DOMESTIC VIOLENCE:
THE MYTHS AND THE FACTS

MYTH: Domestic violence occurs only in poor, poorly educated, minority, or "dysfunctional" families. It could never happen to anyone I know.

FACT: Domestic violence occurs in every community, among people of every age, religion and race, sexual orientation, and at every economic level. Because many victims, due to their abusers' control of the family's financial resources, turn to public agencies, such as city hospitals and social services agencies for help, it sometimes appears as though this statement is true. Middle and upper class victims often do not reveal the abuse they suffer, afraid of damaging a successful partner's career, or due to pressure by family, friends and others to keep up appearances. In addition, they frequently have other options open to them, such as quietly obtaining a divorce.

This myth also brings into question the issue of "normal" families. Given researchers' estimates that as many as 60% of American women will be abused in their lifetime, one has to ask, just what is a "normal" family?

MYTH: Domestic violence is spouse abuse, not woman abuse. Women are just as violent as men.

FACT: People go to great lengths to use gender neutral terms such as "spouse abuse," "conjugal violence," "couples experiencing violence," "violent relationships" and "marital aggression." But this is profoundly misleading. In over 90% of domestic assaults, the man is the perpetrator and the victim is a woman. This fact may make us uncomfortable, but it is no less true because of that discomfort. Stating a fact is not male-bashing. Unfortunately, in our society, men are socialized to use force and violence to get what they want or to retaliate against even a verbal attack, while women are not socialized to respond with violence even when physically attacked. However, it is true that some women abuse male partners, and, regardless of the disparity in numbers, we must always remember that pain has no gender, no age, no race, no culture, no class and no income level. A man abused by a female or male partner will suffer the same emotional and physical anguish as a woman abused by a male or female partner. Because of physical differences in size and strength between men and women, women assaulted by male partners sustain greater physical injury than men assaulted by women. Women are more than seven times as likely to need medical care after an assault by a male partner than men assaulted by female partners.

MYTH:
Battering is a family matter.

FACT: No act which can leave a woman permanently injured physically or mentally, or result in death is a `family matter.' Assault is assault, rape is rape, murder is murder, regardless of the relationship between the people. Arguing that the `privacy' of the family must be maintained can mean injury, death, or virtual imprisonment to many battered women. The same attitudes perpetuate the sexual and physical abuse of children.

MYTH: Husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, and gay couples have always fought. Too much attention is being paid to domestic violence.

FACT: The brutality and severity of the violence - and the seriousness of the injuries inflicted - distinguish domestic violence from a family/couples argument.

• Over half of all women abused by a marital partner have been abused in ways that are potentially life threatening.
  
• 51% to 100% of battered women are punched. Weapons - including blunt instruments - have been used against 15% to 60% of shelter resident samples.
  
• 10% to 32% of victims studied suffer bone fractures at least once, and 43% are permanently physically scarred by the batterers' assaults.
  
• 5% to 10% of victims are knocked unconscious at least once.
  Children who grow up witnessing the abuse of their mother, or who are themselves abused, are more likely to get in serious trouble later.
  
• Childhood abuse increases the odds of future delinquency and adult criminality overall by 40%.
  
• More than 51% of students who saw their parents being abused were involved in violent dating relationships.
  
• In the U.S. in 1991, 63% of the males between the ages of 11 and 20 who were incarcerated for homicide killed their mother's batterer.
  

MYTH: They are just a violent couple. It takes two to tango. They ought to work it out.

FACT: Couples are rarely violent. All it takes is for one partner to resort to violence to get what he wants. Once that occurs, the violence is seen by the abuser, the victim and society as her problem. He does not accept responsibility for the violence, thinking of the beatings as "discipline, " and does not think he has anything that needs "working out." Because batterers are not violent all the time, she may see his violence as "punishment" for her mistakes. As he continually tells her, " If you hadn't..., I wouldn't have..." 

MYTH: When there is violence in a family, all family members take part in the dynamic, and therefore, all must change for the violence to stop.

FACT: Only the perpetrator can stop the violence. Many battered women try to change their behavior, hoping this will stop the abuse. But this does not work. Changes in family members' behaviors will not cause or influence the batterer to be non-violent.

MYTH: Women sometimes provoke a beating. They just ask for it.

