Domestic Violence Crisis Now Impacts 1 in 2 Women, with Oprah and author Rachel Louise Snyder

0:00One in two women in the United States will experience sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetimes. Research shows that the most dangerous place for a woman is right inside her own home. I had a conversation with this woman, Susan, who was a mother of three who had endured 17 years of physical and emotional abuse by her husband. We all have asked this question over the years. Why do you stay? Why do you stay? And you say we should be asking the question, why is he violent?

0:38Hi, and welcome to the Oprah podcast. You know, over the years, I've been talking about domestic violence for women. We did more than 120 Oprah shows on domestic violence. I first started talking about it in 1986. That's when the year the show was launched. And back then, the stats in 1986 were one out of four women were impacted by some form of domestic violence. And now, 2026, after all of that talking and all of those years and all that we know and women's self-awakening and self-empowerment, things have not gotten better. They've actually gotten worse. The current stats are one in two, one in two women in the United States will experience sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

1:36That means if you're listening and you're not one, you know somebody who is or will be. This is so hard to believe and so unacceptable for us as a civil society and tough to hear. Research shows that the most dangerous place for a woman is right inside her own home and that the leading cause of death for women during pregnancy or postpartum is homicide. Pretty shocking, right? So to understand the scope and impact of these terrible statistics, I am joined by the author of the award-winning and best-selling book, No Visible Bruises. What we don't know about domestic violence can kill us. Journalist Rachel Louise Snyder, welcome, Rachel.

2:24Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for having me. Well, what is the significance, Rachel, of the title, No Visible Bruises? I love that title. I think that we really, all of the systems that we have created, prioritize physical violence. We, in particular, prioritize marks that we can see. But a lot of domestic violence is psychological, emotional, coercion. You mentioned stalking in your opening, things like financial control. All of these are forms of domestic violence. Financial control. Absolutely. Financial control. That's a new one because I think a lot of women do not think that their husband having control over the finances and belittling them for spending or, you know, it's one thing to say, you know, we have a family budget.

3:20But I hear that women, young women, are being belittled for their spending or wanting to spend time with their friends. Yeah. But that is also a form of abuse. Absolutely, it is. So all of these don't require physical, they don't require a punch or a kick or any kind of bruise at all. That's why it's no visible bruises. Absolutely, absolutely. And I think it's so amazing. As you're saying this, I know that there's somebody who's listening who is just under the belief or feeling that it's not so bad. I mean, you don't have physical freedom. There's a whole bunch of activity that happens around domestic violence that we don't really know how to calculate.

4:11And those are things like, I don't want you to have friends over because your friends don't like me. Or I don't want to go to your family's home because your family doesn't like me, which, by the way, may be true. Yeah. Right. The family may not like him because he's abusing her or they sense that something's off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, I see the way men on the street look at you when you wear those mini skirts. So I don't think you should wear those mini skirts. There's all these kind of small slights and small degradations that happen before anybody is ever kicked or punched. During the many, many, many, many years and times that I was doing shows talking about this, I think in the beginning, a lot of women see it as flattery.

4:57Oh, he loves me. He doesn't want me to, you know, he's jealous of me. And they are flattered by that. Absolutely. And then it just increases. Totally. And so my thing is, and you know this too, because you have spent eight years interviewing victims and law enforcement and abusers themselves, that the moment it starts, that's when you should put it in check. Oh, yeah. I tell my daughter, if a guy shows up on the lawn with an orchestra or a boombox and he's playing, that's not romantic. That's stalking. Yeah. Go away, right? Yeah. So as I said, you spent all this time interviewing victims and law enforcement and abuses themselves.

5:35And you say, if you get nothing else from this today, I hope we can make the shift in our culture. You say the term domestic violence, which I've used over the years, everybody uses, does not accurately describe what happens to women. What does? What is the term we should be using? terrorism i call it terrorism uh sometimes i call it intimate terrorism intimate partner terrorism yeah i don't call it that because it's not always from the partner right um it could be uh from a brother it could be from a parent there's all kinds of uh abuse that goes on behind closed doors that isn't always just from the partner a child can be abusive too You know, a parent.

