Abuses Within Immigrant Women

Many immigrant women are faced with sexual assault in the U.S. Most of the time women immigrate alone or with their husbands and children. Once they get here, the support of their family is gone, since they are in  foreign countries. The cultural barrier is a major fact of why women get stuck in a labyrinth of abuses. Not knowing English deprives them of looking for help. The following describes some of the abuses immigrant women face.

Emotional Abuse:

• Lying about her immigration status.
• Telling her family lies about her.
• Calling her racist names.
• Embarrassing her in front of friends.
• Telling her that she has abandoned her culture and become "white", or "American".
• Preventing her from visiting sick or dying relatives.

Economic Abuse:

• Forcing her to work "illegally" when she does not have a work permit.
• Threatening to report her to INS if she works "under the table".
• Not letting her get job training or schooling.
• Taking the money she was supposed to send her family.
• Forcing her to sign papers in English that she does not understand.
• Harassing her at the only job she can work legally in the U.S., so that she loses that job.

Sexual Abuse:

• Accusing her of sleeping with other men.
• Alleging that she has a history of prostitution on legal papers.
• Telling her that "as a matter of law" in the United States, she must continue to have sex with him whenever he wants until they are divorced.

Using Threats:

• Threatening to report her to the INS and get her deported.
• Threatening that he will not file immigration papers to legalize her immigration status.
• Threatening to withdraw the petition he filed to legalize her immigration status.
• Telling her that he will harm someone in her family.
• Telling her that he will have someone harm her family members.
• Threatening to harm or harass her employer or co-workers.

Using Children:

• Threatening to remove her children from the United States.
• Threatening to report her children to the INS.
• Taking the money she wants to send to support her children in her home country.
• Telling her, he will have her deported and he will keep the children with him in the U.S.
• Convincing her that if she seeks help from the courts or the police the U.S. legal system will give him custody of the children.

Using Citizenship or Residency Privilege:

• Using the fact of her undocumented immigration status to keep her from reporting abuse or leaving with the children.
• Telling her that the police will arrest her for being undocumented if she calls the police for help because of the abuse.

Isolation:

• Isolating her from people who speak her language or who are from her community, culture, or country.
• Not allowing her to learn English.
• Reading her mail and not allowing her to use the telephone.
• Strictly timing all her grocery trips and other travel times.

Denying and Blaming:

• Convincing her that his violent actions are not criminal unless they occur in public.
• Telling her that he is allowed to physically punish her because he is the "man".
• Blaming her for the breakup of the family, if she leaves him because of the violence.
• Telling her that she is responsible for the violence because she did not do as he wished.

*The information above was obtained from the following source.

http://new.vawnet.org/category/index_pages.php?category_id=891

Information compiled by: Viridiana Moreno Herrera