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Manufacturing Domestic Violence Statistics.
Manufacturing Domestic Violence
Statistics
Using Statistics
Manufacturing Domestic Violence
Statistics
The terms "Domestic Violence" or "Violence against Women", which have been used interchangeably until now, inclusively cover all human interactions that the alleged female victim perceives as being uncomfortable, whether or not there has been any violence per se.
“Violence against Women” is defined to be whatever the individual woman feels uncomfortable with, no action is needed. Victimization statistics not only include the alleged physical offences, but verbal threats, either real or perceived, of them as well. Considering the nature of the questions many women, and most men who now are included in some surveys, are obviously lying as only about two thirds of women and only a handful of men in any given country answer in affirmative. It is obvious that at least some of the questions apply to every man, woman and child in every household.
The main problem with all victimization studies is, with a few exceptions, that there is no verification mechanism in place to establish the veracity of the subjective answers. Most humans will only divulge what they consider to be beneficial to the advancement of their personal interest, or at times even what they perceive to be the expectations of the interviewer. Often what is not said is more revealing than what is said.
Another universal anomaly is the practise to collect the DV data by gender specific survey questionnaires and then selectively issue the analysed results in either gender neutral or gender specific terms, depending on the desired outcome, i.e. that only women can be seen to be the victims and only men can be seen to be the perpetrators.
These "reports", hardly more than expressions of the researchers' personal bias and selectively used, are in turn used to justify the implementation of such draconian measures as the zero tolerance policies vis-à-vis spousal or child abuse where an allegation, rather than proof, is sufficient to have the accused removed from his home, with an accompanying restraining order. "Violence against Women" has now been stretched to cover the potential of violence as well, i.e. a hypothetical situation has become as valid as a real one. A professed fear, no matter how irrational, of someone is on par with action.
BJS Statisticians Callie Marie Rennison and Sarah Welchans report in their Intimate Partner Violence (May 2000, NCJ 178247 Rev. 7/14/00) that in 1998 women were victims in about 876,340 violent crimes and men were victims in about 157,330 violent crimes committed by an intimate partner.
Among victims of violence by an intimate partner, the percentage of women who reported the crime was greater in 1998 (59%) than in 1993 (48%). There was no significant difference between 1993 and 1998 in the percentage of men's reporting their victimization to the police.
Interesting that the percentage of men reporting their victimization is not mentioned.
However, on page 5 of their 1998 report, called Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes report that more men than women were victimized in 1998:
The NVAW Survey also found that 1.9 percent of surveyed women and 3.4 percent of surveyed men said that they were physically assaulted in the previous 12 months. These estimates equate to about 1.9 million women and about 3.2 million men who are physically assaulted annually in the United States.
Approximately 1.5 million, or 1.5 percent, of all surveyed women compared with 834,700, 0.9 percent, of all surveyed men said they were raped and/or physically assaulted by their intimate partner of the opposite sex in the previous 12 months.
Two years later the same authors, in their report called Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey, conclude that more women than men are victimized each year by their intimate partners of the opposite sex.
In the executive summary of the year 2000 report the authors, following the turnings of a torturous path, come to the conclusion that violence is a male characteristic:
Women living with female intimate partners experience less intimate partner violence than women living with male intimate partners.
Men living with male intimate partners experience more intimate partner violence than do men who live with female intimate partners.
They give somewhat different data on p. 30:
The survey also found that same-sex (women 39.2% and men 23.1%) cohabitants reported significantly more intimate partner violence than did opposite-sex cohabitants (women 21.7% and men 7.4%).
In short, they accept the data concerning men but not women.
The authors compare the different results obtained in three different studies and find that only the National Violence Against Women Surveys (NVAW), at times but not always (see their own 1998 study above), document that more women than men are victimized by their intimate partners.
While trying to explain the reasons for the differences Tjaden and Thoennes report that the latest NVAW study found that women were significantly more likely than men to report that they have been victims of intimate partner violence. Therefore, ignoring the fact that a report does not make a finding, they conclude that women experience more intimate partner violence than men.
