No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder

BATB score: 7/10 🤕

*reader discretion advised: this is not a book but a white-paper research making a sole proposal that serial killers, mass shooter, psychopaths, etc, can all be pre-empted and predicted if we take domestic violence cases more seriously*

“You could certainly say about half the cases of mass shootings are extreme incidents of domestic violence.” In other words, it’s not that domestic violence predicts mass shootings. It’s that mass shootings, more than half the time, are domestic violence.”

Best for: Bill Gates would love this book

Best to: 137 women each and every day are killed by intimate partner or familial violence across the globe. It takes an average 7 attempts for a victim of domestic violence to leave their abusive partner. A mad man’s first victim is usually / always his wife and children.

Best as: the only problem with this book is that it is very heavy with numerous anecdotes written in a diary mind vomit style; difficult to feel for the crimes, a lot of work needed to trace back the thought processes / arguments, and super tiring to read through the repetition between chapters; it’s like this book is material, appendix, data collection pre-work to then properly write a separate book referencing it

Best quotes: “Whether a violent man could be taught to be nonviolent. The answers almost always fell along these lines: police officers and advocates said no, victims said they hoped so, and violent men said yes.”

“Hurt people hurt people; healed people heal people.”

“Please don’t kill me. See how polite we women are? We say ‘please’ when we’re begging for our lives.”

“The 8 ways a batterer maintains power and control: fear, emotional abuse, isolation, denial and blame, using children, bullying, financial control, and brute force + verbal threats.”

“I don’t believe love conquers all. So many things in this world seem more powerful than love. Duty. Rage. Fear. Violence.”

“Victims who side with their abusers during police calls do so not out of instability, as many law enforcement officers assume, but out of a measured calculation toward their future safety.”