Challenging Conventions

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An introduction to

Male victims of domestic violence – the unseen side of domestic violence

By Robert Whiston FRSA

Nov 2002

(on behalf of the ManKind Initiative charity)

Traditionally, feminist theory holds that in a “patriarchal society” marriage is the vehicle of oppression of women. [1] However, outside those restrictive parameters it becomes increasingly less relevant as the different gender profiles are offered up for comparison..

As might be surmised that view of cause and effect quickly losses cohesion when confronted with survey results of gay and lesbian domestic violence where violence is more common than in heterosexual relationships. [2] In addition, a study in a doctoral dissertation by psychologist Valerie Coleman of 90 lesbian couples, showed that 46% had experienced repeated violent incidents (Garcia, 1991). The lifestyles of gay and lesbians, by definition, cannot be said to be a product of oppressed victims of marriage or of patriarchy.

The model loses further credibility when heterosexual male victims of domestic violence (DV) are considered. They too, do not fit the mould of oppressed victims of a patriarchal society.

There is perhaps no agreed definitive model of what causes domestic violence. At the moment what we can say is that it is incorrect to assert that domestic violence is perpetuated because of an imbalance – physical or economic – between men and women. However, regardless of sex or preferred gender roles victims of domestic violence all deserve equal treatment and consideration. Unfortunately, for men there are at present no resources or support services. Frequently they are ignored or disbelieved. [3]

In 1997, the American Psychological Association’s official journal, the “Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology”, found domestic violence by men was more likely to be associated with indicators of powerlessness than it was when women were violent.

This was evident in the Kosovan war. Practical insights into the cause of this phenomenon began to appear in June 1999 when the world’s newspapers carried stories of domestic violence by Kosovans as a result of ethnic cleansing (e.g. Daily Telegraph, 1/6/99). Before the Kosovans began their return home increasing levels of anti‑social and pathological behaviour were reported by Aid Workers in many of the camps.

Severely traumatized Kosovans, unable to cope with the atrocities they had witnessed were directing their sense of impotency onto themselves, their wives and family. Thus, powerlessness caused violence. Interviewed by the Daily Telegraph (June 1st 1999) Sue Prosser, head of MSF (Medicine Sans Frontiere) mental health project said:

“There is a huge problem with domestic violence in the camps. We are also starting to see suicide attempts because some of these men see no other way out. The problem of accepted social norms breaking down seem exacerbated by the misery of the camps, where they have little control over their lives prompting depression and violence ‑ particularly among men and young men. Having lost everything including their identity and dignity, the men are attempting to regain some semblance of control and assert themselves which leads in turn to heightened family tensions and domestic violence. In contrast, Kosovan women are ‘internalising’ their trauma. They are experiencing epileptic fits, occasions when their bodies go rigid.“

The same edition of “Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology”, reported that researchers found that physical violence among men was more strongly associated with unemployment, low educational attainment, and few social support resources. These are precisely the same factors that are found in the 1999 domestic violence survey publication “Home Office Study 191” (see Appendix A).

Until more definitive or conclusive research is concluded into the causes of domestic violence it remains easier to state the negative, ie what it is not, rather than propound models that may be found wanting in the near future.

Domestic violence is not related to marriage as cohabitation brings about greater incidences of offending.[4] The use and occupation of women’s refuges is dominated by female cohabitees and casual girlfriend type relationships – not married women.
Domestic violence is not about ‘power’ as usually portrayed, if anything, quite the opposite (see Kosovan reference above and prison reference below).
Domestic violence is not related to men’s inherent violent nature because men are socialised to protect women and children and to sacrifice themselves, e.g. ‘women and children first’. In the example of the RMS Titanic, men from all passenger classes, from steerage to first class, put women and children first and so the death rate for men was the by far the highest. Indeed, this fact may also be the very reason why there are low reporting frequencies of female aggression +noted in all countries.
Domestic violence is not due to size and strength differences between the sexes. [5]

The last point (size and strength) is more insidious than would be commonly imagined. For example, official Home Office statistics show high levels of murder and assault of men by other men who are blandly classified as ‘acquaintances’, ‘stranger’ or ‘known to the victims’. But we are not told exactly what their relationship to one anther is, or whether the motive was monetary or sexual favours. [6] Dr. Warren Farrell, quoting FBI figures, shows that intermediary or ‘contract’ beatings or murder of male spouses (sometimes by the ex-wives new boyfriend) is far greater than previously supposed.

The argument premised on “economic imbalance” must also be considered suspect. It cannot be said to be the key, as an imbalance in earning power between men and women has always been the historic ‘norm’. Only in recent decades has legislation eliminated the historical differences. Single women now earn the same as single men. But it is in those very decades that concern about domestic violence has risen. This concern correlates with the rise in power of feminism and the disproportionate influence of its radical wing (Rad-Fems).

