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

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:00)
One 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? You say we should be asking the question, why is he violent?
Hi, and welcome to The Oprah Podcast. 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 of 1986 were one out of four women were impacted by some form of domestic violence. 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. That 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. Thank you for being here with me.

**Rachel Louise Snyder** (2:25)
Thank you for having me.

**Oprah Winfrey** (2:27)
Well, what is the significance, Rachel, of the title No Visible Bruises? I love that title.

**Rachel Louise Snyder** (2:32)
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 stocking in your opening.
Things like financial control. All of these are forms of domestic violence.

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:02)
Financial control.

**Rachel Louise Snyder** (3:04)
Absolutely, financial control.

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:05)
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 it's one thing to say, you know, we have a family budget. But I hear that women, young women, are being belittled for their spending or wanting to spend time with their friends.

**Rachel Louise Snyder** (3:27)
Yeah.

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:27)
But that is also a form of abuse.

**Rachel Louise Snyder** (3:29)
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.

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:38)
That's why it's no visible bruises.

**Rachel Louise Snyder** (3:40)
Absolutely, absolutely.

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:43)
And I think it's so amazing, as you're saying this, I know that there's somebody's listening who is just under the belief or feeling that it's not so bad.

**Rachel Louise Snyder** (3:56)
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. And 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.

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:23)
Yeah.

**Rachel Louise Snyder** (4:24)
Right. The family may not like him because he's abusing her.

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:27)
Or they sense that something's off.

**Rachel Louise Snyder** (4:29)
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 has ever kicked or punched.

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:46)
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. Oh, he loves me. He doesn't want me to, you know, he's jealous of me. And they are flattered by that.