FACT: People in intimate relationships are bound to disagree and argue. But there is no need for beatings. No provocation justifies having your head banged against a wall, or your arm twisted and dislocated, or being strangled until you pass out.

"Batterers characterize any behavior they dislike, such as`talking back,' or `nagging,' as provocation. But, no matter what she says or does that he describes as `provocation,' it is always his choice how to respond. When friends, acquaintances or strangers prove irritating, most men do not usually respond with yelling, name-calling or violence. If one partner does something that makes the other angry, he could talk to her or someone else about his feelings, take a walk to cool off, pray, get a divorce, ship out on a freighter. None of us can help what we feel, but we can choose how to act on our feelings. The bottom line is that the abuser's choice to respond with violence is his."

MYTH: If my partner hit me, I'd be out the door in a minute. These women must like it.

FACT: Police don't receive calls from women who like it. Crisis lines are not busy with calls from women who like it. The thousands of women who come to shelters for protection do not like it.

• · In 1996, Vermont police responded to 1,027 incidents involving domestic violence.
• · In FY 97, Network programs received 13,535 crisis calls.

MYTH: Abuse of alcohol and/or drugs cause domestic violence.

FACT: Alcohol and other drugs do not cause non-violent persons to become violent. Many men and women use or abuse those drugs without battering partners. Research shows that the pattern of coercive behaviors that is domestic violence is not caused by those particular chemicals, although alcohol and other drugs may be used as an excuse for the battering.

Alcoholism can give both batterer and victim a tool to "explain away" the battering: "He wouldn't have done it if he weren't drunk." If abuse only occurs after drinking, the woman may want to see this as the answer. It is not. Although alcoholics have a disease, they are responsible for their actions. The abuser may promise to give up drinking, but the end of alcohol abuse does not mean the end of violence.

MYTH: Men who batter do so because they snap and lose control, or have "poor impulse control," or are under stress.

FACT: Being out of control "is a myth perpetuated by batterers as they attempt to evade responsibility for their actions. Ptacek found that 94% of the batterers he studied excused their violence by saying that they lost control. 33% blamed alcohol or drugs, and 67% attributed their `loss of control' to a buildup of frustrations and stress.

`Stress is a totally inadequate concept to explain abuse. Under enormous stress, many men do not batter. Insecure women under stress do not beat up men in large numbers. Common sense suggests that heightened stress may be a factor in battering, but ... stress does not "cause" abuse; men choose to deal with stress in specific ways. The belief in one's right to use violence, batter, and dominate women is what causes the man to relieve his stress by beating his wife. ... Poor impulse control is a grossly misleading term; many men are only violent with their wives in the privacy of their homes. Sometimes, they carefully select which area of a woman's body to abuse. They usually do not kill. Some exercise substantial control and stop their abuse when they are threatened with jail sentences. Although they act "out of control," most batterers know what they are doing.' (Schechter)

"While most men could kill a woman or child just using their bare hands, the majority of batterers reveal their very real control over their violence by `pulling their punches' and not doing fatal harm. In reality, batterers choose the time, the place, how much force to use, and often inflict injuries only to specific parts of the victim's body. "
Although men who commit domestic violence and murder are often described as "having snapped," they usually have a history of using repeated, escalating violence to control the victim.

The real question is: "How is it that he has enough self-control to refrain from attacking co-workers, acquaintances and strangers who anger him - but none at home with his partner and children?"

MYTH: Batterers are crazy.

FACT: People who believe abusers are crazy seek to set batterers off from the rest of the population to deny/avoid recognizing that batterers are all around us - doctors, ministers, judges, lawyers, businessmen, legislators, actors, etc. If women believe that batterers are mentally ill and that their partners are not, they assume they cannot become victims of abuse. If men believe this myth, the batterers among them can continue to deny their abuse, and the non-batterers believe they can never become abusive.

"Some percentage of batterers could be classified as mentally ill, as could some percentage of the general population. Gondolf and Fisher suggest that `over a third ... might be considered " sociopathic" or "anti-social," as well as severe abusers. '"

MYTH: Men who batter their partners can still be good fathers, and should have joint custody of their children.

