Nicely following my post yesterday, the Government Equalities Office has published a domestic violence factsheet (PDF), which makes pretty sobering reading. Amongst the 'key facts' it lists are that one in four women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime, that 85% of victims of domestic violence are women and that women are the victims in 4 out of 5 domestic homicides. The factsheet also includes a 'domestic homicide map of England and Wales' showing the number of women murdered by their partners or former partners over the last five years for which statistics are available (see picture - the darker the area, the higher the incidence). The highest incidence of all was recorded by Humberside police force, with 3.27 out of every 100,000 women reported as killed by a current or former partner between 2002 and 2007. The numbers are probably not statistically significant, but I would suggest that the map may show a correlation between domestic homicides and standard of living, although, as the Guardian points out, the map also shows that domestic violence is everywhere.[Thanks for the link to this story go to Current Awareness - who else?]
Government estimates of male-on-female domestic violence are invariably higher than independent studies indicate. Research in the UK, the US and Canada is consistent on this (I can give references). Some studies (such as Martin S Feibert's meta-analysis) even show female-on-male violence to be slightly higher.
ReplyDeleteThe UK Government tends to rely for its figures on extreme feminist organisations like Women's Aid or Justice for Women, or feminist criminologists like Betsy Stanko (read the Hansard account of the Commons DV debate where virtually every speaker took their figures from the WA website). Ministers are not academics, dispassionately relating the facts; they are propagandists, justifying ideological policies. I would approach these statistics very cautiously.
Consider the admission of Sandra Horley, chief exec of Refuge, 'If we put across this idea that the abuse of men is as great as the abuse of women, then it could seriously affect our funding'.
As a MALE victim of domestic violence I would say hand on heart that men are in a far worse situation. little help and few police officers that show any sympathy. most officers are female.(in manchester famale officers make up 92% of all DV units) the crime survey say that dv is non gender specific so why so few convicted women? Having been there I know how hard it is to either report or get the police to take you seriously. In my case my ex wife then used to children against me. In a police statement she said " I would rather lose everything than give him a penny" and "I will use the children to hurt him" Untill we have a even playing field then nothing will change. We read that woman are becoming more violent. Yet the figures of violence stay the same. I would say the figures are wrong. Its just that men cant report it.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I'm sure you and Nick are right that violence against men is more widespread than the statistics suggest.
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