THE VIOLENCE

• "Although divorced and separated women comprise only 10% of all women in America, they account for three-quarters of all battered women and report being battered fourteen times as often as women still living with their partners."
  
  
• Women who suffered severe abuse at the hands of a former spouse were more than three times as likely to be abused while separated than were women abused in less serious ways (25% vs. 8%). The abuse increased in severity after separation in 36% of the seriously violent cases and in 43% of cases where women suffered less serious violence."
  
  
• In one study, 40% of women from estranged relationships had been threatened and/or assaulted with a gun or knife compared to under 16% of the women from active or less estranged relationships.
  
  
• About one in every seven victims of wife rape are raped after the end of their marriage.

THE MURDERS

• Homicidal husbands often have threatened to do exactly what they did, should their wives leave them, and they often explain their homicides as responses to the intolerable stimulus of her departure.
  
  
• Studies in the U.S. and Australia have found that between 40% and 57% women murdered by their husbands were separated at the time of their deaths.
  
  
• Between 1990 and 1998 in Vermont, 58% of female homicide victims are believed by police to have died at the hands of a current or former husband or boyfriend. 11% of male homicide victims were killed by current or former wives or girlfriends.

MOST WOMEN DO LEAVE

Despite the danger, the majority of battered women eventually leave their abuser. For example, a 1993 study found that, while 15% of the battered women they spoke with were being abused by a current partner, 48% had been abused by previous partners.

Although there is a great tendency to blame the victim who remains with an abuser for her continued abuse, studies reveal that women are in danger of abuse whether they stay with the abuser or not, take out a restraining order or not, divorce them if married or not, cooperate with criminal prosecution or not. Nearly 75% of women treated for medical emergencies received their injuries after leaving their abusers (Stark, et al.) and women are most likely to be murdered when trying to break off an abusive relationship or when reporting an abusive incident to authorities (Sonkin, et al.).

There are a number of reasons why women stay with abusive partners. But studies overwhelmingly confirm that the prime reason is fear (Goolaskian). Add to this economic dependence, social pressure to preserve the family or provide a father for the children, their own substance abuse stemming from the victimization, or lack of coping skills due to years of prior abuse and it is not difficult to understand why victims are unable or unwilling to break away (Kramer).