1. Domestic violence is far from unusual…even for men.
I think the media stories, and the 170,000 requests for shelter per year, should be a good indication of how common domestic violence is, but in truth, that’s still not a full picture of how often domestic violence occurs. In fact, 1 in 4 women, and 1 in 7 men, will experience some form of domestic violence over the course of their lives…and that’s just domestic violence (the numbers are even higher when expanded to include all forms of Intimate Partner Violence, or IPV). And those numbers have actually gone down as compared to two decades ago. It’s also difficult to get accurate numbers because survivors, especially men, are less likely to report their abuse for fear of social consequences including stigma and retaliation.
2. Domestic violence is not only physical.
Domestic violence (indeed, all iterations of IPV) can take on different forms, and physical violence is only one of them. Domestic abuse often includes emotional abuses, especially gas lighting, which enables the abuser to convince their victim that they are at fault for what is happening. Abusers may also use tactics like sexual coercion, verbal abuse including insults, personal attacks, or attempts at humiliation, withholding money or preventing access to financial resources, and surveillance in order to control their partners. Physical abuse is often the form of abuse that gets the most attention, likely in part because it’s the easiest to notice from the outside, but it’s rarely the entire story.
3. Domestic violence happens across demographics, but individuals who live in low-income situations are more vulnerable.
Whether you are rich, poor, middle-class, educated, illiterate, Black, white, Latina, etc., domestic abuse does not discriminate. That said, socioeconomic status does have an impact, and individuals who come from impoverished households are more likely to be victimized. Low-income women are among the most likely to be financially dependent on their partners, who are more likely to abuse them. This isn’t saying that all poor people are abusers or victims; that simply isn’t true. But poor women are also among the least likely to have finished their education, and among the least likely to have the resources needed to leave their abusive partnerships.
4. Domestic violence is a major public health threat in the United States.
Domestic violence creates numerous health threats, the most obvious and direct of which is the prevalence of injuries. Though it’s been difficult to find more recent numbers, in 2001, intimate partner violence accounted for 20% of all non-fatal violent crime against women in the United States, and 3% of non-fatal violent crime against men, and a 2003 CDC report indicates that intimate partner violence accounts for approximately 2 million injuries per year. In addition to physical injury, domestic violence contributes to more than 18.5 million mental healthcare visits per year. But it doesn’t end there: according to the CDC and other public health experts, women in relationships with violence are four times more likely to contract an STI, including HIV, than women in relationships without violence, and are more likely to engage in additional risk behaviors; HIV-positive women are also more likely to experience abuse, and more likely to experience more severe abuse.
5. Domestic violence can be fatal.
An estimated one third of female homicide victims are killed by their intimate partner. Access to firearms in the household results in a 500% increase in likelihood that domestic violence will result in death when considering other factors of abuse, according to the American Bar Association-~-in fact, of women murdered with a firearm, two thirds were killed by their intimate partner. Murder, particularly intimate partner homicide, is one the leading causes of death for pregnant women, accounting for approximately 20% of deaths during pregnancy in the United States.
