Domestic Violence UK: A Few Truths

27/10/01

Domestic Violence UK: A Few Truths

I have now perused the figures in the 2001 British Crime Survey and the most recent Coroners Court figures. And the following statistics can be deduced directly from them.

You are 35 TIMES more likely to commit suicide than be killed by your partner.
You are 30 TIMES more likely to die in a traffic accident than be killed by your partner.
A woman has more chance of winning the jackpot prize in the UK lottery than being killed by her partner.
Males are nearly twice as likely to be victims of violence as are women.
25 times as many men die from industrial disease as do women die from domestic violence.
90 times as many people die through everyday accidents as do women die from domestic violence.
For households with average or above average incomes the chances of an adult being violently assaulted by someone within the family setting is once in every 250 years.
For households on below average incomes, the chances are once in every 80 years.
For households in council estates that are defined as having the 'greatest hardship' (the worst group when it comes to DV) the chances of an adult being violently assaulted by a member of the family is once in every 40 years.
Across the nation, the average adult can expect a domestically-violent assault upon their person once in every 140 years.

Note:

It is unclear to me how the Home Office actually defined 'domestic violence', and so the above conclusions are based, quite simply, on however-they-defined-it!

However, my best guess on the basis of all my ferreting about, is that those who were surveyed were asked, quite directly, something like this ... "Have you been attacked or assaulted in a violent manner by someone known to you in the past 12 months?"

If the answer YES was given, then the interviewer tried to discover what relationship the perpetrator had to the interviewee - the victim.

The survey was NOT solely about domestic violence. It was looking at crime in general. And this, in my view, gives it a little more credibility than it otherwise would have.

According to the Home Office, some 530,000 people died in England and Wales in 2002.

Included in this figure are deaths from ...

circulatory diseases - 210,000

cancer - 140,000

digestive diseases - 25,000

diseases of the skin, muscle or genito-urinary tracts - 15,000

accidents - 10,500 (including some 3,500 involving 'transport')

various metabolic diseases 8,000

suicide - 4,500

infection - 4,000

assault - 800

domestic violence - 120

Domestic violence accounted for about 100 female deaths i.e. there was 1 domestically violent female death for every 5,300 deaths - which is about one fiftieth of a percent of all deaths.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that the domestic violence figures published by the government and by the women's groups do not include domestic violence against men that is committed by men. (This is the equivalent of counting only dead and injured soldiers (e.g. in Iraq) that were attacked by women, and excluding from the statistics all those that were injured or killed by men.)

The lives of many thousands of western men are lost every year as a result of their governments neglecting to provide them with proper health services - with most of the health budgets being given over to fund the health concerns of women. In fact, in the UK, about eight times as much money is spent on women's health issues than on men's.

But the deaths of 120 women per year through domestic violence are given far more attention by the government and the media - almost on a daily basis - than, for example, are the preventable deaths of twenty times as many men as a result of the health budget alone; e.g. as per this piece taken from the Sunday Times ...

...

NHS ‘fund bias’ against men may cost 2,500 lives a year
Sarah-Kate Templeton, Medical Correspondent, Sunday Times 19/06/05

DOCTORS have identified a “funding bias” against men within the National Health Service that they believe is costing at least 2,500 lives a year.

Patient groups have accused the government of failing to provide a cheap and simple test for a potentially fatal stomach condition that could save twice as many lives as breast cancer screening and costs a fraction of the price.

They claim that men are “falling behind women” in screening programmes because there is more “political benefit” in offering tests to women.

There are no national screening schemes for men at the moment, while £225m is spent every year testing for women’s cancers.

The Men’s Health Forum wants all men to be screened for abdominal aortic aneurysm, a swelling of the main artery that can burst with fatal results.

More than 4,000 men die from the condition each year, yet it is estimated that more than 50% of these lives could be saved if ultrasound screening were introduced, enabling surgeons to repair the weakened part of the artery before it ruptured.

Screening one man costs £23 and the whole programme would require £8.5m a year in funding.

By contrast, breast cancer screening costs £40 per mammogram and £75m a year for the whole programme in the United Kingdom. According to one forecast, the procedure will be saving 1,250 lives a year by 2010.

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