What you may not know:

• Estimates of the incidents of domestic abuse range from 960,000 to 3.9 million each year. Many occurrences are not reported, other studies estimate that a higher percentage of women are abused (U.S. Dept. of Justice, Violence by Intimates, March 1998).

• 95% of the reported domestic violence cases involve crimes committed by men against women (U.S. Dept. of Justice, Violence by Intimates, March 1998).

• Violence against intimates may occur even though the victim and the abuser do not live together. Violence against women occurs in 20% of dating couples (U.S. Dept. of Justice, Violence by Intimates, March 1998).

• When a woman leaves her batterer, her risk of serious violence or death increases dramatically. 65% of intimate homicide victims were physically separated from the perpetrator prior to their death (U.S. Dept. of Justice, Violence by Intimates, March 1998).

• Protection orders decrease, but do not eliminate, the risk of continuing abuse or homicide. More than 17% of domestic violence victims had a protection order against the perpetrator at the time of their killing (Florida Governors Task Force on Domestic and Sexual Violence, 1977, p.46, Table 15).

• Domestic violence is widespread, crossing all ethnic, racial, age, national origin, sexual orientation, religious, and socio-economic lines (Barnes, Its just a Quarrel, American Bar Association Journal, February 1998, p.25).

• Domestic violence occurs within same-sex relationships with the same statistical frequency as in heterosexual relationships, in approximately 25-33% of couples (Barnes, Its just a Quarrel, American Bar Association Journal. February 1998, p.25).

• Domestic violence has immediate and long-term detrimental effects on children. In homes where partner abuse occurs, children are 1,500 times more likely to be abused. Studies demonstrate that 70 to 84% of batterers also abuse their children. Because violence is a learned behavior, these children are significantly more likely to either become abusers themselves or to become adult victims of abuse (Dept of Justice, BJA, Family Violence: Interventions for the Justice System 1993).

• Domestic violence affects a woman's ability to support herself and her children financially. Between 33% and 67% of welfare recipients reported suffering from domestic violence at some point in their adult lives. Approximately 32% reported current domestic violence victimization (Raphael & Tolman, Trapped by Poverty, 1997, p.21).

• Outreach, education and training activities are essential in addressing and preventing domestic violence. Oftentimes, battered women do not recognize that their relationship is abusive. The National Survey on Women's Health found that only 8% of women they surveyed reported the abuse to their physician: only 43% told anyone at all (The Commonwealth Fund, 1993).