Facts about domestic violence

Facts about domestic violence

Estimates range from 960,000 incidents of domestic violence against a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend per year to 3.9 million women who are physically abused by their husbands or live-in partners per year.

About one out of every four American women (26 percent) report that they have been physically abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives. Thirty percent of Americans say they know a woman who has been physically abused by her husband or boyfriend in the past year.

While women are less likely than men to be victims of violence or crimes overall, women are five to eight times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner.

More than five times as many women were murdered by intimate acquaintances than by a stranger in the year 2000. Additionally, while firearm homicides involving make victims were mostly intra-gender, 95 percent of female firearm homicide victims were murdered by a male.

Of the women who reported being raped and or physically assaulted since the age of 18, three-quarters (76 percent) were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabitating partner, date, or boyfriend.

Sources:
U.S. Department of Justice, Violence by Intimates: Analysis of Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, Boyfriends, and Girlfriends, March 1998.

Liebman Research Inc., Domestic Violence Advertising Campaign Tracking Survey (Wave IV)