The economic argument further fails when spending patterns of disposable incomes are analysed. Women may earn less (or not at all, if housewives) but in the majority of households they have the virtual monopoly of spending any money earned. In addition, out of the disposable income women spend far more (around 7 times) on ‘personal’ items for themselves than do men (see “The Myth of Male Power”, by Dr. Warren Farrell, and ONS, Household Survey).

Susan L. Morrow, one of the authors of a 1989 article in the ‘Journal of Counselling and Development’, witnessed a therapist refer to a lesbian who had been abused by her partner as “borderline” and “paranoid.” The fact that the patient was a victim was completely ignored. Morrow and co-author Donna M. Hawxhurst found that several myths – that women are less aggressive than men and therefore don’t batter, and that women are incapable of inflicting serious harm – “have contributed to the secrecy surrounding the issue” of lesbian partner abuse. Could the imbalance advocated by many (lesbian) radical feminists really be a mental imbalance ?

In the past decade, there have also been three large-scale gender-neutral studies in the UK, all showing a significant level of female aggression in couple relationships:

The MORI survey in 1991 (which reported 10% of women and 3% of men admitting tohitting their partner).
The survey of 2,000 heterosexual adult men and women conducted on behalf of the BBC by Dr Malcolm George in 1994,
The comprehensive survey reported in Home Office Research Study 191 published inJanuary 1999.

In the US and Canada there have been far more large-scale gender-neutral studies and for many years. The most well known is probably Behind Closed Doors – Violence in The American Family, (1980) by Murray Strauss, Richard Gelles and Suzanne Steinmetz. They reported that domestic assault rates between men and women were about equal (see Appendix B).

Physically, men caused more damage to women but women retaliated with weapons. This is backed up in a report from Leicester Royal Infirmary, England, that reported that their findings confirmed that men and women were equally victims of violent assault but that men’s injuries were more horrific because they were caused by weapons. [7] (see also footnote 31).

Despite HOS 191 being the biggest survey of domestic violence of its kind, it is routinely ignored by government and ministers. Its conclusions endorse those of other large sample and gender neutral studies from around the world, including Fiebert. Most samples sizes in surveys and reports cited in the media are ‘attitudinal’ and or comprise a sample of no more than 50 or 250 respondees. A bibliography of male victims of domestic violence has been collated by Martin Fiebert PhD [8] (US). Often they are from self-selecting populations, e.g. a survey about the incidence or likelihood of violence conducted in a women’s refuges. [9] The BMA’s report into DV questioned 429 men, but only about whether or not they had physically or sexually abused women, not vice versa (July 1998).

Publication of HOS 191 coincided with the ministerial launch of “Breaking the Chain” (Jan 1999) yet three years later HOS 191 continues to be never mentioned in any announcement of new initiatives.

Despite “Breaking the Chain” not addressing the issue of men as victims of domestic violence Miss. Jeshran of the Criminal Policy Strategy Unit at the Home Office felt able, in April 1999, to write that it was an “…. example of measures that are gender neutral and designed to be helpful to both men and women.”

Six months later the Gov’t released another document (June 1999) entitled “Living Without Fear”. This document outlined £6 million plus a further £6.3m and £14m of government and near-govt money available for schemes to combat violence against women. There was no mention of funding for male victims. The only male helpline for male victims (MALE) closed in 2000 when the Merton women’s refuge decided they could no longer afford the £5,832 spent on male victims. Their budget for 2001 had been pruned from £123,500 to £116,000. The £5,832 substantially off-set the lost £7,500.[10]

Again, in June of 1999, the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, said when opening a new court in Leeds that “Domestic violence is the beating up by men of their female partners”. Paul Boateng, then also at the Home Office said publicly that, “Violence against men in the family does not exist”.

Thus, six months after its release, HOS 191 was effectively buried by ministers and incessant newspaper articles, such as the Daily Express’s banner headline “This Nation of Wife Beaters” (June 30^th 1999).

The previously mentioned report into domestic violence sponsored by the British Medical Assoc. in 1998 was authored by among others, Radford & Hester (see footnote 9 above). Of all the references cited, over 60% were derived from surveys of women’s refuges’ or studies that contained in their title; “abused women”, “battered women”, “abusive men”, “wife abuse”, “patriarchy”, “violent men”, etc, etc. None were titled Abused Men and references to battered men and abused fathers (caused by women) could be counted on one hand.

By February 2000 the Home Office had a domestic violence budget of £250m for its Crime Reduction Programme (CRP), a programme that was first announced by the Home Secretary in July 1998. Tenders for funds were invited by the Home Office for the “Crime Reduction Programme: Reducing Violence Against Women Initiative” which continues to be part of the £250m. However, no one who has tendered for male victims has received any funding. [11]

We need to ask ‘why’? Why is there no funding for men; why do we never hear of men as victims; why are funding applications routinely rejected; and why is it that politicians ‘see’ only female victims ?

