This is not a pleasant post.
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
This is not intended to compare the battle between the genders, whether one deserves more attention that the other. This is outlined separately to represent both data correctly.
Behind ever statistic there is a victim, regardless of gender or age.
This is what I'm learning today. Outlined, for your interest.
Women as victims
* Crime surveys show that a third of all assaults on women are by partners
* Victorian public hospital figures show that 1.3% of women to emergency departments are there as a result of partner-inflicted injury.
* Each year, more than 20 000 women in Australia seek shelter in women's refuges and take out protection orders.
* A recent review in Western Australia showed that the incidence per 100 000 adult women of injury from domestic violence varied according to the source of public records used. According to hospital admissions data 129 women sustained injuries; according to recorded crime, it was 184, and going by restraining order data, 248.
* Clinical studies in emergency departments and antenatal clinics indicate that up to 25% of women will be subjected to domestic violence over their lifetime.
* Surveys of women attending general practice in Australia reveal varying partner abuse rates of up to 28% in a 12-month period.
* The Women's Safety Survey found that 2.6% of women who currently had partners had experienced an incident of violence in the previous 12 months, and 8.0% had experienced violence at some stage in their relationship. It is estimated that about one fifth of incidence of domestic violence remain unreported in Australia.
Men as victims
* The data on violence against men in a domestic setting is very fractured.
* According to a review of police statistics, domestic violence constituted 1.5 % of violence against men. Unfortunately, this did not indicate if the violence perpetrated against the male victims had been from a male or female partner.
* Some 0.4% of male Emergency Department presentations in Victorian hospitals are the result of an injury inflicted by a partner.
* A Scottish study has shown, in some cases, the men's depictions of themselves as victims of domestic violence were not compatible with details of the abuse that they had described.
* It is commonly argued that men's under-reporting of violence is due to barriers such as embarrassment. However, women also under-report violence for reasons such as fear of reprisals, fear that children will be taken away, and a hope that their partner will change. Men tend to over-estimate their partner's violence while women under-estimate their partner's violence by normalising or excusing it. Men tend to under-estimate their own violence while women tend to overestimate theirs. Men upgraded women's violent behaviour while women discounted or downplayed their male partner's violence.
* Female violence towards a male partner is an area that requires further attention.
Children as victims
* The [western] history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused.
* There are stories of nannies who'd frighten babies so that they would keep still. Christians and Jews throughout the centuries believed that the crying of an infant during the night was devil's work, and that the devil could be beaten out of the child. Fathers would use a whip to punish three or four year olds for poor reading performance. For centuries children were swaddled, tightly bound in bandages, ostensibly to prevent the malformation of limbs or because they were thought to be given to 'abusing themselves', as masturbation was thought of. Children were often put into corsets, tied to backboards and puppet strings, or tied up in chairs to prevent them from 'crawling like animals.'
* It was not until the 16th century that legislation was enacted, first in England, that began the process of protecting children from sexual abuse - boys were protected from forced sodomy, and girls - under the age of ten, mind you - from forcible rape
* In 1672 a father was found guilty of incestuous acts with his daughter and was executed. The perception that the child must have encouraged the abuse which resulted in the child being sentenced to a whipping for 'her part of the crime.'
* 'stranger danger' remains a common in society. But it is much more threatening to acknowledge that sexual abuse is commonly occurring in the family - in an environment, that is, which is mostly represented as a space of love, warmth, support and intimacy.
* The abuser is a family member in about 40% of cases, and is known to the child in 75% of cases. The abuser is usually male, mean age 32 years.
* Sexual abuse by a family member - what is generally known as incest - occurs most frequently between siblings
This is not intended to compare the battle between the genders, whether one deserves more attention that the other. This is outlined separately to represent both data correctly.
Behind ever statistic there is a victim, regardless of gender or age.
This is what I'm learning today. Outlined, for your interest.
Women as victims
Men as victims
Children as victims
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
I do agree there are definitely differences in why they wouldn't report violence against them, and personally I could understand how someone could get to the stage they believe that someone could take away their children.