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Different Kinds of Abuse in Relationships

Different Kinds of Abuse Can Seem Like Passion

I’m Zoe Parsons from @SelfLOveAfterAbuse and Body Image Ambassador for Be Real U.K.

I found Jennifer Smith and True Love Scam Recovery on Instagram! This led me to Jennifer’s website.

I was living in different kinds of abuse for six years, it started out like any normal relationship until it became clear I’d been tricked by a man who took advantage of me and was a narcissistic abuser namely, a sociopath. Ultimately, sociopaths are pure narcissism and bring only harm.

When I met the man who deceived and used me, I didn’t know about different kinds of abuse or the things we see afterward as red flags. I thought domestic violence, abuse was a black eye. I didn’t know what sociopaths were.

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Know Different Kinds of Abuse and Signs of Being Used and Abused

I didn’t know there are many different kinds of abuse with signs that come first from ourselves, and because he never gave me a black-eye, I thought our relationship was just passionate!

I’ve been free for three years now. My journey to freedom started with educating myself. If you can understand what abuse is and how it happens, it makes it easier to move forward from it and heal.

All Different Kinds of Abuse Make Us Feel Bad About Ourselves

One of the effects of the abuse was thinking badly about my self. For the first time in my life, I started to have a negative body image. After getting away, pressing charges and taking my life back I became a spokesperson for body image as an Ambassador for Be Real Campaign, U.K. So let’s talk about the different kinds of abuse I mentioned earlier.

Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse is an attack on your emotions and feelings. If your partner makes you feel small, controlled or as if you’re unable to talk about what’s wrong, it’s abusive. it’s abusive. When we’re being stopped from expressing our self, it’s abusive. If we’re changing our actions to accomodate our partner’s behavior, there are different kinds of abuse going on.

Let’s Look at Kinds of Emotional Abuse

Calling you names and putting you down.
Yelling and screaming at you.
Intentionally embarrassing you in public.
Preventing you from seeing or talking with friends and family.
Telling you what to do and wear.
Blaming your actions for their abusive or unhealthy behavior.
Accusing you of cheating and being jealous of your outside relationships.
Threatening to commit suicide to keep you from breaking up with them.
Threatening to harm you, your pet or people you care about.
Saying things that confuse or manipulate you, this is what people call gaslighting.
Making you feel guilty when you don’t consent to sexual activity.
Threatening to expose your secrets.
Threatening to have your children taken away.

Different Kinds of Abuse Allow Us to Break Leases

Want to move to escape abuse? In Illinois you can break an apartment lease legally under the Safe Homes Act, with a letter. First, write to your landlord explaining you’re leaving due to, “credible imminent threat” under the Safe Home Act. Don’t forget, your landlord needs 30-days notice and the keys. You’re free to leave before the 30 days are up. It only takes fear of an abuser to qualify; no police report, no P.O. Be sure to find out about this in your state.

Physical Abuse

Physical abuse is any intentional and unwanted contact. Be aware, this can be objects thrown at you or fists. Sometimes it’s the wall they punch, this is still abuse. Sometimes physically abusive behavior doesn’t cause pain or leave a bruise, but it’s still physical abuse.

Scratching, pinching, punching, biting, strangling or kicking.
Throwing something at you such as a phone, book, shoe or plate.
Pulling your hair.
Shaking, pushing or pulling you.
Grabbing your clothing.
Using a gun, knife, box cutter, bat, or other weapons.
Grabbing your face to make you look at them.
Grabbing you to prevent you from leaving or to force you somewhere.
Scalding or burning you.
Spitting on you.
Forcing you to swallow something that hurts you, or medication you don’t need or drugs.
Damaging your property; throwing objects, punching walls, kicking doors.

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Sexual Abuse

Sexual abuse is any action that pressures or coerces you to do something sexually you don’t want to do. It can involve begging, insults, threats, force, violence, name-calling, blackmail.

