Domestic Violence Facts Fudged and Forgotten
October 2, 2004
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
- Thomas Paine
Each October is set aside as domestic violence awareness month. And each October a lack of awareness persists and we remain ignorant concerning the true scope and nature of the dilemma. And each October I write something similar to this and each October it falls on the collective deaf ears of our public policy makers.
I would appreciate it if you would pass this along. Some day, some where, enough people will care about our sons as much as they do our daughters and change will take place. Just hope I’m alive to see it.
Pitting One Against The Other As Public Policy
It would seem logical that both public and private domestic violence agencies would be ethically and morally bound to bring to the attention of the general public the danger that dating and domestic violence presents to everyone regardless of age, gender, or sexual orientation. To the detriment of all victims of domestic violence such is not the case in Massachusetts.
Most professionals agree and data documents that in violence between intimates, where homicides, physical injuries and sexual assaults occur , women are victims more than men. However, professionals are also aware of the fact that women are not the only victims of dating or domestic violence.
Recently a Boston Globe columnist wrote that “Pitting the suffering of one group against the suffering of another in a bid for the moral high ground is as old and as odious as injustice itself.” In Massachusetts the Governor’s Commission on Domestic Violence, a public agency, and the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, a private agency, are now and have been for quite some time engaged in this odious injustice.
The Massachusetts Governor’s Commission on Domestic Violence has a domestic violence Fact Sheet on its website. The Fact Sheet purports that it uses a variety of data to present information in an attempt to “accurately capture the true and complete incidence of domestic violence occurring in the Commonwealth.”
Concerning teen dating violence the Fact Sheet documents that 18% of females surveyed in grades 9 through 12 reported being hurt physically or sexually by a date. This same survey also documents that 7% of males in grades 9-12 reported being hurt physically or sexually by a date. Curiously, there is no mention of the latter fact in the Fact Sheet.
The Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence wants the public to be aware that 1 in 5 female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner. The same survey documents that 1 in 10 male high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner. By purposely and willingly omittingthe latter fact it appears that the Coalition does not want us to be aware of the fact that boys are also victims.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health also wants us to be aware that 1 in 5 girls are sexually or physically abused by a boyfriend. Their website also purposely and willing excludes the fact that boys are victims. In response to the victimization of girls by boys the DPH has a pilot program for intervention for adolescent male perpetrators of dating/domestic violence.
Once again, there is no mention of boys as victims and no mention of a pilot program for intervention for adolescent female perpetrators of dating/domestic violence. All of these groups want the general public to believe that female perpetrators and male victims are so few they do not need public or private intervention.
The above data is extracted from the Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey. In 2001 the national data from the same survey reveals; 23.9 % of girls and 43.1% of boys reported being in a physical fight, 2.9% of girls and 5.2% of boys report they were injured in a fight, 9.8% of girls and 9.1% of boys report being physically hurt by a boyfriend or girlfriend and 10.3% of girls and 5.1% of boys report they were forced to have sexual intercourse. These are un-expunged facts.
The reality is, at least in Massachusetts, both public and private agencies concerned with either dating or domestic violence purposely and willing choose to ignore boys or men in their Fact Sheets. Even more mysterious is the fact that the media, both print and electronic, choose to remain oblivious to the distortion of these facts.
Accuracy in Reporting
It was not long ago that a former director of Jane Doe, on the opinion pages of the Boston Globe, made the public aware that National Violence Against Women Survey documents that 1.3 million women annually are the victims of domestic violence. She, willingly and purposely, made no mention that she was aware that the same survey documents 835,000 men are victims.
The Governor’s Commission of Domestic Violence report, Summaries of Statewide Data Sources Relevant to Domestic Violence notes that “Accurate, consistent and complete information on the nature and scope of domestic violence is crucial to targeting resources, refining policies, and evaluating programs.”
The commission then proceeds to omit, obliterate, exclude, expunge, and erase any mention of men or boys as victims of dating/domestic violence. It is obvious that the commission has no intention of being consistent and complete other than consistently and completely ignoring the plight of boys and men.
In the list of citations, which the commission claims contains a wealth of information the only mention of men or boys, is that each year batterer programs serve 2,000 men as perpetrators. They omit, obliterate, exclude, expunge and erase from these citations any mention of males as victims. Pitting females against males, knowingly or not, is exactly what these public and private agencies in Massachusetts engage in. I suspect it is the same elsewhere.
If we intend to seek ways to minimize violence in our homes these public and private agencies must stop pointing the finger of guilt towards boys and men. As we begin this 21 st century should we not expect equal opportunities for our daughters and our sons? Does not everyone, regardless of what percentage of victimization they represent, deserve access to services and funding? Does not everyone, regardless of age or gender or sexual orientation deserve our sympathy and compassion? Is there not a single public policy maker in this nation that cares about our sons as well as our daughters?
