One third of domestic abuse victims are male

I don’t doubt this, esp having seen the recent TV programme ‘my wife the abuser’, but in your experience is the abuse as severe/violent as when men abuse their female partners? I may have phrased that wrongly but am interested in whether there is a qualitative difference in the nature of the DV?

Of course it exists, no one is denying that. But since the dawn of time women have been suffering disproportionately at the hands of men, and we're just gaining momentum now with the much needed focus on VAWG.... Why do we always have to swing it back around from where the spotlight should rightfully be, to make sure we include men.

I could well believe the levels of domestic abuse men experience is that high, but maybe not violence. I don’t think it helps the wider issue to dismiss male experience of domestic abuse, it does a dis service to highlighting the wider issue generally. There should be state funding to support services in this area as well as state funding female services

Yes someone I know, her very violent and abusive ex husband made counter allegations. It's not my story to tell so I won't give details but he was very manipulative including when police got involved. He admitted at a later stage that he knew he couldn't get out of trouble due to the evidence but he was hoping to go for the "both as bad as each other" angle.

She was lucky in that she had strong evidence proving he was the perpetrator (obviously not lucky that she experienced the DV or his attempted counter allegations). Unfortunately some victims don't have as much evidence as my friend did.

Remember that counter allegations are counted as incidents of domestic abuse.

''One of the more common challenges for those coming in to contact with domestic abuse is counter-allegations, where both parties allege that the other is abusive. For those less experienced in working with domestic abuse it can be easy to fall in to the trap of believing this is so, and that they are ‘both as bad as each other’.
''...if professionals dedicated time and had a good understanding of the dynamics of abuse they would almost always identify a primary victim and primary perpetrator and that in fact bi-directional violence was at the least very rare if it exists at all.''

archive.fo/Pe0pI

Female upon male domestic violence does exist.

I don't think anybody is disputing it. The discussion is about whether the scale and impact is such that it merits parity of funding and support services.

ETA: xd with Justasmallgless

No one is denying that female to male intimate partner domestic abuse occurs.

The OP was asking are a third of DA victims male and those of us who have been around this some time are trying to provide context that DA is more complex than these stats suggest

Some women are abusive and violent. Any kind of abuse is to be condemned, no matter who is doing it to whom. I have no problem stating that.

Look closely at the words used, though - 'domestic abuse' is not the same as 'domestic violence', as can be seen in a PP, it is quite a broad definition including non-physical abuse. So it is likely that more male victims appear in that category. But actual physical violence, causing injury or death - I suspect the stats show that it is rare for men to be the victims.

A while ago I looked in detail of the numbers of male victims of sexual assault in Ireland, and found that many of them were adult men reporting sexual assault they experienced as children, and 'the most prevalent sexual violence experience for men was non-consensual sexual non-contact experiences' - obviously wrong and damaging, but 'non-contact', so not involving physical violence like rape.
Overall Prevalence Sexual Violence Survey 2022 – Main Results - Central Statistics Office
More revealingly, only 10% of people presenting at a Sexual Assault Treatment Unit in Ireland in 2023 were male.
Sexual assault units: ‘This will be one of the most traumatic events in their lives’ – The Irish Times

So blanket inclusion of men in stats about domestic abuse, or domestic violence, or sexual crimes, can hide the prevalence of women as victims and men as perpetrators, and the degree of violence and injury involved.

As I said at the beginning, any abuse is to be condemned, and it would be great if men organised Men's Refuges and RCCs to give male victims the specialised support they need, just as women set up refuges and RCCs for women.

In the course of their jobs, both my husband and my daughter have come across male victims who had physical evidence of having been assaulted, and the perpetrators were their female partners. In some cases the man is too ashamed to seek help, because he is too embarrassed. Female upon male domestic violence does exist.

I'd also be interested to see if the men killed by women were previously abusers (as opposed to the women killed by men).

I saw a webinar with an interesting panel (possibly Monckton-Smith) and I can't locate it. One figure that stuck with me is that not all male domestic abusers kill their wife/partner (in this context) but 90% of those who kill their wife/partner have a previous history of abusing them.

GP Hannah Milton on the 1 in 3 figure (just remembered a different talk).

bjgplife.com/domabuse/

And yes, statistics can be far more complicated than they seem at a glance.

