By Andrea Cooper
Intimate partner violence remains a persistent scourge in American culture. It’s hard to determine how frequently it occurs, given survivors’ fear of reporting. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates roughly 41% of women and 26% of men in the U.S. have experienced sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner.
An astonishing one in five American homicide victims dies at the hand of an intimate partner, the CDC says. For American women alone, the figures are even worse. More than half who die by homicide are killed by men who are or were their intimate partners.
Of course, people can be abused without being physically touched. More than 61 million women and 53 million men in the U.S. have survived psychological aggression from an intimate partner, according to the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey.
Intimate partner violence can strike anyone. It doesn’t discriminate by gender, sexual orientation, class, race, education, or age. While most abusers are men, women abuse, too.
Slowing such a widespread problem will take a clear understanding of the types of abusers, ways they may abuse, what we know about effective treatment, and how to prevent the behavior in younger generations.
Read the full story in the NASW Social Work Advocates magazine here.
