Domestic abuse- male victims & statistics

[MrsGhastlyCrumb]

So: I was at a class this evening where we were informed that about 20% of police call-outs for DA involve male victims.

Now, I do recognise that there are male victims, which is of course awful, but this seems high to me. I have certainly encountered and heard of male abusers calling in counter claims against their female partners in order to cover themselves. Is it possible that this is more widespread than I realised, therefore accounting for a large proportion of the numbers we were quoted, or is it genuinely that high, do you think?

TIA for your thoughts.

Hmmm. Then there's the stats here: www.mankind.org.uk/statistics/statistics-on-male-victims-of-domestic-abuse/

Are these dodgy stats? Again, just seems so counterintuitive and unlikely.

Yes, false allegations have been recognised as a form of lifelong intimate partner violence. Considering the comparatively high rate of domestic abuse perpetration in the male population, I'd assume a significant number of the male complainants were lying to further abuse their partners. However, I don't think it would be possible to collect the stats to prove or disprove this.

Thanks, @Thenose, that's what I feel too. It's frustrating to hear the figures being quoted as a 'what about the menz' gotcha when there is no way of easily countering it. ☹️

Don’t forget that these could be man on man violence. No reason to assume all these relationships are heterosexual.

As someone as mentioned it could same sex relationships.

Or it could be relationships where alcohol and drug addictions are involved so both partners are erratic and violent.

Probably also an awful lot of dodgy guys calling themselves ''victims' to hide their abuse of their female partner...

As an emergency response officer attending a lot of domestic incidents i would say a lot of incidents where the male is the victim are under reported.

The vast majority of DV incidents (in heterosexual relationships) will be the female as the victim, so perhaps 20% may be about right.

Not sure weather this is a male 'bravdo' thing not to report things to police or brush off injuries as not important.

Probably the attitude of the other posters that put most men off reporting. Even with figures rising women still don't believe it could possibly be that high. Or blaming the men for "lying" about it. Typical Mumsnet always a "but" within their sentence.

My brother is being abused by his female partner. He won't report it though 😢

I was going to say the exact same thing. A guy I knew in a same sex marriage was very badly beaten up by his husband. A lady in a nearby town did stab her husband to death, but it was in the context of a violent relationship.

My brother is also in an abusive relationship. His wife goes into rages and really struggles to control her anger. She can also be very vicious and controlling and mean. My brother lives on eggshells, bending over backwards to try and avoid setting her off to protect myself and the kids. She has been physical in blocking him from leaving spaces or holding his arm to keep him from walking away. He would never call either.

20% doesn’t sound high at all to me, given the number of victims I have encountered in my work. Some who had abusive mothers growing up, some with abusive wives. I am surprised that many call given they are often not believed. Many not not be the caller but when police arrive, they realize the man was victimized.

Thats really sad @sorrysaythatagain.

My ex used threats of police against me he literally ripped the baby out my arms tearing my fingernails off and because a piece of my fingernail scratched his arm he said he was calling the police on me and will get me removed from the family home he also shoved my daughter flying and said he would claim she attacked him he would also rub "marks" on his arm and face stand over us screaming im telling everyone what you have done to me I swear he honestly believed it

My daughter disclosed to the school in the end got him out but police and children services favoured him and claimed a toxic mutually combative atmosphere in the family home

He was abusing us it wasn't mutual

I read that a lot of male victims of domestic abuse are elderly men.

You could also argue that the higher percentage of female victims takes into account DV incidents between female same sex relationships.

@Midlifemusings - you just described my brothers partner too.

She’s head butted him and broken his front tooth, scratches his face and neck. Won’t let him leave a room (he prefers to walk away and calm down but she doesn’t let him). She throws things. She has belittled him and now he is anxious and depressed. She’s cut him off from most of his friends and family. They have 1 child and another on the way. He feels trapped now

I’m scared for him everyday

My neighbour is in an abusive relationship, I always hear him through the floor he is a cunt.
They had an incident where the police were called and I know it was dropped but he has told her that she is down as the aggressor. She believes him and she is pregnant with his child, he's already threatened to take the child from her.

