Is domestic violence really such a big problem?

In this country, a woman is more likely to be assaulted, injured, raped, or killed by a male partner than by any other type of assailant. Domestic violence is believed to be the most common yet least re­ported crime in our nation. An estimated 3 to 4 million American women are beaten each year by their husbands or partners. The U. S. Surgeon General has identified domestic violence as a major health problem to women. Wife-beating results in more injuries that require medical treatment than rape, auto accident, and muggings combined. Each year, more than 1,000 women -or about four women per day- are killed by their husbands or partners. Domestic violence is indeed a serious national problem that affects not only individual victims, but the entire community as well.

Isn’t domestic violence mostly a low-income or minority issue?

Domestic violence occurs among all sectors of society. It happens to people of all racial, economic, and religious groups. For example, police in the mostly white, upper class Washington, D.C. suburb of Montgomery County, Maryland, received as many domestic distur­bance calls as were received in the same period in Harlem, New York City. However, low-income battered women are more likely to seek assistance from public agencies, such as shelters and hospital emer­gency rooms, because they have fewer private resources than middle-and upper-income women. They are therefore more likely to be counted in official reporting statistics.

Aren’t husbands and wives equally violent?

In about 5 percent of reported domestic assaults, the offender is the male victim’s wife or female partner. Unfortunately, a well-publicized national survey purported to find that husbands and wives are equally violent. The survey has been criticized by numerous prominent re­searches on several grounds. Most importantly, the survey did not find out whether the violence was an act of self-defense nor did it examine the effects of the violence on the victim. It is known that women generally resort to physical force in self-defense. It is also is known that men who batter deny and minimize their acts of violence. For these major reasons, the survey findings are highly misleading and potentially dangerous. Moreover, males commit more than 80 percent of vio­lent crimes that occur outside the home. Why would women be so violent in the home, yet generally peaceful outside of it?

Don’t most victims ask for it?

Victims of domestic violence are the victims of a crime; they do not provoke or deserve such treatment. Typically, abusers blame their victims for provoking the violence because of verbal abuse. Although verbal abuse may cause anger, it does not provoke or justify violence. How a person deals with that anger is a choice—some men choose violence. Only the violent party is responsible for the abuse.

If the abuse is so bad, why do victims stay in these relationships?

Actually, many women do leave their abusers. In one study of 205 battered women, more than 50 percent had left the relationship. Moreover, we will never know about the countless number of di­vorced women who choose not to identify abuse as the reason they ended their marriages.

Battered women, in general, do not passively endure physical abuse, but actively seek assistance in ending the violence from a variety of sources, including police, lawyers, health care personnel, family members, and the clergy. Frequently, it is the failure of these individuals and systems to provide adequate support that traps women in violent relationships. A study of more than 6,000 battered women in Texas found that, on average, the women had contacted five different sources of help prior to leaving the home and becom­ing residents of battered women’s shelters.

Certainly, many victims of domestic violence also suffer in silence. These women endure physical abuse for a variety of reasons:

·         A battered woman frequently faces the most physical danger when she attempts to leave. She may be threatened with violence and death or attacked if she tries to flee. She fears for her safety, her children’s safety, and the safety of those who help her.

·         For many women, leaving may not be an alternative. There may be nowhere to go and little or no resources in the community to help battered women.

·         Because of religious, cultural, or socially learned beliefs, a woman may feel that it is her duty to keep the marriage together at all costs.

·         Many women want the violence, not the relationship, to end. They may take many steps to try to stop the abuse; leaving the home may be their last resort.

·         Some women will endure physical and emotional abuse to keep the family together for the children’s sake. Very often, it is when the violence is directed at her children that she will take them and leave. More than half of the children whose mothers are battered also are victims of physical abuse.

·         A woman may be financially dependent on her husband. She will probably face severe economic hardship if she chooses to support herself and her children on her own.

Aren’t domestic violence shelters just band-aids for the problem?

Domestic Violence shelters are not a band-aid solution to domestic violence, but an important life-saving response to the problem, just as ambulances and hospital emergency rooms respond to medical crises. Shelters are a critical component of the community’s efforts to ensure the safety and protection of victims. Making available safe shelter for battered women and their children is essential to ensure such protection, particularly for low-income women who may lack the resources to find safety elsewhere. Shelters not only offer women refuge, but other essential supportive services, including legal, eco­nomic, housing, and medical advocacy; court accompaniment; em­ployment and job training assistance; support groups for residents and nonresidents and child care and special children’s counseling programs.

But beyond performing crisis intervention and providing essential victim services, shelters are an important grass roots effort to­wards affecting the social change that is necessary to prevent and ultimately end domestic violence. For example, advocates for bat­tered women, working through shelter programs, have worked to pass important state and federal legislation on domestic violence. In addition, shelters also are the focal point for educating the commu­nity about critical issues, training of law enforcement and other pro­fessionals who often confront domestic violence in their work, and for establishing and monitoring counseling and education programs for abusers.

Is domestic violence intergenerational?

There is evidence that violence may pass from generation to genera­tion. Boys who witness their mothers’ abuse are more likely to batter their female partners as adults than boys raised in nonviolent homes. However, not all men who batter were raised in violent homes, so this is only a partial explanation of why some men choose to use violence. On the other hand, there is no evidence that girls whose mothers were battered are more likely to be battered themselves. In fact, the only common factor among battering victims is that they are female. Being a woman is the only identifiable risk factor for becom­ing a battering victim.