Tjaden and Thoennes made the profound observation that if the other surveys only stopped asking women if they themselves were abusive there would be no problem with the data. They concede that in order to get higher reported victimization rates for women the perpetrator data that is collected from them would have to be eliminated. They also noted that results may be affected by the interviewer. All women subjects in the survey were interviewed by a female worker and half of the men were interviewed by a male, the other half by a female. No matter what the excuses, women clearly admit, if asked, that they are more likely to be the aggressors rather than the victims.
In their year 2000 report Tjaden and Thoennes found that women (26.7%) were twice as likely as men (13.5%) to make a police report. Rennison and Welchans on the other hand estimated that 48% of women made a report in 1993, in 1998 59% did likewise, which would indicate that increasingly more women are filing reports, and thus the estimate by Tjaden and Thoennes seems to be low.
According to Tjaden and Thoennes as well as to most other reports, police were also more likely to act if the report was filed by a woman. Similarly men were more likely to be prosecuted: 31.1 percent of men who had been accused of intimate rape were prosecuted, 24.7 percent of allegations about intimate violence and 25.4 percent of alleged intimate stalking incidents by men resulted in prosecutions. On the other hand, only 4.1 percent of accused women were prosecuted. Women also obtained restraining orders at greater frequency than did men (17.1% and 3.5%, respectively). About two-thirds of the restraining orders against men were violated or reported to have been violated. (As a side note: case law documents that men are frequently set up in these situations, as I know from a personal family experience.) On the other hand, according to Tjaden and Thoennes, about nine tenths of the restraining orders against women are violated, again done in the same experience of my family member where he was set up by a woman who broke the mutual restraining order and then claimed that her husband had broken it. Once that fact was established in the criminal court the case was adjourned, indefinitely. In other words, when the woman is found to be guilty the case is dropped so that she cannot be found to be guilty. How simple.
A Nov. 25, 2002 Contra Costa Times newspaper article by John Simerman, called Men, too, fall victim to abuse in big numbers, succinctly describes police and court response when a man reports that he has been assaulted by his wife. In short, his wife was told: "So, you hit your husband. Ha, ha, ha!" (told by the wife who did the hitting.)
In spite of the lack of any evidence the feminist battle cry is
National statistics show more than 90 percent of all domestic violence victims are females battered by males.
That in itself is not surprising. In order to succeed, a political movement that is based on radical ideology, bent on establishing a new world order, has no choice but to resort to half truths and outright lies.
What is surprising is that these movements are able to penetrate the legislative bodies and the judiciary of otherwise democratic nations by stacking them with their members.
The above "national statistic" is now the mantra in police manuals, physicians' handbooks, judicial training materials, etc. No one has the interest, or maybe the courage, to question its authenticity.
Jennifer Brayton, University of New Brunswick asks: What makes Feminist Research Feminist? The Structure of Feminist Research within the Social Sciences, and then answers:
Feminist research is, thus, not research about women but research for women to be used in transforming their sexist society (Cook and Fonow, 1986, p. 13). ... Feminist research is research that uses feminist principles throughout all stages of research, from choice of topic to presentation of data. These feminist principles also inform and act as the framework guiding the decisions being made by the researcher.
In an instruction package developed by NationalResourceCenter on Domestic Violence (U.S.), called General Domestic Violence Statistics Packet Using Statistics And Evaluating Research, researchers are told that methodology is the key in achieving desired results:
Quantitative methods simply try to quantify information numerically, e.g., number of items, events, times of day, etc. This type of data often comes from police or hospital reports, surveys, etc. It can then be further refined through rating, averaging, or other numerical manipulations to provide additional information, trends, etc. to the researcher. Qualitative research is typically more open-ended, such as in-person interviews with study participants that allow them to report freely on an event or idea. Answers to qualitative questions can be coded or analyzed for trends, unique situations or commonalties and generally result in an interpretation of the information.
Researchers are told that they need to ask:
Do the results corroborate the study methodology and participant responses?
The package is an excellent example of how selective use of estimated, but not validated, statistics are used to give misleading information without actually telling a lie. Only by looking deeper into the complete reports and comparing the various research methodologies against each other can one get some glimpse of reality. However, considering the calculated oversupply of "research" reports, which often merely duplicate each other, no one individual has the time to go through them all and thus we are inclined to accept the abstracts which are presented to us from an advocacy perspective. Yet, often the most telling details are buried somewhere in the middle, in one paragraph or a few sentences scattered here and there.