Unwanted kissing or touching.
Unwanted rough or violent sexual activity.
Rape or attempted rape. This can happen within a marriage.
Refusing to use condoms or restricting your access to birth control.
Making sexual contact with you if you are very drunk, drugged, unconscious.
Threatening someone into unwanted sexual activity.
Carrying our sexual activity when we haven’t been able to say yes or no.
Pressuring or forcing you to have sex or perform sexual acts.
Pressuring you to let them a video or take photos of sexual activity or poses.
Putting you down for not having threesomes or do other things you don’t want to.
Forcing you into prostitution.
Putting you down for not engaging in sexual things you don’t want to do.
And the flip side: Claiming you want sex too much, making you feel bad for wanting intimacy. Claiming impotence when there is no medical reason for it. Refusing to be intimate or sexual with you.

Financial Abuse

Financial abuse can be very subtle. It can include telling you what you can and can’t buy or requiring you to share control of your bank accounts. At no point does someone have the right to use withholding money to control you.

Giving you an allowance and closely watching what you buy.
Placing your paycheck in their account and denying you access to it.
Keeping you from seeing shared bank accounts or records.
Forbidding you to work or limiting the hours you do.
Preventing you from going to work by taking your car or keys.
Getting you fired by harassing you, your employer or coworkers on the job.
Using your details to obtain bad credit loans without your permission.
Maxing out your credit cards without your permission.
Refusing to give you money, food, rent, medicine or clothing.
Using funds from your joint savings account without your knowledge.
Spending money on themselves but not allowing you to do the same.
Giving you presents or paying for things expecting you to return the favor.

Digital Abuse

Digital abuse is the use of technology to block, bully, harass, or stalk you. Another form is, limiting or setting rules about when you can use your digital devices or contact friends or how you use social media. Remember, in a healthy relationship, all communication is respectful whether in person, online or by phone.

Tells you who you can or can’t be friends with on social media.
Sends you negative, insulting or even threatening emails or online messages.
Uses social media sites to keep constant tabs on you.
Puts you down in their status updates.
Sends you unwanted, explicit pictures and/or demands you send some in return.
Pressures you to send explicit videos or sexts.
Steals or insists on being given your passwords.
Constantly texts you and makes you feel like you can’t be separated from your phone for fear you will be punished.
Frequently looks through your phone, your pictures, texts, and outgoing calls.
Uses technology such as spyware, a GPS tracker or audio bug to monitor you.

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Spiritual Abuse

Spiritual abuse isn’t limited to a certain religion or denomination. Any person is capable of perpetrating spiritual abuse including pastors, ministers or other representatives of a belief system or group. Some claim authority and to be the gateway to spiritual freedom that doesn’t exist without them. Sadly, in abuse, our significant other can take on this role too.

Abuse is anyone ridiculing or insulting your religious or spiritual beliefs.
Prevents you from practicing your religious or spiritual beliefs.
Uses your religious or spiritual beliefs to manipulate or shame you.
Forces the children to be raised in a faith that you have not agreed to.
Uses religious writings or beliefs to minimize or rationalize abusive behaviors, such as physical, financial, emotional or sexual abuse and marital rape.

Abuse is about controlling and using others for their own gain – not love!

Abusers will use various tactics to keep you manageable and in their “possession”. These tactics are what keep you trapped, confused, going around in circles, not knowing what’s happening. The only way to break this cycle is to remove yourself from it, you need to leave or get them removed from your home.

Passion Isn’t Always Love

You might be like me, thinking the relationship is just full of passion rather than full of many kinds of abuse. I thought maybe it was that we were culturally different, that I was doing something wrong and making him unhappy.

These kinds of abuse caused me to change myself to win his approval… You might do what I did: I stopped seeing friends and family because he said they didn’t like him, I wouldn’t wear my favorite dress anymore because he said it made men look at me. He said he did all the things he did that were truly kinds of abuse because he wanted to protect me and keep me safe because he “loved” me.

