Groups Falsify the Truth About Domestic Violence, Dismiss High Levels of Victimization Among Men

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Henry Herrera

Telephone: 301-801-0608

Groups Falsify the Truth About Domestic Violence, Dismiss High Levels of Victimization Among Men

WASHINGTON / October 11, 2024 – Domestic Violence Awareness Month, observed each year in October (1), serves as an opportunity to promote factual information about domestic violence. But some groups are utilizing the national observance to disseminate falsehoods and half-truths.

In its October 8 group email, the San Francisco-based Futures Without Violence (2) makes this claim: “more than 10 million people, the vast majority of them women, are harmed by domestic violence every year.”

The source of the 10 million figure is a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The CDC notes that each year, there are slightly more than 10 million victims of physical partner violence (3).

Table 6 of the CDC report reveals most of these victims are men:

4.8% of all males
4.0% of all females

But in her October 8 email, Futures Without Violence Vice President Lisa James makes a very different claim: “the vast majority of them women.”

Further investigation of the Futures Without Violence website reveals other misrepresentations (4):

“Women are much more likely than men to be victimized by a current or former intimate partner.”
“Women are 84 percent of spouse abuse victims and 86 percent of victims of abuse at the hands of a boyfriend or girlfriend. About three-fourths of the persons who commit family violence are male.”

The source of these factoids is the Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey, which assesses persons’ perception of “crimes.” A comparison of the NCVS with the CDC survey reveals a severe undercounting in the number of domestic violence victims (5). The reason is the great majority of domestic violence incidents — such as slaps and shoves — are not viewed as “crimes,” and are not reflected in the NCVS results.

For this reason, the NCVS is not a valid source of information about domestic violence.

The misleading nature of the Futures Without Violence statements also is highlighted by recent reports of female-perpetrated partner homicides (6). Over a recent one-week period, the media reported on four domestic homicides perpetrated by women:

September 30: Texas Woman ‘Beats her Husband to Death’ After He ‘Hid her Xanax from Her’ (7)
October 3: Utah Wife Allegedly Shot Serviceman Husband in Head as He Slept, Then Tried to Cover It Up (8)
October 3: Wife Was Caught on Dashcam Injecting Husband with Poison, Which Killed Him in Minutes: ‘Get Off of Me!’ (9)
October 3: Florida Woman Accused of Murdering Boyfriend in Suitcase Begs Judge for Professional Hair and Makeup (10)

The Coalition to End Domestic Violence calls on all groups to report truthful information about domestic violence, and cease their disregard of female-perpetrated abuse.

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