Thanks to the affirmative action and gender equity legislation, the offices of legislators and judges are staffed with social scientists whose degrees include the mandatory credits in women's studies. They are well equipped to fulfill the mandate of politically correct selective analysis of any given report.
While the law makers and enforcers blithely follow the clarion call of their feminist leaders, the nations are crumbling under the sheer weight of the rubble left behind as the very foundations of our civilization, namely the families of the nation, are crumbling, bit by bit.
The ultimate irony is that soon even those who now use the
sledgehammers will find themselves buried under the dust. Some of
them have already become the victims of their policies.
Source: www.nojustice.info/Statistics/ManufactureOfDVStatisticsPartI.htm
Note: The information in this report was copied from a publication from the AZCADV entitled, The Gender of DV It is representative of the kind of statistics, and the way they are used in most websites and published material in this field. The universal theme of all is:
Intimate partner violence is primarily a crime against women. An epidemic of domestic violence?
In 2002, women experienced an estimated 494,570 rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault victimizations at the hands of an intimate, down from 1.1 million in 1993. In 1993, men were victims of about 160,000 violent crimes by an intimate partner, and in 2002 men were victims of about 72,520 violent crimes by an intimate partner.
On average, from 1976-1998, the number of murders by intimates decreased by 4 percent per year for male victims and 1 percent per year for female victims.
Source: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict_c.htm
An estimated 4.5 million physical assaults were committed against U.S. women by intimate partners in the year preceding the National Violence Against Women Survey.
Approximately 2.9 million intimate partner physical assaults were perpetrated against men in the year preceding the National Violence Against Women Survey.
(U.S. Department of Justice, “Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey,” July 2000)
The best that can be concluded from this information is that nobody knows the actual extent of the problem.
95% of victims are women
If you refer to the above DOJ numbers, you can see this statement doesn’t hold water. You don’t need to be a math whiz to see that 494,570 versus 160,000 does not represent 95% and 5%. Neither does 4.5 million and 2.9 million.
Shelter officials will often confuse their client base with the population in general. They see that 95% of their clientele is female, thus they come to the conclusion that this value must apply to the community as a whole. What they fail to recognize is that men tend not to ask for help in any situation. (Everyone is likely aware of the traditional joke about men not asking for directions.) To compound the problem, DV victims of either gender have trouble asking for outside help, this is a well-known victim behavior. So male victims have their trouble seeking help magnified.
There is one more element to add to this situation. Many shelters have the words, “women”, or “women and children” in their names. Even in the cases where shelters are called something else, such as “Family Service,” their outreach programs, PSAs and other materials for public consumption emphasize the female victim in a single-instance occurrence almost to the exclusion of any other category of person affected by DV.
How can a male victim be expected to approach agencies that are so public and visible in their intentions to serve women only? How can a female abuser that wants to change seek help when these “experts” are telling her what she is doing is acceptable? And what of the serial victims who are told they do not exist? Is this not further abuse by agencies that purport to aid the abused?
Here is one more statement, this time actually made by the venerable Department of Justice. It is indicative of the kind of logic and mindset used to interpret their own data:
“Women are nearly three times more likely to report being victimized by a male partner than by a female partner and men are nearly twice as likely to report being victimized by a male partner than by a female partner. These findings suggest that men primarily perpetrate violence, whether against male or female partners.”
(US Department of Justice, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, July 2000)
(The emphasis in the above statement is mine). Just because both women and men are more likely to report being victimized by men does not necessarily prove that men are the primary perpetrators of all partner violence. The findings are only about reporting, and you can’t draw a conclusion based on information you do not have.
Now I’m going to list a group of other statistics.
(Chalk and Kings, eds., Violence in Families: Assessing Prevention and Treatment Programs, National Resource Council and Institute of Medicine, p 42. 1998) Much of female violence is committed in self-defense, and inflicts less injury than male violence.
Does this address the issue at hand? Not really, since we don’t know how this agency came to that conclusion, whether it is the result of advocacy research, or simply someone’s opinion. Those with experience in counseling male victims would differ on this point, and say that women tend to use weapons more quickly and often than men do, making their level of danger equal to or exceeding that of men in DV cases. It is certainly a matter of opinion, and one must draw one’s own conclusion in the matter.