Happily Ever After Starts with Us

I want you to know that a happy ending is possible, but you won’t find it with an abusive partner or any of the different kinds of abuse in a relationship. I’ve been free three years now, and I’m happier now than ever before. He’s in prison for what he did to me, and I’m making a safe and happy life with my daughter. If I can get free, so can you!

Thank you Zoe Parsons, for sharing your story and your experience and thoughts!

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

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As a certified coach, upholding industry standards I strive to inform, educate, invite thought and dialogue, to co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach, guide and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. You decide what winning is.

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2018_10_10 2023_01_27

Marriage Fraud: The Green Card Scam

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Marriage fraud is many a liar’s dream.
Access to the USA
gives them a new place to hide.
Protect yourself legally from their hijinks.
Break free and clear safely.

Marriage fraud: conning someone into marriage for a green card is no big deal to a life-stealing predator like a sociopath.

Sociopaths (narcissists) have no problem lying, they do it all day long. Telling lies that cross into committing criminal acts to gain what they’re after is a-okay with them. Lies are normal and boundaries don’t exist to them.

The cross-over between truth and lies is blurred into nonexistence. Yet, be fully aware that they do know that they’re lying. The reality is that the sociopath’s (narcissist’s) entire life is a made-up fabrication with extremely small fumes of truth in whatever they’ve told you about themselves. So, marriage fraud for a green card scam is an incredibly common sociopath-con.

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Marriage Fraud is a Piece of Cake for a Sociopath

The information and experience reflected in the article are based on a marriage fraud that took place in 2013 in the USA. The monetary amounts mentioned for applications and processing may have changed. During the years 2020 and 2021, immigration into the USA is likely at a halt.

In my experience, I observed that green cards are handed out to married couples fairly easily. The application process with USCIS seems intimidating when you’re going through it, but getting the green card isn’t as difficult as urban myth leads us to believe.

The US Government Sides with You

USCIS holds the position that American citizen deserves to have their spouse living alongside them in the United States. They want our application to work out. Getting a green card can be quite simple.

We’ve all heard stories of the couple who fought for years to be together in North America. What we don’t hear about are the hundreds of couples who get a green card in three to four months with no trouble at all.

Conditional Adjusted Status: The Two-Year Green Card

You might need or want to check with an immigration attorney. You might have realized that it’s rare to find an immigration lawyer who is addressing the needs of the U.S. citizen rather than the immigrant. There is one that has been referred to me years after my case. They’re in Texas but work with U.S. citizens anywhere. www.codiaslaw-com

That first “green card” is technically called being given, conditional adjusted status. This allows the qualifying immigrant to live and work in the USA for two years. In order to stay legally in the U.S. beyond that two-year period, another application process is required and is filed six months before the first green card expires.

As a legally married couple within the U.S., the citizen and the immigrant spouse start the two-year conditional adjusted status process by filing USCIS form I-458. If the immigrant fiance is outside of the U.S. and you’re not yet legally married, there’s a different process.

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Marriage Fraud is Not Uncommon: USCIS Knows How to Spot It

USCIS officials know that marriage fraud happens. There are specific things that signal that one of the parties didn’t marry the other “in good faith”. They are things like an age difference, marrying quickly, and other rather obvious ideas. Follow this link for a list of several of the red flags that USCIS employees and officials look out for. – And yes, those window clerks are on the alert as well as the interviewers.

USCIS Interview Questions

The USCIS interview is basic and pretty much what one would think. In times past they’d show up at your shared home to see that you did indeed live together. This hasn’t been the case for ages. Now you go together to the immigration office and sit in a room with a stoic officer of USCIS.

The couple is asked things like what are each other’s favorite foods, where they went to college, their favorite pet’s name, how they met, and what they wear to bed. Seemingly random questions that reveal the involvement and indicate a personal life together. – They aren’t only listening to the answers. They read the room, as they say. You are being scrutinized.

If USCIS suspects fraud they alter the interview. They’ll get into more specific and probing questions. They might take each spouse into separate rooms to question.

