There are no national Australian data on people’s perpetration of domestic or sexual violence. While we have good data on violence victimisation, we know far less about violence perpetration.
The State of Knowledge Report on Violence Perpetration, released today, reviews the current data and research on who perpetrates domestic, family, and sexual violence, how, and why, in order to enhance national efforts to end this violence. Here’s what it found.
One of the consistent findings from victimisation data, legal system data, and survey self-reports is that most violence is perpetrated by men.
Apparent findings that men and women are using domestic violence at similar rates must be interpreted with caution, for four reasons.
First, most studies are just “counting the blows”, measuring any use of a set list of violent acts. They may lead to false positives or over-reporting, including of harmless and innocuous behaviours.
Second, there is evidence men are less likely than women to report their own use of violence.
Third, women’s violence is more often in self-defence than men’s.
And fourth, even where overall rates of the use of various violent acts are similar among males and females, males’ use of violence typically is more frequent, severe, fear-inducing, injurious, and harmful than females’ use of violence.
Few perpetrators are held to account for their crimes. The vast majority of perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence do not ever come to the attention of police or legal systems.
Source: Who is perpetrating domestic, sexual and family violence?