A significant part of the answer must be political pressure leading to political expediency. Even if male victims constituted only 1% to 5% (as used to be assumed), it should be sufficient to justify funds and prompt “support services” to be directed towards them. HOS 191 states that 4.2% of men and 4.2% of women suffer from acts of domestic violence – the only difference it concludes is that women, not unnaturally, feel more “frightened”. This level of partner violence is validated in other surveys including those in Canada and the US.[12]

If 4.2% of victims trigger huge Government largess, why is it withheld from another group who also constitute 4.2% ?

Some years ago Dewar Research undertook a limited survey of half of all police forces in England. The results broadly mirrored the later conclusions found in HOS 191, namely that domestic violence is evenly distributed in the population; that around 50% of victims are men; and that age and marital status is relevant. Domestic violence is, therefore, not a gender crime but it has been politicised and presented as such for a variety of reasons

Dewar Research, which is cited in HOS 191, also found that only 45% of all domestics involved either male or female spouses or cohabitees (past and present). The remaining 55% of offenders were either: another women, other family members (male and female), neighbours (male and female), or other friends acquaintances or strangers (male and female).

However, even if we were still to suppose that men only represented 5% or 10% of all victims of domestic violence, ManKind would still be pressing for adequate funding and support commensurate with demand. But that is not the case. Even the most dogged of radical feminists (e.g. Betsy Stanko and Women’s Aid) now recognise that men constitute 20% of all victims.[13] This is far short of the true picture but ManKind welcomes the move, which they must realise, reduces their argument that all funding must be channelled towards solely women. ManKind predicts that it will perhaps take a further 3 or 4 years before society will recognise the truer level of 40% – 50% of victims are men.

The BCS (British Crime Survey) ‘estimates’ that in 2000 there were 499,000 cases of domestic violence. Most instances, as we have alluded to above, were reported by women. If 4.2% of women experience some form of domestic violence (according to HOS 191) and it equally applies to men (who are very reluctant to report it), then the figure of 499,000 can only represent 50%, i.e. the true figure being 998,000 victims [499k x 2] or 1.9% of total population (assuming 52m adults England & Wales).

The figure for victimisation in domestic circumstance found in many reports, e.g. Canada, is between 2% and 4%. [14] Figures often quoted in the range of say 26% or 54% of respondees who report domestic violence reflect only the survey sample under scrutiny and not its frequency in the general population.

Although there has been an absence of comparable studies specifically of male victims over the same period, some idea of the estimated proportions of male victims in England and Wales has been given in successive British Crime Surveys, in particular the 1996, 1998 and 2000 reports. Each of these estimated a significant proportion of male victims, namely 29%, 28% and 25% respectively (see Fig 1 and 2). A similar proportion was estimated in the 1996 Scottish Crime Survey.

Fig 1. Trends in reported male and female domestic violence (1995 – 2001).

Note: The sudden rise in female victims seen in 2001-02 (provisional figures) appears aberrant and is the subject of an exchange of views with the Home Office.

The more publicised headline figure of “1 in 4” women suffering domestic violence over a lifetime, while very attractive to the media, is based on an extrapolation of life long predictions of what might or might not happen, and is therefore of little significance in statistical terms.[15] It is also misleading because the banner headlines focus on somewhat dated BCS ‘estimates’ which, although finding around 22% (1 in 4) of victims were women omitted to state that 14% (ie 1 in 6) of victims were men. The fact that in recent years between 1 in 4 and 1 in 6 men report suffering domestic violence in BCS surveys appears to be of little concern and not worthy of either further research or funding.

Domestic violence is not a new concept but the unprecedented publicity it has received of late has seen it propelled onto everyone’s agenda. At the British Library, one of the six ancient books in the “turning the pages” room shows a wife beating her husband. Historical research by Dr. Malcolm George found that a husband was punished by the community if his wife beat him. Punch and Judy, depicting violence between partners, is part of our medieval heritage but so too is the Skimmington procession. A plaster frieze in Montacute House, Somerset, has been unearthed by Dr George. It depicts a wife hitting her husband over the head followed by a “Skimmington” ceremony. [16] Coincidentally, Montacute House was built by the country’s highest legal officer of the time, the Lord Chancellor.

Though it has now become a canon of urban mythology, the ‘rule of thumb’ maxim that is said to allow a man to beat his wife with a stick was no wider than a thumb, is not in fact based on any known ancient custom or alleged 17^th century law. Promoted by women’s groups it is a modern creation and broadcaster Jennie Murray (of Woman’s Hour), in a feature article, has unconditionally and publicly withdrawn it on their behalf (Daily Telegraph, Feb 7^th 2002). Simon Schama in his recent ‘History of Britain’ (BBC TV) fell into the same trap and gave the myth an unnecessary boost (Nov 2002).

Author and broadcaster Lynette Burrows, who has researched the 19th century, also insists that it was the mistress of the house, not the master, who beat both female and male servants.

Comedy in the immediate pre and post war periods often depicted, in euphemistic terms, a ‘hen- pecked husband’ with either a ‘formidable’ mother-in-law or a ‘domineering’ wife. The cartoon character of Andy Capp encapsulates this genre.