6:25So the key is the word terrorism. If you think about someone who you think about walking on eggshells as a writer, I hate cliches, but it's a useful one. Yes. You walk on eggshells. You want to make sure that dinner is on the table at six o 'clock. You want to make sure that the kids aren't being loud. You want to make sure that everything is in place so that you can ward off whatever violence. And you're walking on eggshells and you don't know which one is going to slightly crack that day and send the person off on a tangent that you couldn't even imagine. Yeah, it's absolutely unpredictable.

7:05And that's part of the point is that unpredictability is that I am the one in control and I am the one who says you do this or you don't do this. Are you surprised, as I was surprised when I read your book, I was surprised that I've been talking about it all these years and there have been multiple articles about it and people have talked about it and movies about it, and that the stats were one out of four in the 80s and now they're one out of two now. Are you surprised that we've gone backwards? I'm not surprised by that, and I'll tell you why. With all that we know? With all of our self-empowerment and all that we know?

7:41I know. I know. There's this woman in my book says, we're leaping backwards at an obscene pace. It's such a telling line. I mean, there is a positive way to look at it, actually, but just like inflict a tiny bit of hope, which is that I think there are more resources known now. Certainly in 1986, there was no national domestic violence hotline. So there's more reporting of it now. But I'm also not surprised because there is a backlash going on right now. And I think, I guess I just, I sort of expected it. Yeah. So you say for most of human history, I was surprised by this too. I knew it, but I hadn't absorbed it, that for most of human history, society didn't even recognize domestic violence as being wrong.

8:31I mean, and still in other parts of the world, it's perfectly legal to beat your wife, beat your spouse. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, it's a sign of your status in your social circle that you control. Yeah. I mean, when I wrote this book, part of why I wrote it was that I misunderstood so much about domestic violence myself. First of all, I never thought about it. Right. Right. It's not something you think about unless you're in it. Well, yeah. And I, my father was abusive to me growing up and I didn't term that abuse. I didn't know that that was abuse. And in some ways, the best thing he did was kick me out of the house when I was 16, because I suddenly was able to see that what was going on in my house was not normal.

9:22When I was first introduced to domestic violence, I had been a journalist traveling the world. I did all kinds of human rights abuses, stories, gang rapes and, you know, child marriages and domestic violence sat at the core of all of those stories. but I was like, but that's not my story. My story is about gang rape. I mean, I, I had blinders. I, with all the privilege, I mean, okay, getting kicked out wasn't a privilege, but later in my life I had, you know, education, I was able to access education and make a living and all that stuff. And I thought, oh, but I, but I'm not doing a story on domestic violence.

9:59I'm doing a story on, on, you know, I think the word domestic violence also just marginalizes the experience that so many women have because it makes it feel like he slapped her. They were arguing. There was an argument that went on. And, you know, it does not in any way articulate the terrorism that you spoke of, nor the amount of devastation and fear that a woman lives in. There is a softening. Whenever you add the word domestic onto anything, it's coded as feminine. It's coded as female. Our listeners tell us that the podcast is resonating with you and is serving as a bright spot in your day.

10:42That means a lot to me. So here's the thing. I would really appreciate it if you like and subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube or wherever you podcast. It's just a quick tap of the subscribe button. And that way you won't miss an episode in your queue. You don't have to pay anything. I know subscribe usually means you're paying something, but this time it means you just are notified when there's something new. There are many more to come that we're excited about. So thank you for watching and listening. Thank you for listening to The Oprah Podcast. When we come back, award-winning journalist Rachel Louise Snyder shares the harrowing story of a 23-year-old woman killed by her own husband.

11:23Welcome back to The Oprah Podcast. I'm talking with bestselling author Rachel Louise Snyder. Her book, No Visible Bruises, opened up a new conversation around domestic violence and the rising abuse that happens behind closed doors. Let's get back to it. You know, there's a story in my book of a woman named Michelle Monson Mosher. You start with her. Yeah, I start with her. I actually kind of dedicate the first third of the book to her. She is killed at age 23 by her husband, Rocky. Not only she kills, she's killed and the two children are killed. And their two children are killed. and one of the things he did in the months before he killed her was they lived in Billings, Montana.

