Male Victims of Domestic Abuse
Distortion of issue
Although recognised for many centuries, the problem of domestic violence
first became a real political issue in western societies in the early
1970s. In the UK, Erin Pizzey founded in Chiswick in 1971 the first refuge
for abused women and their children in Britain. She was later to write
that of the first 100 women who came to the refuge, 61 were as violent
or as violent prone as the men they had left.
Since then, the issue has been polarised and distorted, largely by sexual
politics, into female victims and male perpetrators. Government and public
policies and funding in the UK are still largely based on this perception.
This, despite the wealth of academic studies published worldwide in the
past three decades, coupled with successive government studies in the
past twenty years, all showing a significant level of female aggression
or abuse in intimate relationships. Such studies suggest that, in intimate
couple relationships affected by abusive behaviour, women initiate this
against male partners in about a quarter of cases, men in another quarter,
and the rest is mutual.
Although women tend to be more harmed or frightened by violent abuse,
and are more likely to be injured or victims of repeated assaults, significant
proportions of male victims are also severely assaulted and about one
third of those injured are men.
Male victims
The prescription of domestic violence as a womans problem, and not
a social problem affecting both sexes and their children, is now strongly
entrenched in societal attitudes in most western democracies including
the UK. It extends particularly to Government, local authorities and other
public bodies, including police forces, social agencies, childrens
charities, and even the judiciary.
The result has been to largely ignore or subordinate the plight of male
victims, and consequently support services for them are hugely inferior
to those in place for female victims and geographically totally inadequate.
This public indifference to them, not only deters many male victims from
reporting intimate abuse against them, even when they have suffered severe
violence, but also reinforces stereotypical attitudes towards them by
police forces and social agencies, so that if they do report, they are
often disbelieved or ridiculed. Indeed, surveys of male victims have reported
that about one in five male victims are themselves arrested and not the
female assailant.