More contemporary examples of male victims are the actor John Wayne, beaten by his wife Conchita Martinez, and Humphrey Bogart battered by his wife Mayo Methot. More recently, it came to light in a custody dispute that actor Robert De Niro had been assaulted by his wife, Grace Hightower. [17]

US Pres. Abraham Lincoln had his nose broken with a lump of wood by his wife Mary, and Pres. Bill Clinton has also been a male victim of domestic violence by both his wife and his mother.

The view that women “are always acting in self-defence” is not true – 50 per cent of those who initiate aggression are women.[18] The present wife of footballer George Best, whose reputation for heavy drinking is well known, admits that it was she who initiated much of the domestic violence which resulted in both of them becoming bruised (BBC TV, Sept 2002).

Politicisation of DV inevitably lends itself to manipulation. Subsequent marketing campaigns can lead to surges in reporting (see Fig 1 above). The trend lines shown in Fig 2 (below) for acquaintance violence and domestic violence might tend to endorse the view that through the1980’s the issue of DV was becoming ever-more politicised. However, the continued decline, shown in Fig 1, when mapped onto Fig 2 would suggest a level of offending in 2001 comparable to 1987 levels. This is as inexplicable as the sudden rise in 2001 of ‘female only’ victims seen in Fig 1.

Fig 2. Trends in BCS violence typology 1981 – 1997 (BCS 1998, Figure 3.10, page 15).

In the latest edition of the BCS just released by the Home Office (sub-set, Oct 2001) the fall in crime levels first seen in Fig 2, continue for 1999 and 2000. The BCS states:-

“Looking at the violence typology, domestic violence and acquaintance violence have decreased significantly by 34% and 35% respectively. The declines in domestic violence and acquaintance violence are large and statistically significant”.

This is as ManKind predicted and we are discussing with the Home Office the reason for the increase in female victims for 2001 – 2002 (see Fig 1).

The television programme “Dispatches”, in conjunction with ManKind, conducted a survey and found that 25% of male victims who called the police for help were themselves arrested. Other programme findings, broadcast on Channel 4 (Jan 7th 1999), were:-

only 50% asked for any type of help
89% of male victims felt that the police did not take their complaints seriously
only 7% of the female assailants had been arrested and none were subsequently charged
30% had been attacked whilst asleep [19]
25% had been kicked in the genitals

This sends a dangerous message to men because society is saying they are not going to get any legal redress so their option is to hit back.

The situation for men is further complicated by our cultural values. A recent American survey of 60,000 people, aged over 18, conducted by the Department of Justice, found that people rated a husband’s stabbing his wife to death 40% worse than a wife’s stabbing her husband to death.

In a study based on police records from Detroit, Michigan, Eve Buzawa and Thomas Austin concluded that while 85% of the victims in the reported cases were female, only 14% of the female victims compared to 38% of the male victims had “serious injuries.”

According to those number (85 x 14% = 11.9 women; 15 x 38% = 5.7 men), women are about twice as likely as men to be seriously injured in a domestic violence incident. But in terms of risk of “seriously” being injured, men at 38% are three time more likely to than women (see “Determining Police Response to Domestic Violence Victims”, American Behavioural Scientist, May 1993).

Violence takes various forms. There is no question that since men are, on average, bigger and stronger than women are, they can do more damage in a fistfight. However, according to Professors R.L. McNeely and Coramae Richey Mann, “the average man’s size and strength are neutralised by guns and knives, boiling water, bricks, fireplace pokers and baseball bats.” In fact, a 1984 study of 6,200 cases of reported domestic assault found that 86% of female-on-male violence involved weapons, while only 25% of male-on-female violence did.[20]

But the tendency to dismiss female violence as negligible, harmless, or ‘justified’ can be quite unfair to men. In a 1993 study of police handling of domestic violence in Detroit, 94 percent of the female victims and none of the male victims, who accounted for 30 percent of the serious injuries, were satisfied with the police response. One man was taken to the hospital after his girlfriend stabbed him in the chest, but his pleas that she be arrested or at least removed from his home were ignored. The attitudes of many public officials are exemplified by a comment made a few years ago by Los Angeles prosecutor Alana Bowman: “Men, if they need to leave a violent situation, can spend a night on a park bench.” [21]

Messages become even more mixed when according to a study of women’s attitude towards other women who were violent it was “ … considered attractive and on a par with being assertive and aggressive”. Ms Chappell, of the Open University, said “What the results of these studies tell us is that for women in ordinary, everyday life violence is mostly a matter of the mundane. As participants in this study made clear, ordinary women who behave violently seldom pose any serious threat at all. They can be nasty, stroppy, mean and manipulative, but hardly ever will they cause serious injury or act uncontrollably”. The stated reason was that it ‘gets things done’ (Daily Telegraph, 9/4/99).

Terrie Moffitt, professor of social behaviour at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London, agrees that women do engage in abusive behaviour and said the Home Office should fund research into the issue in the UK.