ICE Has an Online PDF About Marriage Fraud

It states: Marriage fraud is: Neither victimless nor limited in scope, the crime of marriage fraud is anything but a trivial matter. Types of marriage fraud include: A foreign national defrauds a U.S. citizen who believes the marriage is legitimate.

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Each Word Has Significance

Further consequences: US citizens who enter into fraudulent marriages assume great personal liability. The foreign spouse may gain access to sensitive, personal information including, but not limited to, bank accounts, safe deposit boxes, retirement and investment accounts, personal identity information, and family heirlooms.

Ten Years Permission to Live in the USA

Before the two-year green card expires another application, form I75-1, and more fees must be filed by our scamming spouse in order to remove conditions from their green card so that they can stay for ten more years and during that time take citizenship.

That’s the big enchilada the con man immigrant is shooting for.

This application cost was $700 in 2012. The is paperwork that the immigrant files on their own. A part of the application process is proving that they married you – the US citizen – in good faith. In some cases even after a divorce from the US spouse, the conditions on their status may be removed and the application approved for their ten-year green card.

Immigration Directors and Officials

USCIS and ICE see tons and tons of marriage fraud and green card scams. Even with this experience, officials aren’t immune to a sociopath’s charms. Additionally, the effect of the sociopath is so all-encompassing that the U.S. spouse under the sociopath effect will defend the sociopath right through the red tape and scrutiny of USCIS, all the while believing their spouse and in their love.

Green card scammers attempting to gain entry into the U.S. are committing a crime. As a target of their fraud, you’re not accountable for the scammer’s crime. – We are responsible for letting USCIS know about the immigration fraud as soon as we realize what has happened.

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A Green Card Represents a Golden Ticket

Marriage fraud and green card scams are carried out in choice-target countries. One destination very high on the list is the UK though with Brexit, that may change since access to all of Europe will no longer be included. Here’s support for marriage scammers in the UK. Holland is another country of choice, as is Canada.

The bottom line is a green card scammer wants a passport to a country that takes them to a richer, riper, more free country. Or out of the country where people are after them.

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Once Married, They Just Might Own Your Stuff

In several states, once we’re married, what’s theirs is ours and what is ours is theirs by law. When married to a scammer, this is a horrifying reality to see. There’s deep sorrow, grief, and loss as a target of marriage fraud.

Once we realize it was a scam rather than a romance we’re better off knowing their real intention, but it’s a hard experience. The way you end the marriage in a legal sense is important. You’ll want to legally end the marriage choosing between a divorce or an annulment.

Report the Scamming Sociopath to USCIS

USCIS is aware that a U.S. citizen can be conned. But when they call things suspicious: You’re both under suspicion. Therefore… cover your bases. I’ve known of the couple being rejected with a letter that implies they’re both in on it when it was anything but the situation.

In my case, USCIS tried to stall the process. They’d given us an interview that is used when they suspect fraud. He did get his green card, and then I’d seen enough as well and I kicked him out just a few months later.

Report, Report, Report

Report to USCIS immediately if you discover that the love isn’t real. Even though it’s your word against anyone else’s be sure to report. Without fail, report the scam to USCIS. – USCIS knows this happens, it’s okay to report you’ve been scammed and it’s for your safety to do so. The lying scumbag will never know that you reported them, that is to say, USCIS doesn’t tell them.

Make your report by writing a letter to the officer who interviewed you and to the director of the immigration center where the interview took place. In your report give them complete information.

You might need or want to check with an immigration attorney. You might have already realized that it’s rare to find an immigration lawyer who is addressing the needs of the U.S. citizen rather than the immigrant. There is one that has been referred to me years after my case. They are in Texas but work with U.S. citizens anywhere.

Changes in Circumstances Must Be Reported

For example, the green card holder is meant to report any address change, they will not do this when they leave your place. You can include this information. Even if you don’t know where they went, be sure to give the date that they left your home.

If things are missing, let them know what was stolen. Be as detailed as you can be in dollar amounts, property, jewelry, and the debt you’ve been left with. You can also report to their country, the one they hold a passport for, the one on their birth certificate. Consider reports to the FBI, CIA, Interpol, the IRS, and tax boards in other countries.

