UK: Why does the CPS report on violence against women include men in the stats?

Article here. Excerpt:

'Male violence against women is both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality, in this country and across the world. It is right and essential that official bodies strive to reduce and eliminate such offences, as an end in itself and as part of a broader strategy to combat gender-based injustice.

The Crown Prosecution Service has just published its annual performance review titled Violence Against Women and Girls: Crime Report. This year, for the first time, tucked away in parentheses on the front page, are seven new words: “(Inclusive of data on men and boys.)”

Readers might wonder how crimes against women and girls can include men and boys. The answer lies in a curiously bureaucratic definition. Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) doesn’t necessarily mean violence against women and girls. It means a subset of criminal offences that have been categorised as VAWG crimes – rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, human trafficking, forced marriage, etc – and the victims of these crimes are not all female. As the introduction makes clear, one in six victims described in the report are in fact men and boys. In the largest category, domestic abuse, exactly 16.7% of victims (where gender was recorded) are male. Elsewhere, the figures are higher; almost a quarter of victims of so-called “honour crimes” are male, and in the category of trafficking and prostitution, a full 40% of victims are men and boys.

But it is in the most sensitive areas of sexual violence and child abuse where the situation is most troubling. Here, the CPS’s data collection is so inadequate that it is impossible to officially state the gender ratio of victims, they are simply assumed to be female. In fact, the limited data that is available in the appendix shows one in eight rape victims and more than a quarter of child abuse victims to be male.

Those who work with male survivors of these crimes testify that issues of gender and sexuality are often central to trauma and recovery, with survivors dealing with a sense of emasculation or isolation, feeling that due to being the “wrong” gender, they barely exist as victims. It is not difficult to see how government bodies categorising these (often young and deeply vulnerable) men as “women and girls” is tantamount to another abusive act. Furthermore, male survivors’ charities and campaigns are desperately frustrated by the lack of reliable data, which they urgently need to make a fair and compelling case for funding, support and donations.'