“If we ask ‘does women’s violence have consequences for their kids’ then the answer is ‘yes’,” she said. “There is also an elevated risk of children being victims of domestic violence if there is central violence between parents” (see Appendix C-1 to C-4).

One of the most fascinating and perhaps most pertinent findings into domestic violence is the analysis of data gleaned from a longitudinal study of a birth cohort in Dunedin, New Zealand. Researchers posited whether physical abuse was strongly linked with mental disorders. Tracked for over 21 years analysis showed that 88% of men and 65% of women who became embroiled in severe partner violence (either as perpetrator or victim) ‘presented’ with signs of mental disorders (comorbidity) as defined and measured by the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSMIIIR). [22]

Comorbidity means that a patient suffers from two or more disorders or problematic conditions at once. Comorbidity between abuse and mental disorders was examined because studies of comorbidity among mental disorders have shown that coexistence of multiple psychiatric problems predicts more severe life impairment, longer duration of the problems, and poorer response to treatment (see Appendix C-3 & D). In the light of this, the Home Office move to withdraw funding for male counselling is all the more disappointing and regressive.[23]

If being violent, either physically or emotionally, to someone is ‘oppressive’, then domestic violence is oppression. However, it would be wrong to assume oppression cannot be directed at both sexes, at any age and by all genders.

Domestic violence appears to occur in two quite separate scenarios. The first is where one or both parties have been disagreeing and there is a temporary, abrupt and catastrophic loss of self-control, ie leading to hitting out physically or lashing out verbally by one or both parties.

The second is where domination or control of the other person is the planned and prime motive force. This, by definition, is not temporary. However, third parties arriving at the scene after an incident of the second type could be forgiven for seeing it as one that falls into the first category. Erin Pizzey wrote of this in her book “Prone to Violence” and again in her newest book “Terrorists in the Family”. Both titles capture the essence of the situations. Both books would seem to embrace the mental instability aspect found in Ms. Moffitt’s research.

The question to be answered is, ‘If domestic violence is loss of control, then is the real oppression being perpetrated by the party that connives or the other party who reactively lashes out ?’ (Appendix D).

Power does not seem the be the answer as can be seen from prison violence statistics where inmates, unable to wield power, are subject to loss of power and control over their daily lives (Appendix E)

The ‘gendered’ view of violence is that men who batter their wives are more likely to assault their children. [24] Therefore, using that model, the one that lashes out is the perpetrator. However, this 20- year-old view is now increasingly seen as a dated perspective and written with ‘an agenda’ in mind rather than an objective assessment. For example:-

‘The battering of women who are mothers usually predates the infliction of child abuse’ (Stark & Flitcraft, 1988). ‘At least half of all battering husbands also batter their children’ (Pagelow, 1989). ‘The more severe the abuse of the mother, the worse the child abuse’ (Bowker, Arbitell, and McFerron, 1988).’

If this linkage is true, then we should expect violence perpetrated by mothers and women to not only deeply affect children but to be more common than violence by fathers. We already know statistically that women and mothers abuse children more often then fathers. This has been true in all English speaking countries over many decades (see Appendix C, F-1 to F-2 and G). In Britain, the research of Susan Creighton, since the late 1970, bears this out. Boxing Heavy Weight Champion of the world, George Forman, experienced years of physical abuse from his mother growing up and as a teenager.

Despite recent NSPCC television adverts (2001 and 2002) depicting men as aggressors, their own research reveals that in numerical and percentage terms children are more likely to be abused, battered, neglected or murdered by their mothers than by fathers.

That men are violent is not in contention. We all know they are and can be. What is really at issue is the struggle to have accepting the view that women can be equally violent – or more so (Appendix B & E).

A 1997 study by Anne McMurray of the Griffith University School of Nursing (Australia) began with the express purpose to “provide definitive explanations for the violent behaviours of certain males.” However, she was forced to conclude that “regardless of the males propensity toward violence” the circumstances most conducive to it arose “during the process of marital separation and divorce, particularly in relation to disputes over child custody, support, and access.”

“These men,” McMurray continued, “from a range of socio-economic backgrounds and age groups, freely discussed episodes in which they had either planned, executed, or fantasized about violence against their spouses in retaliation for real or perceived injustices related to child custody, support, and/or access. One is tempted to say this is what fathers are for: to become violent when someone interferes with their offspring.”

Culture cruelly colludes with biology and psychology to drive men toward instinctively protecting their family only it would appear for this to be penalised by the courts.

Society finds it difficult to come to terms with these facts, to realise that the hand that rocks the cradle can also kill.[25] Why are we so surprised and appalled that men hit and abuse women who are physically smaller when women regularly hit and abuse small children ?

To paraphrase the Ancient Mariner when society is asked to choose it prefers “ not to look, but draws its eyes away”. [26] Faced with taboos society invariably runs away from tough choices. There are many taboos we prefer not to acknowledge. Many come as a shock to the uninitiated.

