NYT/IHT: Women Face Greatest Threat of Violence at Home, Study Finds

[DeepModem Mom]

Women Face Greatest Threat of Violence at Home, Study Finds
By ELIZABETH ROSENTHAL, International Herald Tribune
Published: October 6, 2006

Violence against women by their live-in spouses or partners is a widespread phenomenon, both in the developed and developing world, as well as in rural and urban areas, the most comprehensive and scientific international study on the topic has confirmed.

In interviews with nearly 25,000 women at 15 sites in 10 countries, researchers from the World Health Organization found that rates of partner violence ranged from a low of 15 percent in Yokohama, Japan, to a high of 71 percent in rural Ethiopia.

At six of the sites, at least 50 percent of women said that they had been subjected to moderate or severe violence in the home at some point. At 13 sites, more than a quarter of all women said they had suffered such violence in the past year.

“Violence by an intimate partner is a common experience worldwide,” the authors wrote of the findings, which are being published today in The Lancet, a medical journal in London. “In all but one setting, women were at far greater risk of physical or sexual violence by a partner than from violence by other people.”

The report says that rural areas tend to have higher rates of abuse than cities. But no area was immune....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/world/06violence.html

[Demeter]

1. Unless You Count the Broadcasting of the Obvious, This Isn't News

[DeepModem Mom]

2. According to the article, this is the significance of this study --

"While researchers and women’s groups have long known that domestic violence was widespread — and other, smaller surveys have supported that notion — the W.H.O. study adds an important dimension to the topic because it provides an unusual amount of quantitative, scientific data on the subject.

Previous studies had focused mostly on developed countries, indeed mostly on the United States, said Claudia García-Moreno, a researcher with the W.H.O. in Geneva who coordinated the study.

Because of a lack of scientific data on the magnitude of such violence, particularly in poorer countries, 'there had been a lot of skepticism about whether it was a serious problem' or just a pet peeve of the women’s groups, Dr. García-Moreno said."

[ThomCat]

3. People don't believes the women who have been abused

but now that some researchers have said the same thing maybe more people will take this seriously.
x(

Domestic violence is neither rare nor isolated to any particular group, race, class or population.

[happyslug]

12. I have NOT found that to be the problem

The problem is HOW do you handle the above situation? Remember we are NOT talking about two people working at an "arms-length" transaction, but two people who have made a emotional commitment to each other. I have had clients who asked for a Protection from Abuse (PFA) order against their husband/Boyfriend etc and then 2-3 months later want to drop the PFA so they can get back together with that person (various excuses are given, he has sought treatment, he has stopped drinking/Using drugs, he is the father of my children and I want the Children to know him etc).

This is the problem, How do you handle it? Under the English Common Law, Violence within the Family was a Church Matter (Remember the Common law was created when England AND most of the Colonies had a State Church), thus no action could be taken in Court it had to be handled through the Church Court. What happen when you disestablishing the State Church? While the Churches continued to handle domestic violence problem for a while, but once you had the partners either un-churched or in two different Churches any one Church could no longer perform this function. Thus it took to the 1860s for the Courts took the issue of Domestic Violence. The Courts did this reluctantly (hampered by the fact that most of the Court Decisions regarding Domestic Violence made in the prior 800 years reflected that fact that domestic Violence was NOT to be handled by the Courts but by the Church).

The State Legislature avoided the issue till the 1970s, thus the courts were restricted as to what they could do by the Common Law that said Domestic Violence was Not subject to the Jurisdiction of the Court AND the Refusal of the State Legislatures to change the law to reflect that we no longer had Established State Churches to handle Domestic Violence. The State Legislatures refused to do anything for most Rural Areas tended to have one strong local state and since in such rural areas you only had one strong church, that church could act like a state church and resolved most of these dispute through mediation. Thus Rural Legislature did not put domestic violence high on their agenda. This changed only in 1964 with the One man One Vote Rule of the US Supreme Court. This ruling meant that the State Legislature had to reflect ALL of the voters of the state Equally and stop given extra voting rights to Rural areas (Most of these rules regarding HOW the legislatures was to be elected had been adopted prior to 1920, which was the first time the US Census reported more people living in in Urban/Suburban areas then in Rural Areas of the US).

Anyway, with the one man, one vote rule most states changed how they picked their State Legislators and with this change you had various changes in the State to address the problem of Domestic Violence. Thus you started to get more and more laws regarding Domestic Violence and how the Courts are to handle Domestic Violence. The laws affected both urban and rural areas but did not stop the Churches from trying to reduce Domestic violence (Which most do to this day, often telling women to get a PFA when it is needed, but also trying to resolve the problem of HOW do you handle the problem of two people wanting to live together but can't without hurting each other physically).

