FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 29, 2021

CEDV Launches Two-Week Phone Campaign Demanding UN Recognize Male and Female Abusers

Washington, D.C. – The Coalition to End Domestic Violence (CEDV) commenced a two-week long phone campaign Monday that demands the United Nations recognize the existence of both male and female perpetrators of domestic violence.

The UN is currently in the middle of a 16-day long campaign against what it calls “Gender-based violence.” But the reality is that the UN doesn’t recognize that female abusers exist, and that female-perpetrated domestic violence is just as common in most countries as male-perpetrated domestic violence. In the United States alone, 17.3 million men and 12.7 million women each year are victims of coercive control behaviors, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (1). One review of national studies reached the conclusion of “approximately equal rates of incidence for both genders” (2).

The CEDV phone campaign highlights all of this before offering to connect the listener to the phone line of the UN campaign’s office. As part of its efforts, the CEDV call spotlights the unfortunate example of the consequences of female-perpetrated abuse in the story of Yvonne Wu.

Wu is a former New York police officer who became caught in a love triangle. In October, after weeks of stalking her ex-girlfriend obsessively, Wu shot both her ex and the woman’s new lover. Wu’s ex-girlfriend survived the assault, but the other woman tragically lost her life to Wu’s bullets.

It’s a tragic and all-too-common case of what can happen when female-perpetrated domestic violence goes undetected. CEDV hopes to pressure the UN with this and other stories of abuse to highlight the need to recognize all forms of abuse instead of its current, narrow definition.

To interview a spokesperson, please contact Will Hadden at whadden@shirleyandmcvicker.com

Citations:

  1. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf , Tables 4.9 and 4.10.
  2. Michelle Mohr Carney, John R. Barner (2012). Prevalence of Partner Abuse: Rates of Emotional Abuse and Control. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270526519_Prevalence_of_Partner_Abuse_Rates_of_Emotional_Abuse_and_Control