Defining Violence and Abuse

Domestic violence comprises a wide range of types of abuse. Incidents are not generally a one-time event.  Perpetrators can be seen as forming part of a coercive pattern of controlling behavior. Statistics indicate that the greater percentage of abusers are male (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Highlights from 20 years of Surveying Crime Victims, Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1993, p. 25).

Violence and other forms of abuse are most commonly understood as a pattern of behavior intended to establish and maintain power over family, household members, intimate partners, colleagues, individuals or groups. While violent offenders are most often known to their victims (intimate or estranged partners and spouses, family members, relatives, peers, colleagues, etc.), acts of violence and abuse may also be committed by strangers. In any form, violence and abuse profoundly affects individual health and well-being. Violence and abuse are used to establish and maintain power and control over another person, and often reflect an imbalance of power between the victim and abuser. Violence is a choice, and it is preventable.

General Statistics

• One in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys are sexually abused by age 18.

• More than three million cases of child abuse are reported each year.

• While the average age of children in all child-abuse reports is 7.2, the average age of fatalities from child abuse is 2.6.

• Males are 11 times more likely than females to be molested outside the home.

• Two to four thousand women are beaten to death annually.

• Twenty-five percentof all women's suicide attempts are preceded by a prior history of battering.More than 50% of all married women will be assaulted at least once during their marriage.

• More than 33 percent of women will be repeatedly assaulted during their marriage.

• In 75 percent of the states in the U.S., it is legal for husbands to rape their wives.

• A person is raped every 6 minutes.Every 15 seconds, a woman is battered.

• Two to 4 million women are physically abused in the U.S. each year.

• Twenty-eight percent of all female murder victims were slain by their husbands or boyfriends.

• Family violence kills as many women every 5 years as the total number of Americans who died in the Vietnam War.

• Between 15 to 25% of pregnant women are battered.In home where spousal abuse occurs, children are abused at a rate of 1,500% higher than the national average.

• One half of all homeless women and children are fleeing domestic violence.

• As much as 10 times as many rapes occur as are reported.

• One in 3 women under the age of fifty can expect to be raped in her lifetime.

• One half of all rapes are acquaintance rape.

• One half of all rapes involve a victim, a perpetrator, or both who are teenagers.

• Seventy percent of men who are abusive were abused as children.

• Four children die every day from neglect or abuse.

• Every religious denomination has abuse problems.