(US Department of Justice: Findings for the National Violence Against Women Survey, July 2000)
Women are severely injured or killed as a result of intimate partner violence significantly more often than men.
Again there is a problem with ambiguity. What is “severe”? What is “significant”? Why is this terminology used when it would appear those interpreting this survey would have a set of hard data at hand to quote?
Women are seven to fourteen times more likely to report suffering severe physical assaults from an intimate partner.
Once again, this is about reporting only, and the sex of the offender is not known.
41.5 percent of the women who were physically assaulted by an intimate partner were injured during their most recent assault. Whereas, 19.9 percent of the men who were physically assaulted by an intimate partner were injured during their most recent assault.
It would appear that women are more likely to be injured from this set of numbers. It could also be seen in this way: 58.4% of women are not injured during an assault, 80.1% of men are not injured during an assault. The implication is not really clear. Is the reader intended to infer that women’s injuries are somehow more important, since the recorded percentage is higher?
(United Nations Children’s Fund, “Domestic Violence Against Women and Girls,” Innocenti Digest, No. 6, May 2000)
Thirty-seven percent of all women who sought medical care in hospital emergency rooms for violence-related injuries were injured by a current or former spouse or partner.
This is easy to understand. Women who get hurt seek treatment. Just over a third of those were hurt by a spouse or partner. (Gender of that person unknown.) Logically, just under two-thirds were injured by strangers. This would seem to apply more to a general crime issue than one of domestic violence.
(Family Violence Prevention Fund, “Speaking up”, Vol. 9, Issue 3, February 25, 2003 p. 3) Women are more likely than men to be victims of intimate partner homicide. In 2000,intimate partners killed approximately 33 percent of female murder victims; intimates killed four percent of male murder victims.
Also fairly clear. Yet 67 percent of women and 96 percent of men were killed by strangers, if their figures are accurate. Note the sex of the perpetrators is not mentioned. This also would appear to apply more to a general crime issue than one of domestic violence.
(Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, Intimate Partner Violence and Age of the Victim, 1993-1999, October 2001) On average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in this country every day. In 1999, 1,642 murders were attributed to intimates; 74 percent of murder victims (1,218 total) were women.
If you check the math, you find that someone is presuming all the perpetrators of women’s murders are husbands or boyfriends. Yet the term, “intimates” carries no gender.
I have omitted several factoids related to gun violence from an org called the Violence Policy Center. It is likely their assertions are a result of advocacy research, of doubtful value. In any case, they further confuse the issue, since gun control is not within the scope of this project. There were also figures on elder abuse which do not apply.
That does bring up an interesting question. When the above figures are considered outside the context of the “only women are victims, only men are abusers” mentality, they draw a different picture than I believe was intended. Marketing experts know that if you throw a lot of statistics and figures at people, they are far more likely to respond in the way anticipated, even if the stats and facts have little or no bearing on the issue at hand. Even contradictory information such as that found here is better than no numbers at all. The domestic violence information here is often used in this manner to both garner sympathy for female victims, and place blame squarely on men in general.
Shelters and services have been using these tactics for thirty years. It is as if they feel they still need to convince an uncaring public that domestic violence is a new problem that continually goes unaddressed. Anyone reading this will recognize that in fact, domestic violence is a high-profile issue, and nearly any female victim who makes an attempt to access help can do so.
In these days of transparency and accountability, these tactics will be of less and less value as time progresses. The public no longer will accept being misled and manipulated, and eventually the donations and grants to agencies that have been less than forthcoming with their stakeholders will come to an end. Other agencies that were established in the same era have clearly defined their client base, serve those who they can and feel no need to resort to any kind of artifice to gain financial and other support.
Of course there are those within these agencies who firmly believe outrageous claims such as the well-worn 95%. My personal experience with domestic violence services has been that there are few among them who have ever made any attempt to address the issue without the filter of gender bias, and will grasp at any straw to try and “prove” their claims. However, gender bias has no place in the 21st Century, especially when there is so much to lose by refusing to face reality, and so much to gain by full awareness of the problem in all its incarnations.
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