When the Violence Against Women Act was first passed in 1994, pretty much everybody agreed with the dictionary definition of violence: a “behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.” Accordingly, the original version of VAWA defined domestic violence (DV) as “felony or misdemeanor crimes of violence committed by a current or former spouse or intimate partner of the victim.”

Then the advocates went to work at the state level. Before long, terms like “fearful” and “afraid” began to pop up in statutory definitions. Some states went even further:

• New Jersey: Any intrusion into your “well-being”
• Illinois: “interference with personal liberty”
• California, Delaware, Michigan, Montana, and Virginia: The mere feeling of “apprehension” of harm qualifies you as a victim of domestic abuse

But the victim advocates weren’t satisfied. So they convinced the DOJ Office of Violence Against Women to publish this sweeping definition:

A “pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner.  Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.”

This unauthorized characterization later was removed from the OVW website.

During the 2013 VAWA reauthorization, the DV advocates succeeded in expanding the law’s definition to encompass “dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.”

But the advocates weren’t done.

During the current VAWA reauthorization, they expanded “domestic violence” even more. H.R. 1585 enumerates the following as types of domestic violence: Verbal abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse, and technological abuse. “Verbal” and “emotional” abuse are not defined in the bill.

When you think about it, the possibilities are endless. Do a Google search, you’ll find information about “silence abuse.” According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, “spiritual abuse” is reportedly “no less difficult to endure than any other kind of abuse.”

So what happens when domestic violence becomes so elastic and amorphous that every American becomes classified as a victim?

1. A serious problem becomes trivialized — if everything is domestic violence, nothing is domestic violence.
2. Scarce resources become diverted away from the neediest victims.
3. All-encompassing definitions open the door to government intrusion into trivial matters and encourage false allegations.

As part of the VAWA Fresh Start, we need to consider the harmful effects of the decades-long push to expand and water-down definitions. We need to ponder whether the trend is helping or hurting the real victims of domestic violence.