http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/07/18/Domestic-violence-is-terrorism-but-with-more-victims/WEN-1851342647402/?upi_mf

...

The stories of survivors from different countries and circumstances are strikingly aligned. A British study released in early July draws on such stories to make the case that domestic abuse functions psychologically in the same way as global terrorism. Read more at Women's eNews

"Framing domestic abuse as 'everyday terrorism' helps us understand how fear works," writes Rachel Pain, the study's author and a professor of geography at Durham University in England.

The report, "Everyday Terrorism: How Fear Works in Domestic Abuse," confronts the assumption that, at some level, victims of domestic attacks choose their fates. Pain's findings indicate that entrapment is not a byproduct of masochism or misguided love, but of women's rational fear (validated by research) that they and their children are never so at risk as when separating from a violent partner.

...

Pain's study underscores a powerful disconnect between public perceptions of these two types of terrorism. Global terrorism looms large as a defining horror of our times while its domestic counterpart is relatively overlooked. One is seen as an outcome of mass religious zealotry, the other as a matter of private melodrama and personal failings.

...