12:03He went to the outskirts of Billings and he got a rattlesnake, poisonous rattlesnake, and he kept it in a hexagonal cage in their living room. And he would say to her, if you do anything to piss me off, I'm going to put this snake in your bed or in the shower with you. No visible bruises necessary, right? You wrote that so profoundly that I just thought, wow, you're living with a rattlesnake in your house. In your house. And you're willing to live with a rattlesnake in your house. But then you brought up a point, because we all have asked this question over the years, why do you stay? Why do you stay?

12:40And you say we should be asking the question, why is he violent? Yeah. Yeah. I've even learned so much since I wrote that book. I keep learning and keep learning. And I think I would even expand that now to say that needs to be two questions. Why is he violent? And not why didn't she leave, but what did she do? And in the case of Michelle, so we the research will say it takes on average. What did she do to try to try to get herself out? Yes. Because every woman knows that you can't make a sudden move, that it's a process to try to get yourself out. Yeah. With this vision of like leaving is like, you know, a suitcase packed at the door, go to Vegas or whatever.

13:24But like, you know, you think about their kids might be in sports. They might be taking care of elderly parents. They might have pets, which you can't bring to a shelter. Maybe you don't want to leave your family's China at home. So there's all these barriers. You can't just enroll your kids in another school district without the father signing on or the other partner signing on. But in Michelle's case, and I think her case is fairly typical, there were all kinds of things that she did throughout the years to prepare for her freedom, safety measures that she took. So, for example, Rocky didn't allow her to work, but he did allow her to take classes.

14:03And the way she framed it was, if I take nursing classes, one of their children had pretty significant health problems. If I take nursing classes, I won't need to bring her to the emergency room as much and I'll be home more. I'll be under your thumb more. Right. She was really smart about it. In her case, she knew she wanted to get a nursing degree so that she could afford to raise those kids. That's just one of the things she did. But she also went to her father, who owned the house they were renting, and had her name put on the deed to the house so that she could get Rocky out. Our systems, judges, police, whatever, we don't ask the question, what did you do to prepare for your safety?

14:44What safety planning did you do? We ask, why didn't you leave? And just imagine any other crime where we're like, the impetus to change is on the victim of that crime. Right? But what I want women to do is to see the signs early. I mean, one of the things that I said for years and years and years on the show, and I think it did have an impact because I know a lot of people have since told me that they left when they realized that love doesn't hurt. Love doesn't hurt. And you allude to this in your, literally in the preface. I think this is so profound. You say, we live in a culture in which we are told our children must have a father.

15:26That a relationship is the ultimate goal. That family is the bedrock of society. That it's better to stay and work out one's issues in private than to leave and raise kids as a single mother. Michelle, as you were just speaking of, Michelle Monson-Moshur, said this over and over when she insisted to her mother that she didn't want to raise her children in a broken home. A broken home. As if a home with one adult abusing another adult isn't broken. As if there are degrees of brokenness. The messages are insidious and they are consistent. I think that's so profound that women don't realize that it's already broken.

16:12Right. It's already broken. It's already broken. If he's hitting you in front of your children, it's already broken. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Do you think women are still being raised to think this way? And how do we change that narrative? Yeah, I think they are still being raised. I was raised to believe that the world was a dangerous place. that the world was out to get me. And it wasn't until I was in the world that I realized, no, my house was where the real danger was. As it is for a lot of women. Yeah. You know, part of the issue is that we don't live in a world where you can walk out the door and be free of somebody who abuses you.

17:03We have technological ease right now for stalking. I mean, you know, there's all kinds of ways you can stalk somebody. We have social media, which, you know, if you're on social media, as most people are. And we have a court system that really wants to make sure both parents are in a child's life because they believe that it's going to be better for the child. And probably most of the time it is, but not when there's violence. So research reveals that 60 % of domestic violence victims are strangled, which dramatically increases the chance of violence in the home. Why is strangulation often the last step before homicide?

