Still, She Persisted: Activists Continue to Push COVID-Abuse Hoax

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Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Still, She Persisted: Activists Continue to Push COVID-Abuse Hoax

WASHINGTON / September 28, 2020 – Activists continue to advance the theory that coronavirus stay-at-home policies have caused a “spike” and “surge” in domestic violence cases, despite the fact that police reports fail to confirm these claims.

In April, 41 senators signed a letter that warned of a domestic violence “surge” that they described as “particularly dangerous” and “horrifying.” The letter highlighted activists’ concerns, but did not cite any police reports to corroborate the “surge.” (1)

The drive to issue alarming but dubious claims of partner victimization continued unabated through the month of September.

A September 24 article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune revealed that the number of domestic violence calls actually fell over a two-month period beginning in late May. The percentage of domestic violence calls classified as “more violent” remained steady, compared to previous years (2).

On September 26, USA Today published an article claiming the coronavirus pandemic as contributed to “more emergency calls to police.” The report did not provide a link to any documentation supporting this assertion (3).

Of greater concern was an article by Babina Gosangi and colleagues that was recently published in the journal Radiology (4). The article purported to show that the incidence of physical intimate partner violence in Boston during the height of the 2020 COVID pandemic was 1.8 times higher than during the same periods in 2017-2019. But a careful review reveals serious flaws in the study methods, design, and inclusion criteria:

Apples and Oranges: The 2020 patients were much more likely to have been referred from the hospital’s Emergency Department: 38% in 2020 compared to 18% in the previous years. So the 2020 group was twice as likely to have a serious medical problem necessitating emergency treatment. In addition, the 2020 study population was significantly more likely to be White and younger, compared to the previous years. Thus, the populations were not comparable.
Flawed Measurements: The main study tool, the Injury Severity Score (ISS), lacks reliability. In 2017, Gosangi reported a mean ISS score of 2.6 and a range of 1-9. Three years later, the ISS had a mean of 3.0, with a range of 1-10, similar numbers to 2017. Also, a previous study of domestic violence victims with trauma reported an average Injury Severity Score of 10.9, more than three times higher than the Gosangi average (5). Gosangi did not attempt to explain these significant problems.
Discrimination: Male victims of domestic violence outnumber female victims each year, according the Centers for Disease Control (6). According to a previous study, 50.7% of medical trauma patients who had experienced domestic violence were male (7). But Gosangi reported that only 4.5% of her entire sample was male, unwittingly turning the article into a case study in sex discrimination.

The Coalition to End Domestic Violence has reviewed reports of 911 calls from 33 police departments around the country. The survey found steady numbers of domestic violence calls in 16 departments, small increases in three departments, and decreases in 11 jurisdictions (8).

In New York, one media account reported, “The New York City Police Department said that reports of domestic violence have ‘progressively declined’ since the onset of the pandemic.” (9) In California, “Calls related to domestic violence in Los Angeles declined 18% from March 19 through April 15 compared with the same period in 2019, according to LAPD data provided to ABC News.” (10)

The CEDV calls on state lawmakers to withdraw funding from domestic violence programs that engage in unlawful sex discrimination.

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