While some psychologists would agree that any behavior, emotional or physical, has to be part of a pattern to be abuse, that is not a view held by all by any means. Of course it is more serious if it is a pattern, but a single incident can be damaging nevertheless.

From the one incident it would be irresponsible to extrapolate from it to say it was a pattern, and I am not saying that. However, we also didn’t see the whole thing, and it looks like it went on for a very long time, at least a half hour. I saw enough to say that even the bits that were shown clearly looked like abuse to me. But then, I believe that emotional abuse exists and some people don’t. If you have someone writhing on the floor crying ‘help me, help me’ and her husband is right there but withholding help from her, I think it ought to be clear you have abuse taking place.

Then there are people who think a good wife beating is the way to maintain order in the household and all sorts of other ways to deny abuse. I know you don’t agree with that, but the point is that first a problem has to be identified before it can be solved. We have come a long way in identifying physical abuse, but still have a way to go with emotional abuse or we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

BTW, abuse almost always occurs when people are under stress; that doesn’t excuse it.