Shame and Secrecy: Abuse in the Middle and Upper Classes

"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."

"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."

"Perpetrators in high-status settings often use charm, reputation, and resources to conceal harm. Abuse without financial dependence is still abuse; autonomy can be eroded through strategy, not scarcity. Psychological abuse operates through cycles of contradiction that condition emotional entrapment. Cultural narratives that eroticise domination make middle and upper-class abuse harder to recognise and name. Isolation is disguised as concern, degradation as intimacy, manipulation as care."

Educated, financially independent women can experience severe physical and psychological abuse, including strangulation, assault, humiliation, and forced degradation. Perpetrators in higher-status settings use charm, reputation, and resources to conceal harm and adapt coercive strategies to their environments. Isolation is disguised as concern, degradation as intimacy, and manipulation as care, eroding autonomy without financial dependence. Psychological abuse operates through cycles of contradiction that condition emotional entrapment and make escape emotionally and reputationally complex. Cultural narratives that eroticise domination further obscure recognition and naming of abuse among middle and upper classes.

Read at Psychology Today