Statistics of Abuse and Stalking

[Demeter]

OpEdNews.com

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_sam_vakn_061025_statistics_of_abuse_.htm


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October 25, 2006

Statistics of Abuse and Stalking

By Sam Vaknin

Contrary to common opinion, there has been a marked decline in domestic violence in the last decade. Moreover, rates of domestic violence and intimate partner abuse in various societies and cultures – vary widely. It is, therefore, safe to conclude that abusive conduct is not inevitable and is only loosely connected to the prevalence of mental illness (which is stable across ethnic, social, cultural, national, and economic barriers).

There is no denying that the mental problems of some offenders do play a part – but it is smaller than we intuit. Cultural, social, and even historical factors are the decisive determinants of spousal abuse and domestic violence.

The United States

The National Crime Victimisation Survey (NCVS) reported 691,710 nonfatal violent victimisations committed by current or former spouses, boyfriends, or girlfriends of the victims during 2001. About 588,490, or 85% of intimate partner violence incidents, involved women. The offender in one fifth of the totality of crimes committed against women was an intimate partner – compared to only 3% of crimes committed against men.

Still, this type of offences against women declined by half between 1993 (1.1 million nonfatal cases) and 2001 (588,490) – from 9.8 to 5 per thousand women. Intimate partner violence against men also declined from 162,870 (1993) to 103,220 (2001) – from 1.6 to 0.9 per 1000 males. Overall, the incidence of such crimes dropped from 5.8 to 3.0 per thousand.

Even so, the price in lost lives was and remains high.

In the year 2000, 1247 women and 440 men were murdered by an intimate partner in the United States – compared to 1357 men and 1600 women in 1976 and around 1300 women in 1993.

This reveals an interesting and worrying trend:

The number overall intimate partner offences against women declined sharply – but not so the number of fatal incidents. These remained more or less the same since 1993!



First published here:

http://samvak.tripod.com/abusefamily.html



Authors Website: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/

Authors Bio: Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com