In 1995 the intimate partner homicide rate for all females began to rise again, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars under the Violence Against Women Act.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
— John Adams - 1735-1826)
On December 28, 2006 the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report "Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in the United States" announced that the IPV rate had declined between 1993 and 2004. Domestic violence advocates were quick to attribute that decrease to the 1994 Violence against Women Act (VAWA). They claimed that VAWA-funded training for law enforcement officers and increased prosecution is responsible for that decrease.
There is no data to support that claim. The author of the BJS-IPV report states there is no consensus why IPV victimization has declined. Perhaps because so many advocates want to believe that IPV is caused by sexist, assertive and aggressive males whose goal is to oppress passive and docile females, they have been rendered unable or unwilling to see, understand or acknowledge important empirical data as evidenced by this most recent BJS-IPV report.
What this BJS-IPV report documents, first and foremost, is that the obvious remains oblivious to many advocates, public policy makers and the electronic and print media. The story the media reported was that the IPV rate declined. What the media did not report is that the BJS website documents that the drop in the IPV rate simply mirrors the decades-long decrease of violent crime in general. While VAWA has spent billions primarily to “assist adult heterosexual women,” the non-fatal victimization rates for relatives, friends and acquaintances, and strangers decreased by approximately the same rates without billions from VAWA.
Nonfatal violent victimization rate: Rate per 1,000 females age 12 or older
Intimates Other relatives Friends/acquaintance Strangers
1993 9.8 3.3 15.8 15.4
2004 3.8 1.4 5.3 6.3
The BJS-IPV data clearly documents that reported nonfatal crime victimization, in all of the above categories, has dropped at approximately equal rates. The BJS website also documents that two-thirds of homicides and the majority of assaults against females are not perpetrated by a male intimate partner.
What the advocates and the media also did not report is that there has not been a statistically significant change in the homicide victimization of white females during that period, and in 1995 the intimate partner homicide rate for all females began to rise again.
VAWA funding, perhaps for fiduciary reasons, may have caused many public and private agencies and many researchers to minimize or ignore where or why the majority of female assaults and homicides are committed.
The Decrease: Part II
The BJS data documents that nonfatal victimization, in all of the above categories and homicides, declined before VAWA was passed in 1994. In fact, the National Academy of Sciences reports that many of the contemporary IPV policies and procedures are not effective and many have been implemented because of ideology and stakeholder interests, rather thanempirical science-based evidence.
This BJS-IPV report documents that abusive men are more “violent” than abusive women. However, this BJS data is clearly not representative of the population in general. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) documents that only ½ of 1% of households report at least one incident of what they believe is an IPV assault.
What the BJS crime data documents is that women report IPV more than men. The IPV report documents that women are more than three times more likely than men to view an IPV incident as criminal behavior. Hence, this report documents the role perception plays concerning the percentage differential between crime reports and general population surveys.
BJS and other National Institute of Justice data documents that female and male fatal and nonfatal victimization, in all of the above categories, rises and falls in conjunction with the offenders' and victims' socioeconomic educational status, age, neighborhood, history of family abuse, unequal family power relationships, the abuse of drugs and alcohol, jealous rages, criminal history, and psychopathic behavior.
The National Violence Against Women Survey documents that VAWA has had an effect on law enforcement training and prosecution. Law enforcement is more than twice as likely to detain, arrest or take a report if the IPV victim is female rather than male.
Another effect of VAWA is demonstrated by the National Evaluation of the Legal Assistance for Victims Program report. The report is prepared by the Institute for Law and Justice (ILJ)and the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC). One would expect that the goal of private and public agencies is to provide equal justice and an equal concern for all victims. However, above the acknowledgements section of their report is the following:
This report is dedicated to all the women who had the courage and opportunity to leave an abusive relationship and seek legal help and support; and to all the women who are still thinking about it. [Emphasis added.]
