No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

Rocky Mosure was a young man living in Billings, Montana. He worked on and off in construction and related fields, but he also dealt (and himself took) drugs. A somewhat troubled childhood left him insecure and angry as an adult, and his relationship with Michelle Mosure, nee Monson—who was a decade younger than him and just 14 when she became pregnant with their first child—quickly became abusive. Michelle herself was stubborn, intelligent, and level-headed—traits that allowed her to continue pursuing an education even after becoming a teenage mother. By the time she was 23, she was planning to leave Rocky, and it was this that led him to murder her and their two children before committing suicide.

The tragic story of Rocky and Michelle is both the hook No Visible Bruises leads with and a reference point Snyder uses throughout the text. It embodies many of the hallmarks of abusive relationships, and their respective families and community are the collateral damage of domestic violence. Michelle and Rocky’s story functions as an archetype for the text, as well as acting as the primary investigative tool and experimental control against which Snyder compares the stories that follow. Snyder also continually reexamines Rocky and Michelle’s tragedy through the lens of new information, illustrating the definite patterns and characteristics that are common across abuse scenarios. 

Throughout the text, Snyder introduces several women involved in the fight against domestic violence. Jacquelyn Campbell, Gael Strack, Sunny Schwartz, Suzanne Dubus, Kelly Dunne, and Martina Latessa all use their time and talents to help the victims of domestic violence and prevent future occurrences.

Campbell is the creator of the Danger Assessment, which quantifies the threat posed to an abuse victim and allows law enforcement to prioritize the cases where domestic violence is most likely to tip into domestic homicide. Gael Strack’s work with strangulation and traumatic brain injuries has led to changes in how ERs treat domestic abuse victims and furthered our understanding of why victims are often unable to remember violent events. Sunny Schwartz advocates for the use of programs such as ManAlive, arguing that restorative justice is the key to truly disrupting the cycle of violence. A chance meeting with Suzanne Dubus, who had just developed a “High Risk Team” for a domestic violence agency, was what first led Snyder to begin investigating the issue. Together with Kelly Dunne, Dubus has been instrumental in finding new and better ways to protect women and minimize the disruption to their lives as they struggle to escape abusive situations. Lastly, Martina Latessa is a detective who specializes in working with domestic violence victims in particularly dangerous situations.

The overriding message from these women is that communication and collaboration are absolutely imperative if the various agencies and programs working to prevent domestic violence want to succeed. Most of the women also have either first or secondhand experience(s) with domestic or sexual violence, illustrating how widespread the problem is.

Hamish Sinclair, David Adams, Evan Stark, and Casey Gwinn work to help domestic abuse victims. Hamish Sinclair is the creator of ManAlive, and David Adams is the creator of Emerge: Both are intervention programs for men with a history of domestic violence. Evan Stark is the author of Coercive Control, which has been critical in getting courts to recognize stalking and social isolation as abuse. Casey Gwinn fought to use evidence-based prosecution for abuse victims, and while the Supreme Court dealt Gwinn’s work a huge setback, he continues to work to protect abuse victims from being further terrorized by the court system. Snyder includes these men’s stories to illustrate the need for male allies in the fight against domestic violence; because violence itself is so strongly gendered, it makes sense, both practically and ethically, for men to play a role in solving the problem.