Shame and Secrecy: Abuse in the Middle and Upper Classes — Coercive control adapts to context; wealth and status can’t protect you.
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Yesterday, a reader sent me a Belfast Telegraph article about a woman (a fully qualified doctor from Northern Ireland), who was subjected to severe physical and psychological violence by her abusive boyfriend. He strangled her repeatedly, spat at her, called her names, and filmed her as he forced her to eat food from the floor. When neighbours alerted police in 2023, officers found her crawling away from her home, covered in bruises at different stages of healing. When I discussed the case with colleagues over lunch, one expressed surprise that such violence could be inflicted on a woman who was educated, professional, and financially independent.
That reaction is common, and revealing. It reflects a lingering belief that education, income, or professional success can protect women from abuse, as if knowledge or money could neutralise coercive power or stop a punch. Yet coercive control is not born of ignorance or poverty; it is a deliberate strategy of domination. Perpetrators adapt their methods to the environments they inhabit. In middle-class or professional relationships, the violence can be just as brutal — strangulation, assault, humiliation—but often intertwined with psychological, reputational, or emotional control. Isolation is disguised as concern, degradation as intimacy, manipulation as care. What changes is not the logic of domination, but the tools through which it is enforced.
In The Invisible Abuser, I interviewed women who were financially independent and professionally established. Their abusers weren’t poor or uneducated. On the contrary, they were often respected, well-liked men who used psychological and emotional tactics to dominate their partners. They didn’t rely on financial control. They didn’t have to. The absence of visible dependency made the abuse harder to name, resist, or prove.
This post explores three common forms of abuse—physical, psychological, and financial—to show that domestic violence is not confined to any social class. It’s not a failure of education or income. It’s a strategy of control used by perpetrators, across all backgrounds, to erode autonomy, induce fear, and maintain power in intimate relationships.
Physical abuse
This is often the easiest type of abuse to explain, even to colleagues who were surprised that a well-educated doctor could be a victim. Physical abuse does not lose its impact in middle- or upper-class settings. Being hit by a man in a suit hurts just as much as being hit by one in work boots. Yet in professional or higher-income contexts, violence is often minimised, concealed, or reframed as a loss of control, a “bad night,” or an unfortunate exception. Victims may struggle to be believed, even by friends or professionals, because their abuser doesn’t match the stereotype. He may be articulate, respected, and socially polished. But violence is not mitigated by class. The injuries are the same. What changes is the social response: more disbelief, more silence, and greater institutional reluctance to intervene.
Read more https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychology-in-the-courtroom/202510/shame-and-secrecy-abuse-in-the-middle-and-upper-classes
Content retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychology-in-the-courtroom/202510/shame-and-secrecy-abuse-in-the-middle-and-upper-classes.
