Sexual Violence Conference

        Surveys of victims of crime have been undertaken in many cities and countries, using a common methodology to aid comparability, and have generally included questions on sexual violence. The United Nations has conducted extensive surveys to determine the level of sexual violence in different societies. According to these studies, the percentage of women reporting having been a victim of sexual assault ranges from less than 2% in places such as La Paz, Bolivia (1.4%), Gaborone, Botswana (0.8%), Beijing, China (1.6%), and Manila, Philippines (0.3%), to 5% or more in Tirana, Albania (6.0%), Buenos Aires, Argentina (5.8%), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (8.0%), and Bogota, Colombia (5.0%).
        No distinction has been made in these figures between rape by strangers and that by intimate partners. Surveys that fail to make this distinction or those that only examine rape by strangers usually underestimate substantially the prevalence of sexual violence.
        Apart from crime surveys, there have been a small number of surveys, with representative samples, that have asked women about sexual violence. For instance, in a national survey conducted in the United States of America, 14.8% of women over 17 years of age reported having been raped in their lifetime (with an additional 2.8% having experienced attempted rape) and 0.3% of the sample reported having been raped in the previous year. A survey of a representative sample of women aged 18 - 49 years in three provinces of South Africa found that in the previous year 1.3% of women had been forced, physically or by means of verbal threats, to have non-consensual sex. In a survey of a representative sample of the general population over 15 years of age in the Czech Republic 28:265-269, 11.6% of women reported forced sexual contact in their lifetime, 3.4% reporting that this had occurred more than once. The most common form of contact was forced vaginal intercourse.
        The precise incidence of domestic violence in America is difficult to determine for several reasons: It often goes unreported, even on surveys; there is no nationwide organization that gathers information from local police departments about the number of substantiated reports and calls; and there is disagreement about what needs to be included in the definition of domestic violence. "One study estimated that more than 3% (approximately 1.8 million) of women were severely assaulted over the course of a year, while other studies indicate the percentage of women experiencing dating violence, including sexual assault, physical violence, or verbal and emotional abuse, ranges as high as 65%.

Unless a uniform definition and reporting for domestic violence is established, the exact number of survivors will be under reported because survivors don't view their experience as violence. Therein lies the reason many survivors stay in an abusive relationship. The abuse starts at a low level and continues to escalate gradually. The best definition for domestic violence includes not only the behaviors, but the underlying cause.

Domestic Violence or Battering is a pattern of behavior specifically used to establish power and control over another person through fear and intimidation.

Domestic Violence/Battering is used when one person believes they are entitled to control another. Assault, battering and domestic violence are crimes.

Definitions - Domestic Violence/Battering includes emotional abuse, economic abuse, sexual abuse, using children, threats, using male privilege, intimidation, isolation, and a variety of other behaviors used to maintain fear, intimidation and power. In all cultures, the perpetrators are most commonly the men of the family. Women are most commonly the victims of violence.

Recent studies reveal the prevalence of male abuse to be higher than previously reported. It is now believed that male abuse is 40% of all Domestic Violence/Battering. However, as is the case with all family issues, this statistic is decidedly low, due to the prevalence of non-reporting by the survivor.

Acts of Domestic Violence/Battering include one or more of the following categories:

Physical Battering - The abuser's physical attacks or aggressive behavior can range from bruising to murder. It often begins with what is excused as trivial contacts which escalate into more frequent and serious attacks.

Sexual Abuse - Physical attack by the abuser is often accompanied by, or culminates in, sexual violence wherein the woman is forced to have sexual intercourse with her abuser or take part in unwanted sexual activity.

Psychological Battering -The abuser's psychological or mental violence can include constant verbal abuse, harassment, excessive possessiveness, isolating the woman from friends and family, deprivation of physical and economic resources, and destruction of personal property.

Battering escalates. It often begins with behaviors like threats, name calling, violence in her presence (such as punching a fist through a wall), and/or damage to objects or pets. It may escalate to restraining, pushing, slapping, and/or pinching. The battering may include punching, kicking, biting, sexual assault, tripping, throwing. Finally, it may become life-threatening with serious behaviors such as choking, breaking bones, or the use of weapons--including, obviously, homicide.