Domestic violence (DV), also known as battering and intimate partner abuse, is defined in this course as a behavioral pattern of assault and coercion used against an intimate partner. The forms it takes are:

• physical assault,
• forced sex,
• verbal threats,
• emotional abuse,
• harassment,
• humiliation,
• imprisonment,
• stalking, and
• denial of access to money, food, shelter, medical care and intervention services.
  

Research shows that the average period of time victims endure ongoing or intermittent DV is between four and five years. Two-thirds of DV incidents occur within the victim’s home, most often between dusk and dawn. Although statistics vary, depending on the scope of the DV definition, it is clear that the vast majority of victims are women and that men are the perpetrators in the majority of cases. One out of three to four American women experience physical or sexual abuse by male partners sometime in their lives. Sixty percent of all battered women are beaten while pregnant. It is estimated that almost five million rapes and/or assaults against women occur annually, and another half million women are stalked. Among the victims who suffer physical injury from assault, a projected half million will seek out some medical treatment, revealing only the tip of the iceberg to nurses who are increasingly relied upon to cooperate with surveillance programs. One researcher estimates that one out of three people coming to an Emergency Room is a woman with a DV related injury.

Those who do not require emergency attention may, nonetheless, experience long-range consequences of DV. They may present clinical symptoms of debilitated health that defy explanation. Domestic violence in the U.S. is not only responsible for a third of female homicides, and is the most common cause of nonfatal injury to U.S. women, but is also considered to be the single greatest health threat to women under age fifty.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, efforts to raise awareness about the prevalence and toll of DV seem to be rewarding. Although only about 60% of the estimated number of DV incidents were reported by women to police in 1998, this is an 11% increase in reporting since 1993. There has been an overall decline of 21% in DV from 1993 to 1998. The only category not showing a drop in DV in the past 25 years is that of white female victims.

DV is the biggest threat to women’s health before the age of fifty.

True
False

 
Click here for a State-by-State Report Card on Health Care Laws and Domestic Violence.