'You don't have to be able to name it to be a victim'

Sue Webeck head of the Domestic Violence Crisis Service in Canberra talks about the stats on emotional abuse according to new ABS data. Picture: Karleen Minney

It's the constant insults, the shouting and abuse. It's the act of stopping you from seeing your friends and family and of lying to the kids with the intent of turning them against you.

That's just some of the behaviours of emotional abuse and a new analysis by the Australian Bureau of Statistics of its Personal Safety Survey released on Wednesday shows nearly one in four Australian women have experienced emotional abuse by a partner. For men, the rate is one in six. More than half of women and a quarter of men who experienced partner emotional abuse surveyed said they had also experienced physical or sexual violence by a partner.