Now, the rural legislators of the pre-1964 era did not ignore Domestic Violence, they wanted to address it, but they tendency was more to go after what they considered the Root Cause as opposed to handling each case one at a time. The rural Legislators tended to look at Domestic Violence and its relationship with Alcohol and Drugs. The biggest drop in Domestic Violence in the 20th Century occurred in the 1920s (Even in areas of Economic Hard Times like the Rural South). Domestic Violence increase in the 1930s both do to the economic problems of the Great Depression AND the legalization of Alcohol. In my 15 years of Practice regarding Domestic Violence, Alcohol and/or Drug use is A MAJOR CAUSE FOR MOST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE (Through you do have incidents when Alcohol and drugs are NOT the problem, but these are rare compare to Alcohol and Drug use and Domestic Violence). Thus the rural Legislators were not to far from the root cause, the problem is how do you balance Alcohol and Drugs and the problem that Alcohol and drugs cause with the problem of banning alcohol and Drugs? When the Federal Government gave up on prohibition. the States could not continue prohibition themselves (To easy to move Alcohol cross state Lines with Trucks and Cars). Most States went for the County Option (i.e. each County or local government could decide on Alcohol sales within its borders). All the county Option did was to force people to drive out of the county for Alcohol (Which lead to more DUI accidents then if you just leave them drink at home). Thus prohibition on the local and County Level seams to have no influence on Domestic Violence and Alcohol consumption.

Now come the 1970s, Urban/Suburban legislators dominated the State Legislatures. They solution was to use the local Police (Something that often does NOT exist in rural America to this day). In areas where they are no local Police, the State Police are to be used, but most State Police were set up after 1900 to patrol the roads and their budget is dependent on how many tickets they give out. Given this fact often State Police view Domestic Violence as a secondary function after their primary function of writing tickets (Often called "Keeping the roads safe", but how you keep the road safe is to give tickets to people who are speeding, thus the primary job of the most State Police is to give out Tickets). The Police are NOT capable of handling situation where you have two people who are abusing each other physically, but at the same time want to live together. The old state Churches couldn't do this well, the Police can not do it at all.

If you read this whole thing you see a common thread, the need to some outside organization to mediate between the two partners in the relationship. This includes keeping the stronger one (Generally male) from beating up the weaker partner (Generally Fe-male) when BOTH partners do NOT want to end the relationship. That is a difficult thing to do. The Common Law Courts refused to do it. With the Abolishment of State Churches, the Church can no longer do it (And no one claims the Church did it well, but that they just meditated between the parties). The Police are NOT trained to mediate between the Parties. The legislature has refused to address HOW do you handle the situation where the parties want to stay together but when they are together Domestic Violence occurs. Freedom of association is a factor, Freedom to see someone YOU WANT TO SEE AND WHO WANTS TO SEE YOU is protected by the Constitution. At the same time these freedom often exposes the weaker partner to Domestic Violence. Under the Common Law the Courts did not want to get into this problem and palmed it off onto the Churches. Today the State does NOT want to get into the private relationship between the two painters, but when it comes to the issue of Domestic Violence someone has to address the problem of two people who want to be together but can not be together.

Please note when one of the Partner do want to end the relationship, that is an easy PFA, she gets on with her life, he gets an order to stay away from her (And the ORder can last 36 months). Under a PFA order the man can be required to give up his house to the woman to help her adjust to being away from him. These types of cases are easy, quick and never come back to me. The problem is in most cases the partners WANT to get back together and live together. How do you address cases like that?

[ThomCat]

17. That is an excellent post.

I have known people who were in abusive relationships, and I have watched as friends rationalized staying because family pressured them into working it out. Parents did not want to take their daughter back in, or belitted her ability to manager her own life, or insisted that she needed to "work things out."
x(

I'm not disputing anything you said. I think you are very correct, but I don't think your perspective conflicts with mine.

I do think that everyone will be in a better possition to address domestic violence if people realize how common and serious it is and are prepared to believe it and lend support to the people who need it. I have personally seen it belittled and demeaned and ignored.

