Fact Sheets index

Violence Inflicted on Women and Children

34% to 60% of American women will be abused in their lifetime. In 30% to 70% of these families, the children are also physically or sexually abused. The injuries inflicted in domestic violence incidents are as serious as, or more serious than, injuries inflicted in 90% of all violent crimes.

PHYSICAL VIOLENCE
  • Between 33% and 84% of victims are pushed or thrown around.
  • 51% to 100% of victims are punched.
  • 40% to 84% of abused women are kicked.
  • 15% to 40% of battered women suffer attempts to drown, smother, or strangle them.
  • 15% to 60% of survivors report weapons were used to abuse them.
  • 20% to 63% of domestic violence victims are pregnant when beaten.
  • As many as 70% of men who batter women also batter their children.
SEXUAL VIOLENCE
  • 34% to 59% of battered women report being raped by their spouses.
  • 13% report being raped `often.'
  • 33% are sexually assaulted "at least once a month."
  • 47% of violent male partners demand sex after completing a beating.
  • 37% report that their husbands forced or urged them to perform other sexual acts that the women considered abusive or unnatural.
  • So many battered women have been infected with HIV by batterers who force them into unprotected sex that the National Centers for Disease Control have identified a direct link between battering and the spread of HIV and AIDS among women.
THE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
  • 5% to 10% of victims are knocked unconscious at least once.
  • 10% to 32% of victims studied suffer bone fractures at least once.
  • 43% are permanently physically scarred by the batterers' assaults.
  • Survivors of sexual violence are likely to receive several psychiatric diagnoses, including major depression, alcohol abuse and dependence, drug abuse and dependence, generalized anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
MURDER
  • The lives of 20% to 40% of abuse victims are threatened.
  • 28% to 70% of murdered women in America are killed by a husband, lover, or estranged same.
  • Approximately 2/3 of those murdered by intimate partners or ex-partners had been physically abused before they were killed.
  • Police authorities believe that 100% of Vermont's female homicide victims killed in 1993 died at the hands of an intimate partner or family member.
 
	






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