The Face of Financial Abuse

"When Jeanette Dey Andrews talks about her husband, her hands shake and eyes roam. She pauses between thoughts, and speaks slowly and quietly.  Her husband is the reason she lost her 70-acre family farm, and why she has no stable retirement plan. He is the one who racked up their family’s debt and refused to help pay it. He is also the one who once threatened her with a gun.

Still, Andrews did not view her husband as abusive until just two years ago, after he had already died and their 35-year long marriage had ended. It was only during a meeting with her local domestic violence shelter, listening to other survivors tell their stories, that she looked around and thought, “Wait, that’s me.” Until then, she had just thought that he was “mean.”

During their marriage, she was able to survive the physical violence, but just like thousands of other victims across Virginia, she had no idea how to escape financial abuse, a form of intimate partner violence in which the perpetrator uses finances to establish control in a relationship–a problem that is evolving with the introduction of new digitized technology.

Financial abusers exploit their partners through a variety of methods, including limiting their ability to work, maintaining control of all property and savings, forcing them into coerced debt, and sabotaging their employment. The ultimate goal, though, is always to limit the autonomy of their partner–who is almost always a woman..."

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