Our thanks to Danuta for this, a MailOnline article which is remarkable for its depth of reporting, as well as for being written by a male journalist – Richard Spillett – a rare thing in the field of reporting on Domestic Abuse. The first photograph is of a woman assaulting a man, again a rare thing.
It’s a lengthy piece, but well worth the effort of reading in full. For me, one if the most interesting Figures was Fig.15, shortly into the article. It’s titled, ‘The sex of victims and defendants in domestic abuse-related cases in England and Wales, year ending March 2017’. The text beneath the bar chart:
Despite the high number of male victims, CPS stats show men are the defendants in a high proportion of cases and women are the complainants
Polly Neate, for many years the Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, left the organization earlier this year. Her successor is clearly made of the same cloth:
Katie Ghose, chief executive of domestic abuse charity Women’s Aid, said ONS data cannot currently offer the ‘full picture’.
She said: ‘Domestic abuse by its very nature, hidden behind closed doors, is hard to capture in statistics alone.
‘Survivors often do not involve official bodies as it takes great courage to report abuse to the police; some women [J4MB emphasis] will never speak out because they don’t know if they will be believed, are not given the space to make the call or fear the repercussions if they do report the perpetrator to the police.’
