NPO: This October, Let’s All Become Truly Aware of Domestic Violence

Article here. Excerpt:

'October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and that’s a good thing. When it comes to partners hitting partners or parents hitting kids, we should all increase our awareness of the problem, its causes, and how to reduce its incidence. Surely there’s little controversial about that statement.

What may be controversial is the fact that, after over 40 years of awareness of domestic violence, facts about it are not very well known. Most people, including lawmakers, aren’t very aware. That’s not because we don’t know a lot about it; we do. Indeed, domestic violence has been studied in astonishing depth and we now know more than enough to educate the public and dramatically reduce violence in the home.

The basics of domestic violence are simple. Hundreds of studies show that men and women are about equally likely to commit an act of domestic violence. Studies of reciprocal domestic violence done for the Centers for Disease Control indicate that when both partners engage in “reciprocal” domestic violence, it’s more likely that the woman initiated the violence. Men are somewhat more likely than women to inflict “severe” violence on a partner. About two-thirds of those injured in a domestic violence incident are women and a third are men. Large scale studies in Scotland and elsewhere show that about 5% of all adults will be victims of domestic violence in a given year with about 80% of those (i.e. 1% of the total) sustaining either no injury or only a slight one. ...'