accompanies by blunt force trauma to the head. DV victims are not routinely screened for strangulation or brain injury in the ER and victims have poor recall of the incident or may not even be aware they've lost consciousness. This means diagnoses are rarely formalized, the assaults and injuries are downplayed and abusers are prosecuted under lesser charges. (page 65)

...studied case filed of 300 nonfatal DV strangulation cases. Strangulation turned out to dramatically increase the chances of DV homicide. Only 15% of victims in the study turned out to have injuries visible enough to photograph for the police reports. As a result, the officers often downplayed the incidents, listing injuries like "redness, cuts, scratches or abrasions to the neck." ERs tended to discharge victims without CT scans and MRIs...most translation injuries are internal and that the very act often turns out to be the penultimate abuse by a perpetrator before a homicide. "Statistically we know now that once the hands are on the neck, the very next step is homicide..."They don't go backwards." (page 66)

...victims had urinated or defecated - an act she chalked up to their fear. She spoke to an ER physician who offered a very different view. Urination and defecation are physical functions, like sweating and digestion, that happen below our level of consciousness, and are controlled by the autonomic nervous system. Sacral nerves in the brain stem - which happens to be the final part of the brain the expire - control the sphincter muscles. So urnination and defecation weren't a sign of fear but rather evidence that each of those victims had been very death death. And each of those cases had been prosecuted as a misdemeanor. (page 66-67)

...police reports are unspecific, ambiguous, terribly written, lacking in detail. And, as a result, prosecutors will be left with a weak care of often no case...officers downplayed the incidents because they weren't properly trained on how to identify strangulation injuries that weren't instantly recognizable, like memory loss, a raspy voice, urination or redness in the sclera of the eye. Such reports leave prosecutors with scant evidence. (page 250-251)

An Extraordinary New Book Dismantles the Myths That Surround Domestic Violence

'No Visible Bruises' Upends Stereotypes Of Abuse, Sheds Light On Domestic Violence

Rachel Louise Snyder - “No Visible Bruises” and a Closer Look at Domestic Abuse