Help Put Pressure On Group For False DV Portrayal

I received a request from an anonymous reader to help question the Break-The-Cycle organization for presenting misleading information on domestic violence. His message is a bit long for the main index, so you can read it by clicking "Read More" below. It will only take a moment to send an e-mail to this organization asking for the sources of their statistics, and it would help to put pressure on them to change their extremely harmful portrayal of domestic violence. An Anonymous User writes "I could really use a hand here. Break-The-Cycle is a very active domestic violence group that speaks at high schools. They recently had a panel discussion in which they claimed "95% of reported DV cases are women." Dr. David Fontes of SAFE shows that this figure is 15 years old and no a longer accurate figure even based on "reported" cases, which now show men make between 15 and 35% of victims (Download the "Violent Touch" document at this link) while survey data shows men make 50% of victims (click here). At the Break-The-Cycle website, they use 'he' for batterers and 'she' for victims. Then they give a disclaimer that says: "Throughout this web site, we refer to victims as 'she' and abusers as 'he' because that is the reality of most relationship violence. However, boys and men can be victims, and girls and women can be abusers; and domestic violence does occur in same-sex relationships. The above information applies equally in those cases." This disclaimer doesn't alleviate the harm done by using gender-exclusive language and lying about the statistics, which is only used to justify the lack of attention to battered men and the failure to reach out to them. So I called and asked politely for their source on the 95% figure and referred them to Dr. Fontes' analysis. They said they'd get back to me with the source for the 95%. That was months ago, and they're ignoring me. I believe it's because the source is 15 years old. Can a few people PLEASE send them a quick e-mail at Info@break-the-cycle.org and ask them the source, along with your comments? Thanks."

NOTICE: This story was migrated from the old software that used to run Mensactivism.org. Unfortunately, user comments did not get included in the migration. However, you may view a copy of the original story, with comments, at the following link:

http://news.mensactivism.org/articles/01/01/13/169251.shtml