It used to be thought that divorce was better for children than living in an unhappy marriage and that divorce didn’t really ‘damage’ children’s long-term prospects. [27]
It used to be thought that child sexual abuse in families was perpetrated by fathers and step-fathers but now data from the NSPCC show that fathers are the least likely to commit these offences. [28]
It used to be thought that only a man could perpetrate rape and that all paedophiles were men (we now know that between 25% and 35% of all paedophiles are women). [29]
We used not to know the cause of schizophrenia but now there are indications that it is related to stress levels and social factors (including fatherlessness), and that it may even have an ethnic bias. (BBC News, on-line 22 June 2002, citing King’s College, London). [30]

So we are left with very few inhibitions about how the world really works and we should no longer be surprised to learn that men can be victims of domestic violence. It used to be difficult for many people to conceptualise men as victims of domestic violence but the evidence is now so overwhelming there can be no excuse.

Today’s repertoire of politically correct excuses insists that we must perceive a woman who batters a man to be acting, by definition, in self-defence – after all, he has the power. This leads to a “victim-either-way” scenario. Victimhood is now an exalted status but leads only to victimhood syndrome.

The resulting rationalisation leaves men feeling blamed either way. This ‘no win’ situation increases tensions and, therefore, increases the likelihood of the battering of a spouse or partner leading to the break-up of relationship. In turn this leaves millions of children raised without the love of their Dads, and as fathers are the main socialising force available to children, the spiral of deprivation and anti-social behaviour is initiated. In cost-effective terms it is far more attractive to keep the family together and work to iron out problems as a united whole. The state makes a poor ‘parent’.

In the view of Dr. Warren Farrell and Prof. Stephan Baskerville, society is therefore legislating on very questionable evidence. That ‘evidence’ has been available since the 1970’s (see “Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say”, pp 141 – 156). For example, the National Family Violence Survey (US) found that;

“ ….. compared with 1975 ..… severe violence against wives had by 1992 decreased by 48%, but violence against husbands (by wives) had decreased only 2%. And although overall violence (including minor violence like shoving or slapping) against women decreased, overall violence against men increased.” [31]

Fig 3. “Indexed” trend in comparable crime 1981 – 1997 (BCS 1998, p23, Fig 4.5)

This decreasing trend can be also be detected in the “indexed” figures for domestic violence in Britain (see Fig 3).

The conduct of British cabinet ministers, underlined by their disdain of HOS 191, and the Canadian and American examples (‘Alberta Report’ and “Behind Closed Doors”) reinforces the view that there has unquestionably been systematic suppression of reports where men are victims.

What can be seen in Fig 3, after 1985/87, is the emergence of a variance between reported and recorded crimes, which only comes back into alignment in 1995 – 97. After 1993, the number of reported crimes actually began to fall. The recently published 2001 BCS shows continued falls for 1999 and 2000. This, naturally, has implications for funding and the making of grants to those advocates for whom domestic violence is an increasing problem. If instead, there was a recognition that it was a declining problem this would lead to a diminution in the availability of funds. The obvious and logical step when faced with a declining situation, would be to counter the effect by enlarging the definition. This has now happened with domestic violence and we must expect it to happen in other areas.

The legislating on shaky foundations leads us to the question, “Has violence against men been censored out of public life ? And, if so, why ? The short answer is “Yes”. Studies reporting violence against men have indeed been censored. The “why”, ie the underlying dynamics of this censorship, is very simple to grasp. It is not a conspiracy but the result of the collective and incremental action of many people, many of whom have no idea what the impact will have in political terms.

Take one American pioneer analyst of research in domestic violence, R. L. McNeely. When asked why few studies are published he replied, “I’ll tell you why – as soon as I published results along these lines, I received a letter threatening to stop my funding.”

It’s as simple as that. To a greater or lesser degree funding is the prerogative of either private industry or government departments. The fund suppliers have to feel they are getting value for money. They also have to be led to believe that more funding will bring them closer to the results they want. Women as abusers, as we have seen with the NSPCC television adverts, don’t make for attractive newspaper ‘feature’ articles or for the quotable headlines they crave, for example, the seductive 1 in 4.

At an even more personal level, we must not forget that a portion of the government funding to a professor or research faculty usually goes to the university. [32] We must not also forget the kudos of being given a multi-million pound budget reflects well on the university, attracts new students and other sponsors.

Research funding, therefore, often allows a university to keep a professor employed. If the professor is supporting a family, it creates an ethical dilemma: When does being ‘responsible’ become

irresponsible ? And, of course, the instinct to ‘protect the female’ (in this case, his wife, in economic terms) can make the choice for him. Thus, when it comes to domestic violence, the censorship is both direct, which is a story, and indirect – which is the ‘real’ story.

Conclusion

In the final analysis nothing goes to men. No funding; no public acknowledgement; no sympathy; no understanding; no empathy; no research; no enlightenment; no legislation; no public opinion. In short, ‘no nothing’.