I understand from doing the freedom program that controlling the narrative around a relationship is something abusers do, gathering the mutual allies around and victimising themselves is a useful technique to isolate someone.

So 80% of victims of domestic violence are females. That's a huge discrepancy.

I say this as the sister of a brother whose neighbours called the police because they heard an horrific argument. My brother was lucky to escape with scratches, bruises and minor cuts - he had glass and crockery thrown at him. His partner was put in jail for the night and the two wonderful officers gave excellent advice and told him that if he didn't leave the violence would escalate. They separated for a year, but are now back together again.

Well the ONS (2018) reports that an estimated 4.8 million women and 2.2 million men aged 16 to 59 years had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16 years. An estimated 1.3 million women and 695,000 men aged 16 to 59 years had experienced domestic abuse in the last year.

It is somewhat depressing that the first few posts seek to discredit, cast doubt or label as false the number of male domestic victims. If you cynically view these stats as a competitive 'what about the menz gotcha' rather then as an actual real problem we are not really going to get very far.

It is generally accepted that female to male abuse is massively underreported. Male victims find it hard to report the abuse, as there is still stigma that this will brand them as not a ‘real man’. They also fear that they won’t be believed (as demonstrated in the first few posts) and that there is no support for them. Men can increasingly feel a sense of shame and embarrassment about the abuse, they refuse to seek help for the issue and are often afraid that speaking out will bring them ridicule.

It was only a few years ago that the police started to take complaints from men seriously rather then crack jokes on the doorstep about 'who is wearing the trousers' in the household.

It is not a zero sum game, recognising that women can be perpetrators of domestic violence does not in anyway diminish the fact that they are more likely to be the victim.

So you're not happy with 4/5 domestic abuse cases being against women, you think it's more?

From my own experience I would estimate around 70-80% of cases in DV heterosexual relationships, the victim is female - these are the ones reported to police though.

I would suggest that there is also a load of under reported cases out there which may effect the results - a lot of men don't report such things, but a lot of women don't either. So who knows where the true figures lie.

I often think that its pointless looking a figures such as this in great detail as its often never the true picture.

Um. I suppose it's more that I have so much more experience of abusive men, as have female friends. So it perhaps does skew my perspective, yet. I've a lot of male friends, too.

And, yes- I do realise that there is violence in same sex relationships of course, but the stats I was referring to related to heterosexual relationships and I was trying to be brief.

It probably sat badly with me because it's a group for women with trauma, and also I have recently dealt with a friend's abusive ex who has gone full MRA and made false statements to the police.

However, totally prepared to hear that the stats are accurate- and I'm sorry to hear it, genuinely. But that's why I asked- so to hear from professionals and people with male relatives and friends who have been or are victims had been a useful perspective. Thank you all.

How many of the perpetrators are female?

Last time I looked into numbers on this there was under reporting by both sexes. However the numbers on male victims showed a disproportionate number of male perpetrators suggesting the overwhelming problem in DV is still violence by men. (The numbers were specific to domestic set ups, excluded casual encounters or victims assaulted by clients).

C8H10N4O2
I would say about 20-30% of perpetrators are female. This is just my own personal experience - and yes the vast majority of perpetrators will be male.

You have to take into account that a lot of incidents are not reported. And DV cases include harassment through text messages, phone calls and social media, financial abuse, breaches of orders, criminal damages etc etc - not just physical violence.

If you actually look at the historical data it paints a very different picture from 'commonly accepted truth'. See below - apologies for the huge cut and paste.

The theory that women perpetrate intimate partner violence at roughly similar rates as men has been termed "gender symmetry". The earliest empirical evidence of gender symmetry was presented in the 1975 U.S. National Family Violence Survey carried out by Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles on a nationally representative sample of 2,146 "intact families". The survey found 11.6% of women and 12% of men had experienced some kind of intimate partner violence in the last twelve months, also 4.6% of men and 3.8% of women had experienced "severe" intimate partner violence.