17:47It's such an important question. I didn't fully understand that strangulation was a different marker of dangerousness. It's different than a kick or a punch. It is often the penultimate act before homicide. it carries two different potential injuries. One is literally cutting off the airway. Airway. So oxygen to the brain. And then I read in No Visible Bruises that it also, you're more likely to have a stroke. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Brain damage or blood clot. Yeah. And of course, we don't have emergency rooms that regularly scan victims of domestic violence for head trauma. in the way that we do car accident victims or kids with sports.

18:39And it is a particularly gendered act because women just don't have the hand strength for strangulation. So 60 % of the cases, people have been strangled. Yeah, yeah. You spent years conducting interviews and sitting in on group sessions with abusers. And what surprised you about the men you encountered, the men who were the abusers? The men who were abusers were charming and funny. You know, I've mentioned my father. My father was also the guy that took my daughter to the Supermama to walk around. It was like the grandpa, granddaughter special thing. He was the guy who knew every woman's name who handed out free samples at the grocery store and their kids' names and their life stories.

19:29He was wonderful and charming and funny and also abusive. So, but I didn't, even I didn't recognize that I had grown up with that until, and I'm ashamed to say, it wasn't this book that I realized that, it was the book that came after this. And those guys, and I've sat in on prisons, I've sat in on abuser intervention groups. It really shook me to think, oh, you're funny guys. You're smart guys. I know. You're educated guys. I know, I know, I know. I remember having an aha moment years ago when I was talking to this man named Zeke. And I remember walking into the room with all these guys who, you know, were in this program supposedly for rehabbing.

20:21And they all looked so like normal guys. Normal. Yeah. Okay, so let's take a look at Zeke. He talks about why he was physically abusive. Take a look. What does it take to change this kind of behavior? What does it take? Oh, that's an easy question. That's probably the easiest question so far. Learning to tolerate pain and learning to manage emotions that don't feel good. And you're not always going to get the reinforcement that you think you need because you're dealing with an outside person who has the right not to play the game with you. even if it's beneficial for both people. They don't have to go along with you.

21:06They don't even have to see this as a problem. Okay. Let me tell you how profound that is, I think. Because that is the same thing I do to keep myself from overeating. Wow. That is the same thing you do when you want to stop yourself from taking the next drink when you're an alcoholic. Exactly. It is the same thing you do if you're addicted to any kind of behavior that is destructive to you. You have to allow yourself to feel the pain and allow yourself to deal with the emotion that you automatically would repress or overlook or deny yourself. What you just did was you put it in a context so that everybody can see that what you used to do with your anger, lashing out, is the same thing that everybody does.

21:53That's how brilliant that is because everybody does it. But when somebody does it in a form that you don't do or we don't do, we see that as being those people who do that. Yeah. It's so interesting. He had said to me either before that or after that every time he hit his spouse, he would tell himself, it will never happen again. It will never happen again. I won't do it again. This is the last time. This is the last time. And feel terrible afterwards. And I thought that's what every addict feels. And so I was wondering, in your interviews and conversations with men who've abused, does it feel like an addiction for them?

22:37Does it feel like something they can't control? It's complicated. I do compare it to addiction sometimes, but it's an imperfect comparison because, you know, addiction has so much neuroscience behind it. And violence, I think, is socio-cultural. But I was able to, I did a story for the New York Times a couple of years ago on this violence hotline in the UK. We don't have anything like it in the U.S. nationally, but they have a national violence hotline, not domestic violence hotline. And so it's for people who are using violence and want to stop. So the police will give out this number when they don't go on calls or child protective services.

23:23And they let me listen in for about two or three months to these phone calls. And they're all anonymous. So it's 85 percent men who call and they don't, you know, they don't give their name. And because they're not because they're anonymous, they don't have to perform. And what was amazing to me to listen to them was how many were calling up, first of all, sobbing. How often do you hear men cry? Not very often. And they were saying, I don't want to be like this. I don't want to be this person. But they had no training on exactly what Zeke said, on how to manage their pain. Their rage. Absolutely.

