BlackeyedSusan - it's abomidable that happened to you and unfortunately all too common.
LaSqrrl What could be said about it, is that the government, in cutting funding, are actually getting the private sector to bear the costs of their woeful underfunding.
I found some extra info:
2012 Estimating the cost of gender based violence in the EU
Definitions: In 1993, the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women offered the first official definition of the term “Gender-based Violence”: “Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.” Gender-based violence has become an umbrella term for any harm that is perpetrated against a person’s will, and that results from power inequalities that are based on gender roles. Around the world, gender-based violence almost always has a greater negative impact on women and girls. For this reason the term "Gender-based Violence" is often used interchangeably with the term "Violence against Women" (VAW). GBV principally affects those across all cultures. GBV can occur throughout a woman's lifecycle, and can include everything from early childhood marriage and genital mutilation, to sexual abuse, domestic violence, legal discrimination and exploitation.
Also ref. definitions in Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence 2011.
14. Conclusion
The impact of gender-based violence and intimate partner violence on the economy and society is high. These costs are borne not only by individuals but also the whole society. This violence is detrimental to the economy in lost working time due to injuries. It drains resources from services for which the costs are borne publicly or collectively.
Economic cost of gender-based and intimate partner violence
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The review identified three main types of costs: lost economic output, services and the physical and emotional impact on the victim. The category of services was subdivide into: health serves, criminal justice system, civil legal sector, social welfare and specialised services. In all cases the identification of relevant data is a challenge.
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UK was chosen on the grounds that it has one of the most developed statistical systems and sources of quantitative data on gender-based and intimate partner violence in the EU
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Cost of IPV against women in UK is €14b and €16b for IPV against women and men.
Cost of all violence against women in UK is €29b and for gender based violence against women and men €33b.
By extrapolation:
Cost of IPV against women in EU is €110b and €123b for IPV against women and men.
Cost of all violence against women in EU is €226b (87%) and for gender based violence against women and men €259b.
The spending on specialised services to mitigate the harms and prevent the repetition of the violence is 3% of the cost of intimate partner violence against women. Specialist services, as discussed in Section 8.1, are immensely beneficial to women. The cost of specialised services is very small relative to the cost to economy and society. Th loss to the economy, through lost output as a result of injuries, is around 12%. Services especially criminal justice, make up around 30% of the cost of the violence. Just under half the cost is a result of the public estimation of the value placed on the physical and emotional impact that the violence causes. The proportion of the expenditure on this violence that is linked to focused attempts at mitigation and prevention is currently small.
The conclusion drawn here is that gender-based violence and intimate partner violence place large costs on economy and society. It is likely that an increase in the currently small amount on prevention and mitigation of harms, by increased spending on specialised services, would lead to a decrease in the extent and impact of the violence.