At one level the debate goes on – impervious to the urgent needs of men. In the one tent are those who stress the greater damage men do when they hit women, regardless of who strikes first. In the other tent are those who say women, especially younger women, hit first and about as often as men. While they squabble as to who should be held accountable, men and fathers are being injured and maimed. Their children look on helplessly. As researchers scuffle over domestic violence (and thereby, the all important funding) “ …. neither side is motivated to understand the other”, says Karen S. Peterson, USA TODAY, (27 July 1999). “Rather, each seeks to impose its will on the other”.

Confirmation that women are or can be as violent as men came recently with figures announced by the Home Office. The level of prison admissions for women is at an all-time high and those admitted for violence have reached unprecedented proportions. [33] (Appendix E and H)

The trend is echoed in many other countries. For instances the Leader-Post (01/08/02, Regina, Canada) ran a story, under the headline “Girls’ cruelty can be deadly”. It described how girls engaged in forms of aggression that can hurt just as much as a punch in the face from a boy.
For many years it has been known that girls committing violent crimes now are more likely to end up in violent relationships and that violence by a mother has a more traumatic effect on children

The archetype of this genre is the lesbian feminist and author Andrea Dworkin. She is alleged to have had a very abused and illiterate childhood leading to juvenile prostitution, which perhaps explains much of her damaged attitudes and advocacy of incest. She once opened a conference with a hitherto unexplored solution for the problem of wife-beating, namely husband-killing. She added: “I am asking you to stop men who beat women. Get them jailed or get them killed.”

Some years ago Dr. Anne Campbell (then of Durham University, now Oxford) said that in the past PMS (PMT or pre-menstrual tension) was the excuse favoured by women to explain their violence against partners. Behaviour, she believes, they cannot admit to themselves. She acknowledges that male victims feel too embarrassed to come forward. She explained the ferocity of many female attacks in this way:- Boys learn from a very early age how far to go, and decide what is a “fair fight”; they decide where and how to call a halt without inflicting too much damage. Girls on the other hand have never learnt this in their games or roles.” She said, “70% of all adolescent girls-on-girl fights involve “territory”, ie possession of a boy, or a boy’s attention. The savagery of their attacks on other girls was far worse than boys would have inflicted.”

Feminism, which despises patriarchy, cannot tolerate the idea of women as perpetrators. Feminists tend to despise the police and police officers, as embodiments of patriarchy. In their turn police officers, who embody this essence of patriarchy, see themselves in a chivalrous role and can’t tolerate the idea of “weak” men as victims (yet they are quick to prosecute men who lash out). The result is a double bind for male victims. The feminists and law enforcement agencies arrive at the same position – though via different circuitous routes – and “agree to cast men as exclusive perpetrators and women as exclusive victims.”

At the heart of the matter is the dualism of money and politics. Men suffer the same problems that women endure. Their hurt, pain and injuries are the same. [34] Their unhappiness at the situation in which they find themselves is identical. They, too, are torn between leaving home or staying to protect their children. They face all the dilemmas women victims of domestic violence face but must do it unaided -and they are expected to suffer it in silence

“Many gender feminists – myself previously included”, says Jenna Brooke O’Neil “thrilled to the idea that masculinity is a point of view that forgets that it is one. But that can also be true of a viewpoint that puts the female gender in the privileged position. And it seems to me that we get on very shaky ground when we, as women, posit that our gender perspective is somehow truly universal and objective.” O’Neil, who teaches ‘Women in US History’, says that this question has caused her to rethink her one-time flirtation with the idea that the most fundamental feature of our society is its unrelenting maintenance of a sex / gender system that keeps women cowering and submissive.

Describing herself as a ‘victim feminist in recovery’, O’Neil says her main complaint with the idea of men as sole perpetrators in the domestic violence equation is the idea that women can’t be perpetrators, except in self-defense and other extreme situations provoked by men. “The appeal is that it reduces some very complex issues to a manageable band of complexity, or should I say simplicity”, adding. “Which, of course, is also its fundamental limitation.”

What’s clear is that women’s and girls’ violence is not meaningless, either for researchers or for the women themselves. Teenage girls who commit violent crimes “are twice as likely to become victims themselves than juvenile male offenders according to an FBI report.

“Moffitt’s findings about women’s violence and the FBI statistics are invitations to further research – not because so many women are being beaten and killed every year, but because of it”, says Patricia Pearson. [35] “But there are additional reasons why all aspects of violence must be studied, including those of violent women.”

In the last paragraph of her book Patricia Pearson states why that is:

“The consequences of our refusal to concede female contributions to violence are manifold. It affects our capacity to promote ourselves as autonomous and responsible beings. It affects our ability to develop a literature about ourselves….. It demeans the right our victims have to be valued. And it radically impedes our ability to recognize dimensions of power that have nothing to do with formal structures of patriarchy. Perhaps above all, the denial of women’s aggression profoundly undermines our attempt as a culture to understand violence, to trace its causes and to quell them.”

There is an enormous number of victims of violence by women. Patricia Pearson makes it quite clear in her book who they are: men, of course, but foremost children, and also other women, in short, women’s victims, just like men’s victims, are to be found in all sectors of society. They have rights, and they need to be heard, seen and recognised.