Despite the fact that the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control documents that 5.3 million IPV incidents occur each year for women and 3.2 million for men, the ILJ and NCVC apparently believe it is not necessary to expend money or provide resources for men. Why do so many advocates, public policy makers, and private and public agencies continue to believe that male victimization is so rare, they need not care? And why is it that the electronic and print media continue to miss . . . the rest of the story?
rldavis@post.harvard.edu
Read more articles by Richard L. Davis
Mr. Davis,
You have left me (and I assume others) somewhat at a loss where you are going with this. You provide some useful information which we are, of course, appreciative of; but give us only a vague idea of the position you are taking or conclusions you draw from these reports, other than they are somewhat flawed. You leave too vague which sources you feel are distorted and which reliable, and why. This needs some expansion and explication.
I gather you find there is bias in the interpretation if not in the actual data, that male-only-violence is an agenda driven myth, and that the politicizing of domestic violence as against women is causing significant harm and injustice. What I do not see is any critique of the data itself (which is demonstrably flawed also), any discussion of what constitutes abuse illustrating how the whole domestic violence issue has been hyped to serve funded interests, or the many flaws in the assumptions surrounding domestic and child abuse causing a forced shift in behaviors and thought away from a family centered society.
Possibly you wish to avoid these other issues as emotionally loaded, divisive, distracting, or unlikely of a fair hearing among a strongly conservative audience, yet it is impossible to discuss the one without at least touching on the others. Possibly you wrote this piece for a wider audience, and have it posted other places where those notions might offend. Please fill in the blanks.
Comment by Robert W. Stapler | April 18, 2007
Once again it must be emphasized all of these sources of data regarding violence and abuse are agenda driven and the criteria on which they are based are, in varying degrees, subjective. There are differences in reporting and gathering of the data that must be understood when interpreting what the reports tell us about human behavior and perceived differences between the sexes. What constitutes ‘abuse’ or ‘contextual violence’ has a great deal to do with who is doing the constituting. The author points out only one of the more egregious: i.e., the misuse of a problem for political gain that compounds rather than solves the problem.
Reading through the BJS, ILJ, NCVS, and CDC reports, I find a common refrain that people are the problem and government is the answer. Despite the subtleties of interpretation, all take the same stance as regards society’s right to intervene and scold, and I make the same objection to all.
In the case of statistically reported child abuse, why it is ‘domestic violence’ now when it was legitimate, community-sanctioned ‘discipline’ then? We have been struggling with child-abuse and the role of the wider community (aka, ‘The Village’) in curbing it for centuries. Only in the last half century have we insinuated the meddling of nanny-state governments into what was predominantly a family (or, at most, a local) affair. In the course of doing so, it appears we have done more harm than prevented; with governmental busybodies declaring virtually all parents unfit and changing the paradigm of parent - with vested interests and rights - into one of temporary and barely tolerated caretakers with no rights and no power but full responsibility for outcomes. I can think of no better means for discouraging people from getting married or having children.
What became of the statistics published in 2000 from these same sources showing a very different trend (i.e., more female initiated violence)? I have seen, in these pages and elsewhere, numbers of articles that describe a much smaller gap between the violence of women and that of men; including the harm inflicted. These more recent reports appear only to have rearranged some of the furniture to give a different picture of what is happening. As very little of the data can be new, it cannot have changed as much as these reports depict; and I must assume it is being done to a purpose. These new reports seem to emphasize changes more than revealing the actual extent of the problem. This magnifies rather than diminishes the problem's importance as we are to suppose from the representation that the decrease is small in a large population of abuse cases rather than tiny in a far larger population of people who are not deemed abusive. Moreover, these reports agree that male aggression is significantly higher than female aggression, even while less than the distortion of a few years ago. This has the effect of providing a compromise between agendas without ever conceding a flawed premise.
