The Causes of Wife Abuse - Who Is Abused?

In the past, domestic violence was viewed as a phenomenon exclusively affecting the lower classes. But when researchers began investigating the causes of family violence in the 1970s, they noticed that although lowerclass women at first appeared to make up the majority of victims, domestic violence, in reality, spanned all social and economic groups.

Middle- and upper-class women were also abused, the researchers found, but they often did not turn to hospital emergency rooms and shelters for help. Instead, they utilized private facilities and remained largely unknown, unreported, and uncounted by the public agencies that attempt to measure the rates of domestic violence and aid victims.

While women of any social class may be victims of abuse, general population studies find that women with lower incomes and less education, as well as minority women, are more likely to be the primary victims of domestic violence. Still, researchers note, classification is not exclusive. Just about anyone, rich or poor, male or female, may be a victim of domestic violence.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics defines an intimate partner as a spouse, former spouse, or a current or former boyfriend or girlfriend, either of the same sex or the opposite sex. (See Table 3.1.) The National Crime Victimization Surveys found that in 2001 an estimated 588,490 violent

TABLE 3.1

Definitions of an intimate partner
Intimate partner relationships involve current spouses, former spouses, current boy/girlfriends, or former boy/girlfriends. Individuals involved in an intimate partner relationship may be of the same gender. The FBI does not report former boy/girlfriends in categories separate from current boy/girlfriends. Rather, they are included in the boy/girlfriend category during the data collection process.
The FBI, through the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), and BJS, using the NCVS gather information about the victim's and offender's relationship, using different relationship categories. In this report responses to the victim-offender question from both data sets are collapsed into four relationship groups: intimate, friend/acquaintance, other family, and stranger. These groups are created from the following original response categories:
	NCVS categories	SHR categories
SOURCE: "Definitions of Intimate Partner," in Intimate Partner Violence, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2000, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ipv.pdf (accessed September 23, 2004)
Intimate	Spouse	Husband/wife
	Ex-spouse	Common-law husband or wife
	Boyfriend/girlfriend	Ex-husband/ex-wife
	Ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend	Boyfriend/girlfriend
		Homosexual relationship
Friend/Acquaintance	Friend/ex-friend	acquaintance
	Roommate/boarder	Friend
	Schoolmate	Neighbor
	Neighbor	Employee
	Someone at work/customer	Employer
	Other non-relative	Other known
Other family	Parent or step parent	Mother/father
	Own child or stepchild	Son/daughter
	Brother/sister	Brother/sister
	Other relative	In-law
		Stepfather/stepmother
		Stepson/stepdaughter
		Other family
Stranger	Stranger	Stranger
	Known by sight only

crimes—rape, sexual assault, aggravated assault (assault with a weapon), and simple assault victimizations (assault without a weapon and resulting in minor injuries)—were committed against women by their intimate partners. (See Table 3.2.) About 85.1% of all intimate partner violent crimes were committed against women.

TABLE 3.2

Violence against women by intimate partners, 2001
	Intimate partner violence
	Total		Female		Male
	Number	Rate per 1,000 persons	Number	Rate per 1,000 females	Number	Rate per 1,000 males
— Based on 10 or fewer sample cases.
SOURCE: Callie Marie Rennison, "Table 1. Violence by Intimate Partners, by Type of Crime and Gender of Victims, 2001," in "Intimate Partner Violence, 1993–2001," Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, February 2003, NCJ 197838, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ipv01.pdf (accessed September 22, 2004)
Overall violent crime	691,710	3.0	588,490	5.0	103,220	0.9
Rape/sexual assault	41,740	0.2	41,740	0.4	—	—
Robbery	60,630	0.3	44,060	0.4	16,570	0.1
Aggravated assault	117,480	0.5	81,140	0.7	36,350	0.3
Simple assault	471,860	2.1	421,550	3.6	50,310	0.5