‘DV Statistics’ FB Post

[minniebow]

Someone just shared this on my Facebook and I removed them straight away the ‘70% of DV is initiated by women’ bit really gets to me being a survivor myself. It’s victim blaming and these fantasy statistics should not be posted all over the internet to be believed. Posted by a page called ‘Meninism’ and the photo’s got 4k likes!

Oh this has pushed my rage button! Of course all victims of DV need support, but where the hell did they get those stats?
"70 % of DV initiated by women" -sounds suspiciously close to "she was asking for it"
I'm sick of the deflections and minimising of male violence. Still raging after calling the police on a neighbour abusing his partner on Friday night. I told them on the phone that I could here her screaming -they turned up half an hour later ffs! Thankfully she seems to be physically ok but she's just the latest in a string of vulnerable women he has abused over the years. Nothing gets done.

It's a Harvard Newsletter thing from > 10 years ago about the US population.

www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/In_Brief_Domestic_violence_Not_always_one_sided

Posted too soon - there's an overview that is reasonable in Time:

time.com/2921491/hope-solo-women-violence/

Auto-correct created reasonable over my fat-fingered attempt to type referenced...

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/domesticabuseinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2017#how-prevalent-is-domestic-abuse

ONS report for last year.

Of note:
"For the year ending March 2017 CSEW, an estimated 1.9 million adults aged 16 to 59 years experienced domestic abuse in the last year, equating to a prevalence rate of approximately 6 in 100 adults (Figure 2). Women were more likely to have experienced domestic abuse than men (7.5% compared with 4.3%). This equates to an estimated 1.2 million female victims and 713,000 male victims (see Appendix Table 1 for more information).

"The difference between the estimated number of male and female victims (522,000) is at its lowest compared with previous years, however, the estimates do not take account of the context and impact of the abusive behaviours experienced. Research suggests that when coercive and controlling behaviour is taken into account the differences between the experiences of male and female victims become more apparent."

Some things I know women's organisations have flagged up as problems with statistics:

• Repeated instances of abuse are reported as a single incident (so, for instance, repeated punching regular as clockwork on a Friday night will go down as one crime)
• Self-defence is given the same weight in the stats as the attack which prompted it - so he tries to strangle you, you push him off leaving scratches, both go down in the statistics
• Men are more likely to report the first time it happens, with women it tends to happen repeatedly (over 30 times? IIRC? Someone may wish to supply a link for this) before they report.

Recent discussion specifically about the bruited statistics relating to lesbians and DV:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3356397-The-myth-about-lesbians-and-rates-of-domestic-abuse

This is quite a good page from Women's Aid

www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/domestic-abuse-is-a-gendered-crime/

Self defence given the same weight in the stats as the attack? That's nuts!

That's the police for you.

If they had to investigate all acts of violence against women they would have no time left to do anything else.

minniebow glad you unfriended this person but I hope you left a comment first.

I think it's because of the difficulty of collecting stats in a meaningful way, bluetits.

It would be a disaster for women's rights if only complaints resulting in conviction were to be recorded in official stats (think what the rape rate would look like - it would drop to next to nothing). So understandably, police record reported crimes (not all of which may make it to the end result of someone being convicted).

So a police officer is booking in an incident of DV. The woman says "he punched me." This quite rightly gets recorded. The man says "well, look what she did to me - scratches all down my arm - it was six of one and half a dozen of the other, a fight that just escalated. I want to report that she attacked me." So the police officer (quite rightly, because finding out the truth of the matter is down to the courts) also records that as an instance of DV. It's hard to see how you could change the system without leaving "reporting for statistical purposes" to the discretion of individual officers, which would then back-fire totally when it came to women's rights ("oh, well this rape victim was drunk and has a local reputation for being a bit of a slapper, so I'll leave this one off the returns form at the end of the month...")

It's not conspiracy, it's not even cock-up, it's just that it's in the nature of trying to record these things that you get these blips which are artefacts of the methodology. Which is why you have to dig under the headline stats.

Good point fermats -all reports need to be recorded. I can also see it's pretty mych impossible to get accurate stats on DV whatever the system -so many incidents go unreported and there's so many different ways to interpret the stats that are available.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.womenssupportproject.co.uk/userfiles/file/resources/nationalresources/Intimate%2520Terrorism.%2520Johnson.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiSi-SW2PHdAhVjB8AKHbgzA1cQFjAIegQIABAB&usg=AOvVaw3UUBckPja3JF13K76xmjGr" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.womenssupportproject.co.uk/userfiles/file/resources/nationalresources/Intimate%2520Terrorism.%2520Johnson.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiSi-SW2PHdAhVjB8AKHbgzA1cQFjAIegQIABAB&usg=AOvVaw3UUBckPja3JF13K76xmjGr

Pdf but it talks about Johnson's research on intimate terrorism.

Thanks superloud -had a quick skim and that looks very interesting. The phrase "intimate terrorism " is very apt -not heard it before.

The techniques you would use to eg take a group hostage - isolation, humiliation etc are so similar to the things abusers do.

Not invisible people smashing eyes in ... that is bizarre.

I am sure I read a while back that the only way these manipulated stats actually work, is if stuff like 'nagging' is included as domestic abuse. And yes, self defense is also given the same weight as full on attacks. and the repeated incidents thing too.

Basically whoever posted that is a bit of a misogynist. As is anyone else who shares rubbish like that.