Domestic Violence: Up or Down?
Channel: Sam Vaknin's Musings
Date: 2010-11-10

According to the Washington State Domestic Violence Fatality Review Project, and Neil Websdale, Understanding Domestic Homicide, Northeastern University Press, 1999 -- women in the process of separation or divorce were the targets of half of all intimate partner violent crimes. In Florida the figure is even higher (60%).

Hospital staff are ill-equipped and ill-trained to deal with this pandemic. Only 4% of hospital emergency room admissions of women in the United States were put down to domestic violence. The true figure, according to the FBI, is more like 50%.

Michael R. Rand in "Violence-related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments", published by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, August 1997 pegs the real number at 37%. Spouses and ex-husbands were responsible for one in three murdered women in the USA.

Two million spouses (mostly women) are threatened with a deadly weapon annually, according to the US Department of Justice. One half of all American homes are affected by domestic violence at least once a year.

And the violence spills over.