FACT: A range of studies between 1975 and 1995 found that as many as 77% of men who batter female partners also physically and/or sexually abuse the children. Half of women sexually abused by their fathers in childhood reported that their the incestuous fathers were habitually violent against mothers and children. And though parents often deny that children are aware of the violence, research suggests that 90% to 100% of children from violent homes see and/or hear their fathers battering their mothers.

The damage done to these children is clear: "[r]epeated and chronic exposure to interpersonal or family violence in childhood (either as a victim or a witness) has been associated with chronic or delayed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), adolescent and adult substance abuse, a wide variety of child, adolescent and adult behavioral disorders, depression, suicidality, self-mutilation (i.e., cutting), an intolerance for or constant search for intimacy, and diagnoses of multiple and borderline personality disorder.

MYTH: Child sexual abuse doesn't really happen that often.

FACT: Approximately 35% of women and 20% of men in the U.S. were victims of sexual abuse as children.
"[I]ncestuous abuse by biological fathers was found to be the most traumatic form of abuse. In terms of the frequencies of sexual abuse by relatives, 25% of the perpetrators were uncles, 24% were fathers (including biological, foster, and step-), 16% were first cousins, 13% were brothers, 8% were other male relatives, 6% were grandfathers, 4% were brothers-in-law, 2% were female first cousins, 2% were other female relatives, and 1% were biological mothers. In all, there were only 10 female perpetrators of incestuous abuse in the survey [of 930 randomly selected adult females]. This number represented 5% of all incest perpetrators."

MYTH: Battered women stay in violent relationships. If they just left, the violence would stop.

FACT: Battered women work very actively on their own and their children's behalf, seeking help from domestic violence programs, police and social services agencies. But their efforts often fail because batterers continue to assault, and institutions refuse to offer protection.
Studies have shown that, instead of ending the violence, leaving can increase the victim's risk of injury or death. Since he abuses her to gain and maintain control over her, it is logical that when she leaves and he has lost control over her, he resorts to the tactic that has always worked before - violence - to regain control.

• Battered women seek medical attention for injuries sustained significantly more often after separation - as many as 75% of battered women's visits to emergency rooms occur after separation.
• One study found that about 75% of battered women's calls to law enforcement for intervention and assistance were made after separation.
• A 1991 study found that "among assaultive men arrested, convicted and sentenced, less than 1% (0.9%) served any time in jail." And some men would rather kill than see "their" woman start a new life without them.
• In Vermont, between January 1, 1990 and December 31, 1998, of the 29 female homicide victims in current or former partner relationships with their killers, 15 (52%) were known to be estranged: 8 wives and 7 girlfriends.

  Despite the chilling reality, the majority of battered women eventually leave their abuser. It is important to remember that leaving is a process that can be dangerous and can take a woman some time.

MYTH: How prevalent is domestic violence? How many Vermont women are battered?

FACT: No studies have been done in Vermont to find out how many Vermont women are abused each year, so we estimate that the percentage of Vermonters abused is similar to percentages established in broad-based studies.

• In a wide range of studies reported between 1979 and 1996, researchers have estimated that as many as 60% of American women will be abused in their lifetime.

  Since Vermont has a population of about 600,000, and half are females, we estimate that as many as 180,000 Vermont women will be abused in their lifetime. Some other estimates of the amount of abuse inflicted on American women include:

• Every 9 seconds, a woman in the U.S. is beaten.
• If each of the 4,000,000 American women who were beaten by husbands or boyfriends in 1993 joined hands, the line would reach from New York City to beyond Los Angeles.

  While we don't know how many women are beaten in Vermont, we do know how many are killed by male partners.

• Between January 1, 1990 and December 31, 1998, 56% (29) of the 52 females killed are believed to have died at the hands of current or former husbands or boyfriends, while 9 (11%) of the 79 males were killed by current or former wives or girlfriends.

  We also know that domestic violence is the leading cause of violent death in Vermont.

• Between 1990 and 1998, a total of 131 people were killed: 79 males and 52 females. Seventy-four (56.4%) of the 131 deaths occurred in domestic situations: 47% (37) of 79 males killed and 71% (37) of 52 females.

  It is interesting to note that between January 1, 1990 and December 31, 1998, while 15 women who had left their partners were pursued and allegedly killed by them, none of the men killed had left female partners and were pursued and killed by them.