Sociologist Evan Stark, 82, studied domestic violence

Evan Stark, a sociologist who helped broaden the definition of domestic violence beyond physical assault to include the patterns of domination often at its root, a shift that improved services for victims as well as their treatment under the law, died March 17 at his home in Woodbridge, Conn. He was 82.

His wife and academic collaborator, Anne Flitcraft, confirmed his death. He was on a Zoom call with domestic violence advocates in British Columbia when he had an apparent heart attack, Flitcraft said.

Stark was a self-described “veteran radical sociologist” who participated in the civil rights movement and led protests against the Vietnam War before turning his attention to domestic violence — “an epidemic problem that has been invisible,” he once said — when a friend in Minnesota helped open one of the country’s first shelters for battered women in the 1970s.

As a sociologist, author, expert witness and advocate, Stark challenged misconceptions about domestic violence, which is primarily, although not universally, inflicted upon women. One of the most pernicious myths is the notion that women who remain in abusive relationships do so willingly.

In the 1980s, advocates created a diagram known as the “Power and Control Wheel” to represent tactics often employed by abusers to keep victims from leaving. Those tactics might include belittling a woman to degrade her self-esteem, isolating her from her friends and family, limiting her access to money, surveilling her activities and threatening violence on her or her children.