The norm seems to be to treat everything that happens within a relationship as a private matter, so saying or doing anything is interfering. "I don't want to get involved." But there are times when the things that are happening in a relationship need to become a community issue, at least to a limited extent. This would give people tacit permission, and perhaps even a moral obligation to lend support to both people when it's necessary; to help her when she needs it, and to give him the sense that someone is watching and paying attention. Simply knowing that someone is watching and paying attention is often enough to keep people from doing many things they know they shouldn't do.

I don't have the answers about how to make this a community issue to break that wall of privacy. Hard and fast rules don't work. But changing the norm, the expectation, that violence in the home is a private issue would certainly help.

[happyslug]

18. I agree with you, the real issue is HOW DO YOU GET THE COMMUNITY INVOLVED

Intervention when the victim asked for it is being addressed and has been address for at last 30 years (The present PFA movement started int he early 1970s). The problem is when the Victim does NOT ask for help, or ask for help that the Community is not willing to provide her (i.e. counseling and understanding of her problem, she wants to stay with him, but he has to quit abusing her).

Furthermore you have economic considerations. Who bares the loss do to the victim moving from the house of the abuser? Should it be her? Should it be her family? Should it be the Abuser? Most people will say the abuser but what if he can not? Then who?

There are two classes of Abuse, the abuser who abuse for the power it gives him, and those women abuse do to their man taking out his frustrations against them. The former is easy, you just have to convince the Woman to move out and stay out, This is earlier said then done, but the abuse is such cases is NOT tied in with money or other financial situations.

On the other hand, financial crisis can lead to increase tension within a household and with that increase tension episodes of violence. In such cases economic aid is the best way to minimize the problem, but this has to be done in a way that the person getting the aid is NOT taking "Charity" or forced to "Beg". The Government on the other hand wants it money to go to the "truly needed" and thus demand that the poor jump through certain hoops to get assistance. Thus you can have a situation where the abuser refuses to seek assistance for he does not want to beg, but his situation is dire. Working around such a situation is difficult, but the economic problems MUST be addressed, even if it means trying to change the application process so it is less like "Begging". Extended family members can help, if they can, but they have to be careful that it is assistance they are providing not an ego trip of how much better they are than the person they are helping (Can be difficult). In the ideal situation (Which rarely occurs) someone minimized these conflicts, but that someone has to be someone who knows the family AND knows how to help them. In the days of the State Church this was the job of the Parish Priest. I am NOT saying they did the job well, most did it badly, but they at least TRIED. The problem is today, Churches can NOT provide this service, they do NOT know they people. They do not keep track of them. Neighbors do not go to the Priest and say "So and so is having a hard time, what can we do to help them?". The reason is most people the job of helping oneself is up to oneself NOT the Community. The problem is this is a falsehood, and has been a falsehood for lower income people for Centuries. It is a convenient falsehood for those people who want to cut Welfare and other assistance but in many ways we HAVE TO DEVISE A WAY TO GET THE COMMUNITY INVOLVED IN THE AFFAIRS OF ITS MEMBERS. That is the best way out of this mess, but the real issue is HOW.


While abuse can occur in any economic class they is a different connection between income and abuse, more to do with

[iverglas]

4. you know what the damned thing is?

The mere survey itself can put women in danger.

This was a huge issue in Canada some years back -- too long ago for me to find anything on the net just now.

A massive survey of women on their experience of intimate-partner violence was to be carried out by telephone ... but how to reach women who were in households with controlling abusive spouses and either not able to take the call or not able to speak openly on the phone?

You don't want to leave a message, because innocuously as it might be framed -- have her call Jane at _____ -- it could be the trigger for abusive behaviour. Having the abusive partner actually find out what the call was about, let alone that the woman participated in the survey ...

It really is a damned thing when you can't reach a victimized group to gather information about their victimization.

[donsu]

5. once when I was in Hilton Head, S.C. I asked a cop what was their

biggest crime and he said domestic abuse.

when I speak of men's war against women, many men get all huffy and talk about proof and evidence, so think on this.

if you recorded as evidence all the domestic abuse cases (against women) in Hilton Head and the county it resides in for 1 yr. and the domestic abuse cases in each county in S.C. - if would fill a large book.

go next door to N.C. and Georgia and record their cases - two more books., etc., etc.

then you can record the number of women's shelters in each county/state.

then you can record the number of women murdered by men in each county/state.

then you can record the companies that pay women less salary for the same job as men in each county/state.

on and on with the injustice.

you want evidence, it's out there.

[iverglas]

6. then do it over 30 centuries

and you've got about the biggest hate crime that ever walked the earth.

Women today are still at statistically greater risk of harm from men than any other vulnerable or minority group, at the hands of any group that hates them, anywhere.