24:07Their rage. Yeah. And I think the more interesting programs that I've sat in on for people who use violence are ones in which they're able to connect not just the emotional constellation that's happening, but the ones where they can actually notice their physical body, what they look like, how intimidating they look, their voices. those are ones that really, where you really see aha moments for these guys. I think, and also in No Visible Bruises, one of the things you talk about is when you ask law enforcement, do you think that men can be rehabilitated from violence and change? They say no. And women who are abused say they hope so, but the men themselves say yes.

24:58And I think yes is the answer, but it takes a lot of work. And I think for any woman who's living with an abusive husband, unless that person or an abusive spouse or partner or brother or whomever, if that person isn't willing to seek help for it, they're not going to resolve it on their own. I do not think you can resolve it on your own. No, that's absolutely the key. It's not something that can be resolved. That you just decide one day I'm not going to do it anymore. Absolutely. I think that's where the addiction parallel is relevant. It's learned behavior. And that's how you react. That's how you react.

25:32And they have to see the benefit in their own lives. Of changing. They have to say, oh, my life is better when my children aren't scared of me. My life is better when my wife is happy and not cowering, for example. Yeah. And the people who are able to see that are the people who are actually able to change. But isn't that hard to see because aren't most of them narcissists? Yes. Yeah. And so they love the power and the control and I'm the one. If you're not going to be with me, you're not going to be with anybody. Right. After a quick break, we catch up with a woman I met on The Oprah Show whose story is seared in my memory.

26:14Susan endured 17 years of physical and emotional abuse. Her husband even forced her then 13-year-old son to record the abuse on camera. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Christy from Lululemon. I'm here at the office and we just dropped some really fun new summer colors in the Flow Y styles. If you're like me, you've loved the Flow Y tank and bra for years. And as of this year, it also comes in a dress and a crop tank. These are made in our buttery soft Nulu fabric. And my favorite part is the built-in bra. It makes it super easy to wear for yoga or honestly as an everyday basic. You can find Flow Y styles in store or online at lululemon.com.

26:54Hi, and welcome back to a difficult but important conversation about domestic violence, a silent epidemic impacting more women than you may have realized. Well, one of the stories, you know, I did 4 ,561 shows. I've interviewed over 35 ,000 people one on one. And so a lot of things get buried in my memory. But there is one woman's story that nearly 20 years ago I had a conversation with this woman, Susan, who was a mother of three who had endured 17 years of physical and emotional abuse by her husband. Her story was especially shocking. It shocked our whole audience because her then-husband, Rachel, forced her 13-year-old son to videotape the violence.

27:42Wow. So there we see her son on camera filming it. And I want to give warning that this footage is physical and verbal abuse and may be difficult to watch. This is Susan on her wedding day. 17 years ago, the arms of the man she believed was the love of her life carried her across the threshold. Now I want you to take a look at Susan four years ago on June 23rd, 2003. One day after the video that you're about to see was taped. Keep in mind that the images in today's show are not suitable for young children. They're not suitable for anyone. You play those stupid games with me, I'll knock your teeth out of your face.

28:27You hear me? It's the nightmare we hear happens behind closed doors, but rarely if ever see. You keep playing this game with me, I'm going to knock your head across that wall. In a rage, Susan Stills' husband emotionally and verbally attacks her in front of their children. No slogan come out. You don't want to see yourself get beat in front of the kids, but you act like in front of the kids. Her husband even commands their 13 year old son to shoot the abuse on home video. Zoom in on that half. The videotape records 51 minutes of fear. For more than 40 of those minutes, Susan stands in the same spot, desperately trying to avoid another beating.

29:08And just you standing there talking stupid like that pisses me off because you should be on your knees apologizing. Susan says simply asking her husband if he'd like a sandwich set him off. With her oldest son, 13, on the other side of the lens, and her 8-year-old son also in the room, Susan's husband calls her stupid 23 times, heifer 28 times, among other dehumanizing names.