Sometimes the perpetrators of these acts of violence are state officials, such as police, prison guards or soldiers. Sometimes they are members of armed groups fighting against the government. However, much of the violence faced by women is at the hands of the people with whom they share their lives, whether as members of their family, of their community or as their employers. There is an unbroken spectrum of violence that women face at the hands of men who exert control over them. Police and other state agents inflict torture not only in order to extract confessions, but also to instil profound dread in victims, to break their will, to punish them and to demonstrate the power of the perpetrators.
Similar purposes characterize torture in the family or community.
The perpetrators may seek to intimidate women into obedience, to punish them for bringing shame and dishonour on male relatives, or to assert their power over them. The effects of violence and torture are physically and psychologically devastating, whether inflicted by private individuals or agents of the state. For example, women are traumatized and injured by rape, wherever the crime takes place. The medical consequences include psychological trauma, wounds, unwanted pregnancies, infertility and life-threatening diseases. The responsibilities of every state Violence against women, especially sexual violence in marriage, is still often viewed as a private or individual matter separate from the responsibility to protect civil and political rights.