Speak From the Heat: Be Straightforward and Clear

State that you were in love when you got married
Be open in that this person did not marry you “in good faith”
If they moved out, tell them so and give the date that they left
Give any address or contact information we have on our runaway scammer
Let them know you no longer agree that this person should have access to or that conditional adjusted status in the United States
Tell them anything you feel is pertinent such as indirect and direct evidence of their criminal behavior, fraud, other marriages, children; or anything you’ve discovered.

Their Fraud is Not Our Crime: We Owe the Immigrant Nothing

Contrary to what we’re made to think and to what a sociopathic green card scammer will tell you: you will not be held accountable for them. You’re not going to be in trouble. You don’t have to pay their rent and feed them. You owe them nothing. You’re not responsible for their crime.

Information to Report to USCIS on the Scamming Sociopath

Even if you don’t have all f this, give them what you have. If you can make or have copies of their driver’s license or IDs and information, give those as well (and keep copies for yourself).

The con man or woman’s full name
Give their “A” Number, the number assigned to them by USCIS
Copies of or numbers from any birth certificate, passports from any country, driver’s licenses from any country or state
Social Security numbers or other state or country IDs
Their car’s license plate number and State
VIN number of their a car and the car make and model
A recent full-face photo, and a full-body photo
Bank account numbers and the bank name or routing number
All addresses you’re aware they use or have used
And all versions of their name
List the telephone numbers you’ve known them to have (or use)
Give their Facebook page link, Twitter handle, Insta, or anything you know about
List other social media or websites they have
Report the names and contact information of friends/girlfriends/boyfriends, finances, or other wives or children

Turn In Every Bit of Documentation You’ve Got

Basically, you’re going to report absolutely everything you’ve got that could possibly lead them to him or her. – If you don’t have much don’t worry, give them what you do have.

Let USCIS know the date that he or she moved out. Be straightforward in declaring that you feel they did not marry you in good faith. Report the filing date and the status of your impending divorce or annulment. Give them the contact information of the attorney handling your divorce or annulment process. Here’s a link to USCIS: www.uscis.gov.

You want to be sure to make your feelings and position clear. There’s nothing more you need to do. You will not be punished. You will not be arrested or be held responsible for the fleeing a conman spouse.

Report For Your Own Well Being

Please know that you’re making these reports out of a sense of what you feel is right and for your own protection. Decide what’s right for you. Keep in mind though that these people – these patholgoical predators – could have been up to things we have no idea about while we were married to them.

Separating ourselves and legally extricating ourselves from culpability, implicit guilt or any legal responsibility to whatever that might be is essential. While USCIS can’t arrest them for theft or for defrauding us, the information you report, and the statement you make leave you free and clear. The attempted fraud and other relevant information are attached to their permanent file following them everywhere they go in the world.

Green Card Fraud is a Crime

Scamming USCIS is no small crime. The more information we give, the clearer we can be, with copies of previous annulments, divorces, or attempts at adjusting immigration status before their green card scam using us, the better.

If they try to get another U.S. green card, or if any country’s authorities have any future reason to look into them and the history will be there. The day will come when our international true love scammers will be criminally caught out.

Loss and More Loss: Recovery Is Resolving Every Loss

Our deepest loss will be our trust in – well – a lot of things for a while. We lose our hearts, a piece of our soul. And things. Things that mattered to us. And we recover. We are renewed.

After making the report – that’s it. USCIS will not tell us if they investigate, apprehend or arrest or deport the marriage-frauding, green-card-scamming fiend. They can’t by law. The good part is this: We know we followed through. We took the steps to protect ourselves.

And hopefully, your reports will weigh down the movements of the monster with facts and a paper trail of their malevolent, diabolical acts. Hopefully, you’ve taken some of the flexibility and range out of their criminal life-stealing, soul-raping madness. And best of all you can recover fully. Each of us extracting ourselves from these creatures is truly a superhero and our own angels.