Women's Aid

Haven't really done a lot on my main project currently other than reading. Been mainly concentrating on my disseration to get that out of the way.

I have however found out some truly shocking statistics through Women's Aid UK, a charity in aid of women who are victims of domestic abuse. Here's some of the facts I discovered:

• 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence over their lifetimes and between 6-10% of women suffer domestic violence in a given year (Council of Europe, 2002).  

• 12.9 million incidents: The British Crime Survey found that there were an estimated 12.9 million incidents of domestic violence acts (that constituted non-sexual threats or force) against women and 2.5 million against men in England and Wales in the year preceding interview (Walby & Allen, 2004). 

•  One call a minute to the police: Though only a minority of incidents of domestic violence are reported to the police , the police still receive one call about domestic violence for every minute in the UK, an estimated 1,300 calls each day or over 570,000 each year. (Stanko, 2000).  However, according to the British Crime Survey, less than 40% of domestic violence crime is reported to the police (Dodd et al, July 2004; Walby and Allen, 2004; Home Office, 2002). 

•  44% of victims of domestic violence are involved in more than one incident.  No other type of crime has a rate of repeat victimisation as high (Dodd et al, July 2004).

•  Fear of being killed: In a study of 200 women's experiences of domestic violence it was found that 60% of the women had left because they feared that they or their children would be killed by the perpetrator (Humphreys & Thiara, 2002).

• Homicide: On average, two women a week are killed by a violent partner or ex-partner. This constitutes nearly 40% of all female homicide victims.  (Povey, (ed.), 2005; Home Office, 1999; Department of Health, 2005.)  

•  54% of UK rapes are committed by a woman’s current or former partner. (Walby and Allen, 2004)

• Serious sexual assault was most likely to be committed by someone known to the victim (89% of female and 83% of male victims). Just over half (54%) of female victims reported that a partner or ex-partner had been the offender. (Coleman et al. 2007)

• 29 children in 13 families were killed between 1994 and 2004 as a result of contact arrangements in England and Wales, 10 of them since 2002. In five of these families contact was ordered by the court. (Saunders, 2004) 

• 1 in 5 young men and 1 in 10 young women think that abuse or violence against women is acceptable. (Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust, 1998).

Some of these statistics are truly disgusting, to think that humans can think of these acts as everyday blows me away. This is why I have now decided to do my work on Domestic Violence.