Article July 9, 2001 Issue

WOMEN AREN'T THE ONLY VICTIMS

Sentinel Staff

When people talk about domestic violence, they usually focus on women. And women are more likely to be injured in cases of abuse. But men can also be victims of violence, either by women or by other men.

According to a US Department of Justice study, from 1992 to 1996 about two percent of the violent crime sustained by men stemmed from abuse. But some researchers dispute this figure, pointing out that men tend to hide their suffering. They say that men may make up roughly five to ten percent of all domestic violence cases.

Many shelters are geared to helping women, and they are sometimes reluctant to help men, believing, for instance, that an abuser might be pretending to be a victim in order to get access to a spouse or girlfriend who is at the shelter. Some shelter workers believe women strike back at their male companions in self-defense, but that the men then claim it is abuse. But a 1985 study by Murray Straus, director of the University of New Hampshire Family Research Laboratory, found that 12 percent of men—and 11.6 percent of women—admitted to having hit, slapped, or kicked their partners. They also found that instead of being passive victims, women initiated the violence as often as the men.

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