http://www.shatterdmen.com/pagetwo.htm (illustrates how men are tricked into convicting themselves without trial … and other useful insights)
http://www.shatterdmen.com/MUSTArrest.htm (must arrest laws - how funding skews justice and reportage)
http://www.shatterdmen.com/BATTERD%20HUSBANDS.htm (references more balanced 1980 study)
http://www.oregoncounseling.org/Handouts/DomesticViolenceMen.htm
http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/factoid/factoid.html (speaks to prevailing myths and deliberate distortions)
http://www.batteredmen.com/straus99.htm (Strauss responds, types of bias)
As Dr. Strauss points out, various interpretations (sometimes of the same data) are the result of different approaches. The BJS statistics (regarded in most circles as the most authoritative because they come from government) are probably the most limited in what they represent. This database is culled from a variety of arrest sources, without a uniform methodology (until recently), and only represent those instances of abuse for which a judgment is made and a record created. At least some of this record is the result of men coerced by our justice system into conceding guilt not proved in order to avoid a physical arrest, often without their comprehension that is what they have done, and not in a court of law … even when they are not the aggressor. Other systemic abuses similarly abound, all of which tend to support the presupposition men are more dangerous than women and that it is safer to lock up or burden men than it is to risk a fair determination.
Should every case of abuse be reported? The effect of reportage is often not a balanced resolution that ends in a restored marriage. The effect is to invite every professional and authorized busybody in the world into your home, begin dismantling your marriage and family, and dictating the ultimate terms of resolution. Well meaning as they are, their very presence puts us on our guard and stifles the best interests of the family by reducing issues to only those conflicts which exist between individuals who only happen to occupy the same house. They create an imbalance of power that debases the one and inflates the other. Anyone who has been through this process will, if they are honest, tell you it is unproductive, slow, demeaning, debilitating, and pointless. In the end, you have more barriers between you and your spouse than when you began, and your children have been taught to disregard, distrust, and, maybe, vilify you. You may even have no other option left other than leave. Every marriage has its moments when tempers flare and judgment fails. There may even be a moment when it gets physical. Most of us repent this and do better. By working this out as between husband and wife, we form a stronger, surer bond; while signaling we do not simply ‘sick the cops’ on the other the moment things get tense.
When I was a kid, I sometimes went bawling to my dad the bullies were beating me up. He recognized I sometimes baited them, and sagely told me it would be wrong for him to interfere. I changed my behavior to avoid the beatings and became a better person for it. Had he interfered, the bullies would certainly have gotten their just deserts, but I would not have learned how to get along. My dad also sometimes disciplined me for my misbehaviors or abuse of others. In today’s world, he’d be tagged an abusive father and locked up. He was nothing of the sort, and his discipline made me a better man. Among the things he taught me was to never hit a woman (unless in real danger and with no way out) and to do all I could not lose my temper when disciplining a child. The cornerstone of a free society is that people are capable of managing our own affairs and disciplining ourselves against abusing others. The perception and growing acceptance we have in asking the state to do this for us and in coddling to keep us well only serves to make us a servile people.
As I see it, the flaw both in the author’s thinking and in that of the many well meaning ‘let’s have a Village’ types, is thinking this is a problem that can ever be solved perfectly. The author seems to think more needs be done on a problem that has neither shrunk nor restored a single ‘victim’ to her/his dignity, and his rationale is it needs parity. If it does not fix the one, it is unlikely to fix the other; and only throws more fuel on the ‘it takes a village’ mentality. There is often a fine line between self-defense and abuse and between discipline and abuse; but it is a line most people are capable of recognizing. There will always be some who overstep the line and need reigning in and there will be times when an abuser is unamenable to reason. For that we have courts and juries. The current system of laws punishes good parents and husbands far more often than it hinders abuse; and discourages and/or interferes with stable relationships; which I see as the greater evil. I do not see how Mr. Davis’s program of catering to male victimology corrects this abuse of government any better than does female victimology. To the contrary, it encourages more of the same. It is the kind of problem you get when you entrust what is properly a private concern to government to guarantee against, a thing no one can do. The function of government is to intervene in extreme cases and in those that threaten the larger community. It may also extend to the protection of individuals, but that is easily addressed by voiding marriage as a license to hit, and, thereafter, treat all unavoidable cases as assault. That has been done, yet our courts and advocates seek to go further, to eradicating anger, frustration and hurt. It is unlikely any system of laws can do so much or better than married couples, the overwhelming majority of whom are dedicated to each other’s wellbeing and to that of their families.
Comment by Robert W. Stapler | April 19, 2007