In 1992, an estimated 1,432 females were killed by intimate partners. Female victims represented 70 percent of the intimate murder victims. An estimated 1.4 million people were treated in hospital emergency departments in 1994. Leaving Increases Risk Separated or divorced women were 14 times more likely than married women to report having been a victim of violence by a spouse or ex-spouse. Although separated or divorced women comprised 10 percent of all women, they reported 75 percent of the spousal violence.
Wives are particularly at risk in the first two months after leaving.
The New South Wales data available for slain wives found that 47 percent were killed within two months and 91 percent within a year of separating. Approximately 1,155,600 adult American women have been victims of one or more forcible rapes by their husbands. Spousal rape is often more violent and repetitive than other rape and it is less commonly reported. One-third of women who are physically abused by a husband or boyfriend grew up in a household where this happened to their mother. About one in five were abused themselves as a child or teenager.