Domestic violence is a pattern of coercive and threatening tactics used by one person against an intimate partner in order to gain power and control (Adobe Reader required to view, free download.) Tactics may include physical, sexual, psychological, financial or verbal abuse.
- Violence against women is primarily partner violence. 76% of women who were raped and/or physically assaulted since the age of 18 were assaulted by a current or former partner or date. (National Institute of Justice center for disease Control and Prevention, 1998)
- Domestic Violence is the leading cause of injury to women, more common than automobile accidents, muggings and rapes combined. (US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop)
- Intimate partner violence is primarily a crime against women. In 1996, females were the victims of three out of every four murders of intimates and approximately 85% of the victims of non-lethal intimate violence. (FBI, 1999, US Dept. of Justice, 1998)
- More than 500,000 women each year have injuries requiring medical treatment that were inflicted upon them by their intimate partners. (National Institute Of Justice, 2000)
- The American Psychological Association estimates that nearly one in three adult women experience at least one physical assault by an intimate partner during adulthood (APA, 1996)
- Women are 5 times more likely to be assaulted by an intimate partner than by a stranger. (Bureau of Justice Services, 1998)
- Fathers who batter mothers are twice as likely to seek sole physical custody of their children than non-violent fathers. (APA, 1996)
- Women of all races are about equally vulnerable to violence by an intimate partner. (BJS, Violence Against Women survey, 1995)
- All available data suggests that the rates of domestic violence in the lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual communities are comparable to the rates of domestic violence in the heterosexual community. (25%) Family Violence Prevention Fund, 1999)
- Most (78%) stalking victims are female and more (87%) stalking perpetrators are male. (Tjaden, Thoennes, Stalking in America, 1998)
- In a national study of more than 6,000 American families, 50 % of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children. (Strauss, Gelles, Smith - Physical Violence in American Families, 1990)
- In a survey of over 4000 9th through 12th graders, approximately 1 in 5 female students reported being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner. (Silverman et al, Dating Violence Against Adolescent Girls... Journal of the AMA, 2001)
- Homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women. (Pan American Health Organization)
- Nearly 3 percent of college women experience a completed or attempted rape during the college year (U.S. Department of Justice, 2002)
- 62% of victims reported that they knew their attacker; most often, the rapist was a friend or acquaintance. (U.S. Department of Justice, 2002)
- Every two minutes, somewhere in America someone is sexually assaulted. (2002 National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice.)
- Less than 5% of completed or attempted rapes against college women were reported to law enforcement. (National Institute of Justice, 2000)
- 93% of juvenile assault victims knew their attacker, 34.2% were family members and 58.7% were acquaintances. Only seven percent of the perpetrators were strangers to the victim. (Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 2000)
- About 3% of American men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. (National Institute of Justice, 2000)
- One out of every six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. (National Institute of justice and Centers for disease Control and Prevention, 1988)
- 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually assaulted by age 18 (Finkelhor, et al., 1990)
- Women with a childhood history of sexual abuse are 4.7 times more likely to be subsequently raped (Merril et al. 1997)
- 1.8 million U.S. adolescents have been sexually assaulted (Kilpatrick and Saunders)
- Girls who were raped are about three times more likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders and over four times more likely to suffer from drug and alcohol abuse in adulthood (Kendler, et al., 2000)
- 24% of sexually active girls younger than 13 years old reported that their first intercourse was non-consensual (Abma, et al., 1998)
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