Counseling Services of Barbara Reade, L.C.P.C.
Bel Air, Maryland 21014

Phone: 410-803-1510

Email: reade.lcpc@yahoo.com  

Facts about Domestic Violence

FACTS on DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Author: Barbara Reade, M.S., L.C.P.C.

Family violence can be both caused by, and be the cause of severe family and individual stress. These symptoms can be immobilzing, effecting both emotional and physical health. If you or a member of your family is the victim of family violence, you can find help and answers, to whatever obstacles you may be facing! Counseling, with a trained specialist in the field of family violence, can help you find answers that you may have never dreamed possible.

FACTS on DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

• Between 2 and 4 million women annually are victimized by domestic violence.

• A woman is beaten every 15 seconds.   (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Report to the nation on Crime and Justice.  The Data.Washington DC Office of Justice Program, US Dept. of Justice.  Oct 1983)

• In 1991, at least 21,000 domestic violence crimes against women were reported to the police every week.

• Approximately 52% of women visiting hospital emergency rooms report at least one incident of violence during their lifetime.

• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between ages 15 and 44 in the united States - more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.    (Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1991)

• Battered women are more likely to suffer miscarriages and to give birth to babies with low birth weights.   (Surgeon General, United States, 1992)

• Sixty-three percent of the young men between the ages of 11 and 20 who are serving time for homicide have killed their mother's abuser.   (March of Dimes, 1992)

• Battering is the establishment of control and fear in a relationship through violence and other forms of abuse.  The batterer uses acts of violence and a series of behaviors, including
  intimidation, threats, psychological abuse, isolation, etc. to coerce and to control the other person.  The violence may not happen often, but it remains as a hidden (and constant) terrorizing factor.   (Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1990)

• Women who leave their batterers are at a 75% greater risk of being killed by the batterer than those who stay.   (Barbara Hart, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 1988)
       
  Nationally, 50 percent of all homeless women and children are on the streets because of violence in the home.   (Senator Joseph Biden, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Violence Against Women: Victims of the System, 1991)

• "One in five women victimized by their spouses or ex-spouses report they had been victimized over and over again by the same person."   (The Basics of Batterer Treatment, Common Purpose, Inc., Jamaica Plain, MA)

• Women of all cultures, races, occupations, income levels, and ages are battered - by husbands, boyfriends, lovers and partners. (Surgeon General Antonia Novello, as quoted in Domestic
  Violence: Battered Women, publication of the Reference Department of the Cambridge Public Library, Cambridge, MA)
       
       

• Most children in homes in which domestic violence occurs witness that abuse and suffer secondary psychological effects, including aggressive behavior and depression. Male children who witness abuse are more likely to become abusers themselves as adults, creating a vicious, intergenerational cycle of violent behavior. We need to know more about what factors help other boys to remain nonviolent in spite of witnessing domestic violence.
  
  If you have a life threatening emergency please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room immediately!