[donsu]

9. true

nt

[allisonthegreat]

7. I haven't seen any studies

But I can believe that SC is high up there in the statistics. It would be my home state.
I also heard one time that Super bowl Sunday there were larger than usual numbers of criminal domestic violence.

[iverglas]

8. archival article on that

http://www.fair.org/extra/9304/superbowl.html

Shortly before the start of the Super Bowl on NBC this January, viewers saw a public service announcement that warned: "Domestic violence is a crime." For some, the PSA came as a surprise, but not for those involved in the campaign to get 30 seconds of airtime donated to the ad. The moment (worth roughly $500,000 to advertisers) was the result of many weeks of work by FAIR and a coalition of anti-violence groups in negotiation with executives at NBC and NBC Sports.

Workers at women's shelters, and some journalists, have long reported that Super Bowl Sunday is one of the year's worst days for violence against women in the home. FAIR hoped that the broadcast of an anti-violence PSA on Super Sunday, in front of the biggest TV audience of the year, would sound a wake-up call for the media, and it did.

"Since the Super Bowl it seems as though public awareness has increased dramatically on this topic," the executive director of a women's shelter in McKeesport, Pa. wrote to FAIR. "We believe you've played a major role in bringing domestic violence out in the open."

Not too long, worth reading it all; it's got Rush Limbaugh saying guys who wear ties don't beat their wives and everything.

Whether the basic premise, of violent Super Bowl Sundays, is accurate or not, the outcomes were apparently good.

Although I do recall hearing the same kinds of concerns voiced about those ads as about the Cdn telephone survey -- especially if the woman victim were in the room when the ads ran, there could be a backlash reaction by the abuser.

Oh, and of course the backlash to the ads:

http://tafkac.org/misc/super_bowl_domestic_violence.html

[NorthernSpy]

10. home is where most people spend the majority of their time...

... and that time is spent in contact with the same few persons that they have the most emotionalized contact with (and therefore likely the greatest number of "opportunities" for sustained interpersonal conflicts, which may include violence and aggression). But it's certainly possible that some non-home situations might pose a greater risk of violence for women on a per-minute-exposure basis.

For comparison, where are men most likely to suffer violence? Anyone know?

[jberryhill]

19. It's sort of like....

...they guy who found out that most fatal accidents happen within 25 miles of home. So he moved.

[fleabert]

11. and when are women most at risk? when they are pregnant...

sad but true...

[NorthernSpy]

15. not according to the available data...

I've heard that claim too, but we really don't know that to be the case:

There is no current national estimate of the prevalence of violence against pregnant women. Estimates that are currently available cannot be generalized or projected to all pregnant women. CDC’s PRAMS develops statewide estimates of the prevalence of violence for women whose pregnancies resulted in live births; 1998 estimates for 15 participating states ranged from 2.4 percent to 6.6 percent. Research on whether women are at increased risk for violence during pregnancy is inconclusive. However, CDC reported that study findings suggest that, for most abused women, physical violence does not seem to be initiated or to increase during pregnancy. National data are also not available on the number of pregnant homicide victims, and such data at the state level are limited. The two federal agencies collecting homicide data, the FBI and CDC, do not identify the pregnancy status of homicide victims. CDC is exploring initiatives that could result in better data on homicides of pregnant women.

(United States General Accounting Office Report to the Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton, House of Representatives. "Violence Against Women: Data on Pregnant Victims and Effectiveness of Prevention Strategies are Limited." May, 2002.)

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02530.pdf

[fleabert]

20. I don't have it on hand (of course) but I remember a study going

out a few years ago that a woman's chance of being murdered was the highest while pregnant. I will look for the study- I think it's in my basement. I would have read it in or around 01-02

[iverglas]

13. and when their homes are gone ...

http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/freda/reports/dviol.htm

"Surviving Domestic Violence and Disasters"
Elaine Enarson, Visiting Scholar
Disaster Preparedness Resources Centre
University of British Columbia
January 1998

One factor appears to be similar to the perceived Super Bowl phenomenon: a heightened level of frustration in the abuser.


Other studies in an understudied field, and more broadly, gender-based violence in disasters:

http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/facts/disasters/fs_domestic.html

http://w3.whosea.org/EN/Section13/Section390_8280.htm

[AngryAmish]

14. Isn't this in the "water is wet" news category?

[Megahurtz]

16. And the ReThuglican Way just encourages MORE violence.

Women should be barefoot, always pregnant, and in the kitchen.:sarcasm: