Myths, Factoids, and Facts about Domestic Violence
One of the problems with discussions on domestic violence is that so many things people think are factual are actually factoids. This page collects common factoids on domestic violence, and rebuts, confirms, or clarifies each.
| Claim | Fact check | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men make up 5% of the victims of domestic violence | Approximately 1.5 million women and 834,732 men are raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States (i.e. men make 36% of the victims), according to the Violence Against Women Survey | ||||||||||
| Every 9 seconds in the U.S. a woman is assaulted or beaten | |||||||||||
| One woman is beaten by her husband or partner every 15 second in the US | |||||||||||
| Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women | Sometimes, said as “domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States — more than car accidents, muggins, and rapes combined.”The best research on this is: National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 1992 Emergency Department Summary-Centers For Disease Control The CDC study reports on the causes of injury in emergency departments by percentage for women only:
Note that the last figure includes assault by strangers as well, i.e. ALL assault. This study: Violence-Related Injuries in Hospital Emergency Departments-US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics NCJ-156921 found that of those assaults, 17% of all admissions for assaults are due to intimate partner violence (14% women-3% men).You can read about the history of this factoid. A detailed response to this is also available on page 28 and 29: Violent Touch, by David Fontes. |
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| About 1 out of 4 women is likely to be abused by a partner in her lifetime | |||||||||||
| Nearly 2,000 American women are killed every year by their partners | |||||||||||
| More than eight out of ten men commit violence against wives in India | http://www.proutist-universal.org/archives/000453.html | ||||||||||
| Police nationwide report that between 40 and 60 percent of the calls they receive, especially at night, are domestic disputes. | |||||||||||
| Domestic violence ranks as one of the nation’s most expensive health problems. | |||||||||||
| According to one study, family violence alone may cost the country from $5 to $10 billion every year in health care and associated costs. | |||||||||||
| Half of all homeless women and children in this country are fleeing domestic violence. | |||||||||||
| More than 90 percent of corporate security directors in one survey had seen at least three cases of men stalking women employees and rated domestic violence as a ”high II security problem.” | |||||||||||
| The No. 1 cause of death among pregnant women is murder | According to longtime domestic violence researcher Richard J. Gelles, co-author of Behind Closed Doors, ”to be pregnant alone doesn’t put a woman at risk.””Women between the ages of 20 and 34 suffer the highest rate of domestic violence, and that is also the most likely age to be pregnant,” he says. ”Age is driving the risk, not pregnancy.” quoted in column by Glenn Sacks in a conservative paper (Please note that SAFE Is not a conservative or liberal organization). |
See also:
- Domestic Violence Factoids, by Richard J. Gelles, University of Rhode Island Family Violence Research Program.