Since 1975, numerous other empirical studies have found evidence of gender symmetry in intimate partner violence. For example, in the United States, the National Comorbidity Study of 1990-1992 found 18.4% of men and 17.4% of women had experienced minor intimate partner violence, and 5.5% of men and 6.5% of women had experienced severe intimate partner violence.[48][49]

In England and Wales, the 1995 "Home Office Research Study 191" found that in the twelve months prior to the survey, 4.2% of both men and woman between the ages of 16 and 59 had been assaulted by an intimate.[50]

The Canadian General Social Survey of 2000 found that from 1994 to 1999, 4% of men and 4% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship in which they were still involved, 22% of men and 28% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship which had now ended, and 7% of men and 8% of women had experienced intimate partner violence across all relationships, past and present.[35]

The 2005 Canadian General Social Survey, looking at the years 1999–2004 found similar data; 4% of men and 3% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship in which they were still involved, 16% of men and 21% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship which had now ended, and 6% of men and 7% of women had experienced intimate partner violence across all relationships, past and present.[36]

The 1975 National Family Violence Survey found that 27.7% of intimate partner violence cases were perpetrated by men alone, 22.7% by women alone and 49.5% were bidirectional. In order to counteract claims that the reporting data was skewed, female-only surveys were conducted, asking females to self-report, resulting in almost identical data.[52]

The 1985 National Family Violence Survey found 25.9% of IPV cases perpetrated by men alone, 25.5% by women alone, and 48.6% were bidirectional.[53]

A study conducted in 2007 by Daniel J. Whitaker, Tadesse Haileyesus, Monica Swahn, and Linda S. Saltzman, of 11,370 heterosexual U.S. adults aged 18 to 28 found that 24% of all relationships had some violence. Of those relationships, 49.7% of them had reciprocal violence. In relationships without reciprocal violence, women committed 70% of all violence.

In 1997, Philip W. Cook conducted a study of 55,000 members of the United States Armed Forces, finding bidirectionality in 60-64% of intimate partner violence cases, as reported by both men and women.[55]

The 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found that 49.7% of intimate partner violence cases were reciprocal and 50.3% were non-reciprocal. When data provided by men only was analyzed, 46.9% of cases were reported as reciprocal and 53.1% as non-reciprocal. When data provided by women only was analyzed, 51.3% of cases were reported as reciprocal and 49.7% as non-reciprocal. The overall data showed 70.7% of non-reciprocal intimate partner violence cases were perpetrated by women only (74.9% when reported by men; 67.7% when reported by women) and 29.3% were perpetrated by men only (25.1% when reported by men; 32.3% when reported by women).[56]

The 2006 thirty-two nation International Dating Violence Study "revealed an overwhelming body of evidence that bidirectional violence is the predominant pattern of perpetration; and this ... indicates that the etiology of ipv is mostly parallel for men and women". The survey found for "any physical violence", a rate of 31.2%, of which 68.6% was bidirectional, 9.9% was perpetrated by men only, and 21.4% by women only. For severe assault, a rate of 10.8% was found, of which 54.8% was bidirectional, 15.7% perpetrated by men only, and 29.4% by women only.[57]

In 2000, John Archer conducted a meta-analysis of eighty-two IPV studies. He found that "women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more acts of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently. Men were more likely to inflict an injury, and overall, 62% of those injured by a partner were women."[58] By contrast, the U.S. Department of Justice finds that women make up 84% of spouse abuse victims and 86% of victims of abuse by a boyfriend or girlfriend.[59]

From 2010 to 2012, scholars of domestic violence from the U.S., Canada and the U.K. assembled The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge, a research database covering 1700 peer-reviewed studies, the largest of its kind. Among its findings:[63]"

• More women (23%) than men (19.3%) have been assaulted at least once in their lifetime.

• Rates of female-perpetrated violence are higher than male-perpetrated (28.3% vs. 21.6%).

• Male and female IPV are perpetrated from similar motives.

• Studies comparing men and women in the power/control motive have mixed results overall.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men#:~:text=The%20theory%20that%20women%20perpetrate,Straus%20and%20Richard%20J.

That’s really interesting, sad. Thank you