Facts about Domestic Violence

• One in four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.(1)
• One if five high school girls report being abused by a boyfriend.(2)
• In Missouri, 34,183 incidents of intimate partner violence were reported to law enforcement in 2008.(3)
• About half of the incidents of intimate partner violence experienced by women are reported to the police. Of those reported, the offender was immediately arrested only 20 percent of the time.(4)
• The majority of domestic violence victims are women. Females are 84 percent of abuse victims and 86 percent of victims abused by a boyfriend or girlfriend.(5)
• Seventy-five percent of domestic violence victims defend themselves during the attack.(6)
• The percentage of female murder victims killed by a current or former intimate partner has remained at about 30 percent since 1976.(7)
• Intimate partner violence occurs less often between women in same-sex relationships. While 30.4 percent of women in opposite sex relationships have reported similar abuse. However, men in same-sex relationships report intimate partner violence almost twice as often as men in opposite-sex relationships-15 percent as opposed to 7.7 percent.(8)
• In a study of women with disabilities, 56 percent reported abuse. The abuser was their male intimate partner 80 percent of the time.(9)
• Women with unwanted or unplanned pregnancies have four times the odds of experiencing violence by their partners than women with intended pregnancies.(10)

(1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10) Sources for the above statistics are available from the advocate upon request.