Homicide is fairly stark as a measure and thankfully statistically relatively rare:

'11. Domestic homicide

Analysis on data from the Home Office Homicide Index combines data for a three-year period to account for the year-to-year variability in the volume of homicides.

Homicide Index data for the year ending March 2020 to the year ending March 2022 show that 67.3% of the victims of domestic homicide were female. This contrasts with non-domestic homicides where the majority of victims over the same time period were male (87.8%).

Of the 249 female domestic homicide victims, the suspect was male in the majority of cases (241). In the majority of female domestic homicides, the suspect was a male partner or ex-partner (74.7%), whereas in the majority of male domestic homicides, the suspect was a male family member (66.1%).'

...'Family members include parents, sons and / or daughters, siblings or other relatives.'

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/domesticabusevictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2023

My ex wife - public school and a first was pretty unpleasant to me and subsequently assaulted her next partner in the street.

My suggestion is the

1. The womens movement has been very good at highlighting the issue of violence against women
2. BUT more men are killed 'in the home' than men

What we need is a proper plan to address violence, that means tackling the causes, stopping a new generation becoming violent and how we deal with perpetrators.

However all we are offered is a failing state

If all the children in a household who witness or hear DV are counted as victims, obviously half of those will be male.
I'd also be interested to see if the men killed by women were previously abusers (as opposed to the women killed by men).

Services for victims of DV should definitely cater for boys, though, including teenage boys. When my DS moved from mainstream to a PRU he started coming home and telling us women are useless, I'm pretty sure he was hearing that from boys at the school who were witnesses to DV.

The way crime is recorded in terms of DA, including stalking and harassment keeps changing to so it is very difficult to compare year on year.

In my view male perps are reporting stalking/harassment as a tool in childcare cases through family court

Domestic violence in any context is horrific.

But we do victims a serious disservice if we downplay domestic violence of women against men. It’s a thing. It may well be nowhere near as prevalent as domestic violence male on female, but when we seek to challenge and diminish the stats on it we make it harder for male victims to come forward.

To be absolutely clear, I am NOT diminishing the extent or the effect of male on female violence. But when we make it a stats game like this we lose the impetus to deal with the underlying issue that ALL DV is wrong.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2023#:~:text=1.,previous%20year%20(684%20offences).

Apologies links to the data set

@ArabellaScott always on it thanks

https://www.beta.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/physicalabusebullyingorassaultofchildren

'The data we publish relating to child physical abuse is collected via two main sources, the Children's Crime Survey for England and Wales (CCSEW) and the abuse during childhood module from the adults Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). The CCSEW is asked of children aged 11 to 15, whilst the abuse during childhood module is asked of adults aged 18 and above about their experiences of abuse before the age of 16.'

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/exploringthefeasibilityofasurveymeasuringchildabuseintheuk/june2024

'We have been assessing the feasibility of a survey to measure the prevalence of child abuse in the UK as there is currently no single source of accurate data. '

We really need to look at typology of domestic abuse in the statistics.
Intimate partner violence
Parent to child
Child to parent
Familial - siblings, aunts uncles grandparents etc etc
Situational
Bidirectional

It isn't helpful to lump it all in together, especially as the risk assessments are only designed for intimate partners, not other family relationships.

Of the 100 recorded domestic homicide, 70 were female and 30 were male.
Of the 30 men, 13 were killed by a partner / ex partner (43% of male victims).

Of the 70 women killed, 55 was a partner /ex partner. (78% of female victims)

However of the total men killed in homicides, only 8% were attributed to DA

Summary statistics are useful but, as always, there is nuance in detail.

I don't know how it is now but one of the greater discrepancies used to be the number of years/incidents it took for a woman to report and then follow through on DA to the point of prosecution vs the number of years/incidents for men (in various contexts).

The discussion reminds me of the (only narrowly avoided) CPS proposal re: what would constitute transwidows' abuse of their spouse/partner.

16 and over for both male and female victims of dv.

@AgileGreenSeal So one experience sad as it is makes for an obliteration of fact.

I’ve witnessed it in a close relative’s situation. Domestic abuse is absolutely devastating for anyone suffering it, men or women. And in the case I’m thinking of it was violence and emotional abuse from a woman against a man.

It is possible this has changed, but the last time I looked (about 5 years ago) the statistics for male victims of domestic violence included men attacked by either their ex-partner's current partner, or by the current partner's ex partner, so male on male violence. I posted on MN about it at the time because I viewed it as intentional skewing of statistics.