WHAT IS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE?

Domestic violence is defined in the law as certain criminal acts committed between persons of opposite sex who live together in the same household, (or who have lived together in the same household, (or who have lived together in the past); or persons who have a child in common or are expecting a child (regardless of whether they have resided in the same household); or persons related to one another in the following ways: spouse, child, grandparent, former spouse, brother, grandchild, parent, sister.

The criminal acts specifically defined in the law are: assault, criminal damage, custodial interference, endangerment, imprisonment, intimidation, kid-napping, trespass, disorderly conduct (by fighting, unreasonable noise, abuse language), or reckless display or discharge of a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS A CRIME

Domestic violence is not a "family problem." It is a crime. You have the right to be safe. No one has the right to hit or threaten you. Children are also hurt emotionally by seeing domestic violence.

The abuser often apologizes and tries to make up. The abuser may even be sincere in wanting to change. Don't fool yourself. Statistics show that the violence will only get worse, and happen more often, without court involvement and counseling.

National   Statistics

• Estimates range from 960,000 incidents of violence against a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend per year1 to three million women who are physically abused by their husband or boyfriend per year.2
• Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime.3
• Nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives, according to a 1998 Commonwealth Fund survey.4
• Nearly 25 percent of American women report being raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or date at some time in their lifetime, according to the National Violence Against Women Survey, conducted from November 1995 to May 1996.5
• Thirty percent of Americans say they know a woman who has been physically abused by her husband or boyfriend in the past year.6
• In the year 2001, more than half a million American women (588,490 women) were victims of nonfatal violence committed by an intimate partner.7
• Intimate partner violence is primarily a crime against women. In 2001, women accounted for 85 percent of the victims of intimate partner violence (588,490 total) and men accounted for approximately 15 percent of the victims (103,220 total).8
• While women are less likely than men to be victims of violent crimes overall, women are five to eight times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner.9
• In 2001, intimate partner violence made up 20 percent of violent crime against women. The same year, intimate partners committed three percent of all violent crime against men.10
• As many as 324,000 women each year experience intimate partner violence during their pregnancy.11
• Women of all races are about equally vulnerable to violence by an intimate.12
• Male violence against women does much more damage than female violence against men; women are much more likely to be injured than men.13
• The most rapid growth in domestic relations caseloads is occurring in domestic violence filings. Between 1993 and 1995, 18 of 32 states with three year filing figures reported an increase of 20 percent or more.14
• Women are seven to 14 times more likely than men to report suffering severe physical assaults from an intimate partner.15

Stalking

• Annually in the United States, 503,485 women are stalked by an intimate partner.37
• Seventy-eight percent of stalking victims are women. Women are significantly more likely than men (60 percent and 30 percent, respectively) to be stalked by intimate partners.38
• Eighty percent of women who are stalked by former husbands are physically assaulted by that partner and 30 percent are sexually assaulted by that partner.39

1U.S. Department of Justice, Violence by Intimates: Analysis of Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, Boyfriends, and Girlfriends, March 1998
2The Commonwealth Fund, Health Concerns Across a Woman’s Lifespan: 1998 Survey of Women’s Health, May 1999
3Heise, L., Ellsberg, M. and Gottemoeller, M. Ending Violence Against Women. Population Reports, Series L, No. 11., December 1999
4The Commonwealth Fund, Health Concerns Across a Woman’s Lifespan: 1998 Survey of Women’s Health, May 1999
5The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The National Institute of Justice, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence, July 2000.
6Lieberman Research Inc., Tracking Survey conducted for The Advertising Council and the Family Violence Prevention Fund, July – October 1996
7Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003
8Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003
9U.S. Department of Justice, Violence by Intimates: Analysis of Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, Boyfriends, and Girlfriends, March 1998
10Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003
11Gazmararian JA, Petersen R, Spitz AM, Goodwin MM, Saltzman LE, Marks JS. “Violence and reproductive health; current knowledge and future research directions.” Maternal and Child Health Journal 2000;4(2):79-84.
12Bureau of Justice Statistics, Violence Against Women: Estimates from the Redesigned Survey, August 1995
13Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles, Physical Violence in American Families, 1990
14Examining the Work of State Courts, 1995: A National Perspective from the Court Statistics Project. National Center for the State Courts, 1996
15National Institute of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, November 1998
16Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003
17Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003
18Horon, I., & Cheng, D., (2001). Enhanced Surveillance for Pregnancy-Associated Mortality - Maryland, 1993 - 1998. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 285, No. 11, March 21, 2001.
19Frye, V. (2001). Examining Homicide's Contribution to Pregnancy-Associated Deaths. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 285, No. 11, March 21, 2001
20Nannini, A., Weiss, J., Goldstein, R., & Fogerty, S., (2002). Pregnancy-Associated Mortality at the End of the Twentieth Century: Massachusetts, 1990 – 1999. Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association, Vol. 57, No. 23, Summer 2002.
21Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United States, April 2003.
22National Crime Victimization Survey, 1992-96; Study of Injured Victims of Violence, 1994
23U.S. Department of Justice, Violence Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments, August 1997
24Jay G. Silverman, PhD; Anita Raj, PhD; Lorelei A. Mucci, MPH; and Jeanne E. Hathaway, MD, MPH, “Dating Violence Against Adolescent Girls and Associated Substance Use, Unhealthy Weight Control, Sexual Risk Behavior, Pregnancy, and Suicidality,” Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 286, No. 5, 2001
25The Commonwealth Fund Survey of the Health of Adolescent Girls, November 1997
26Children Now/Kaiser Permanente poll, December 1995
27U.S. Department of Education, Violence and Discipline Problems in U.S. Public Schools: 1996-1997
28Strauss, Murray A, Gelles, Richard J., and Smith, Christine. 1990. Physical Violence in American Families; Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers
29U.S. Department of Justice, Violence by Intimates: Analysis of Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, Boyfriends, and Girlfriends, March 1998
30Carlson, Bonnie E. (1984). Children's observations of interpersonal violence. Pp. 147-167 in A.R. Roberts (Ed.) Battered women and their families (pp. 147-167). NY: Springer. Straus, M.A. (1992). Children as witnesses to marital violence: A risk factor for lifelong problems among a nationally representative sample of American men and women. Report of the Twenty-Third Ross Roundtable. Columbus, OH: Ross Laboratories.
31U.S. Department of Justice, Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, November 1998
32The Commonwealth Fund, Health Concerns Across a Woman’s Lifespan: 1998 Survey of Women’s Health, May 1999
33National Institute of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,, Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, November 1998
34Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, Reporting Crime to the Police, 1992-2000, March 2003
35Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003
36Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, Reporting Crime to the Police, 1992-2000, March 2003
37Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence, National Institute of Justice, 2000
38Center for Policy Research, Stalking in America, July 1997
39Center for Policy Research, Stalking in America, July 1997