Most of all they, too, need our help. Will we help them, or will we continue to ignore them ? What choice will you make ?

E n d

References:

‘The Courtship Dance of the Borderline’ By Anthony Walker, MD, ISBN: 0-595-19712-4, US, 2002. (Note the 2%)
‘Violent femmes: Women beating up on men ? You bet’ The Union Leader, New Hampshire, 1 August 2002
‘Men fall victim to domestic violence’ By A Correspondent, The Times, March 5th 2002
‘Lies, damned lies and rape statistics’ By Melanie Phillips. First published in the Daily Mail, July 24 2002.
‘Men shouldn’t be forgotten victims’ By Brad Crouch, Sunday Mail (South Australia), 6 January 2002, Page 30
‘Men as well as women are victims of domestic abuse but discussing that fact is a taboo in our society.’ By Wendy McElroy May 29, 2001, mac@ifeminists.com
‘Straw pulls plug on counselling for wife-beaters’ By Martin Bright and Sarah Ryle, The Observer, 28 May 2000
“Researcher claims men, women equal abusers – data supported by Statistics Canada study” By Linda Slobodian Calgary Herald, November 6, 2000, Front page (Prof. M. Straus) Canada
”Battered males: A domestic abuse secret’ By Ruth-Ellen Cohen, Of the News Staff, Bangor Daily News, 27 October 2000
‘Women are more violent, says study’ By Sophie Goodchild, The Independent Home Affairs Correspondent, 12 November 2000, Britain
‘Battered men want victim status’ By Jonathan Milne, Nations News, 13 OCTOBER 2000, New Zealand
‘Violence against men deserves attention, too’ by Donna Laframboise, National Post August 1st 2000, Canada (Note 2%)
‘Love you to death, my funny Valentine By Amanda Craig, News Review, February 6th 2000, USA
“Man beaters behind closed doors”, By Melanie Phillips, Sunday Times, November 19th 2000 New Review, Britain
‘Abusing the Truth: Woman Trouble’ By Cathy Young http://www.modernman.com/family/244-1.html
‘Men are the victims of a feminist myth’ By Melanie Phillips, Sunday Times Sunday, May 30th 1999, Britain
“Women emerge as aggressors in Alberta survey – “67% of women questioned say they started severe conflicts” by Brad Evenson and Carol Milstone, National Post, Saturday 10 July 1999, Ottawa – Canada
‘Teach girls and boys not to be bullies’ By Kathleen Parker, The Orlando Sentinel, October 13, 1999.
‘Silence of the Screams – Female Violence in Intimate Relationships’ by Yuri Joakimidis. Policy Monograph – Joint Parenting Association – Nov 1996. Australia (Note 2%)

A Review of 20 Years of Research, London, Sage Publications (divergent views)

Mullender, A., (1996), Rethinking Domestic Violence the Social Work & Probation Response, London, Routledge.
Pirog-Good, M.,A., Stets, J., A., (1989), Violence in Dating Relationships, Emerging Social Issues, London, Prasgrave.
Stets, Y., E., & Strauss, M., A., (1990), gender Differences in Reporting Marital Violence & its Medical & Psychological Consequences in Physical Violence, Transaction Publishing, 151/165.
Steinmetz, S., (177), The Use of Force for Resolving Family conflict; a Training Ground for Abuse, the Family Coordinator, Vol 26, p 19/26.
Szinovacz, M., E., (1983), Using couple Data as Methodological Tool, the Case of Marital Violence, Journal of Marriage & the Family, Vol. 45, p 633/44.
Strauss, M., A., Gettes, R., Y., Steinmetz, S., K., (1980), Behind Closed Doors, Violence in American Families, New York, Doubleday.
Straus, M., A., & Gelles, R., J., (1986), Societal Change & Change in Family Violence from 1975 to 1985 as Revealed by 2 National Surveys, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 48, 465/479.
Straus, M., A., & Gelles, R, J., (1987),The Costs of Family Violence, Public Health Reports, Vol 102 (6), 639/641.

Appendix A

Home Office Study 191 (Jan 1999)

H.O. Study 191 demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of incidents of domestic violence occur between young couples (under 25 year old), and non-marital (cohabitees) relationships.

Note: ONS figures show that the average age for marriage for women is about 28 years old.

Page (vii) “4.2% of women and 4.2% of men were said to have been physically assaulted by their current or former partner in the last year”.

“4.9% of men and 5.9% of women had experienced physical assaults or frightening threats”.

Page (ix) “Half of life-time incidents were committed by current of former spouses compared to 43% of last years incidents, probably reflecting the lower rates of marriage amongst the young [First indication that domestic violence is age and martial status related- Ed].

Page (viii) “Amongst women, risks of physical assault in 1995 were highest for those who were 16 – 24 [years old]; separated from their spouses [this definition includes cohabitees- Ed]; Council tenants; in poor health; and/or in financial difficulties”.

“Women aged 20 –24 reported the highest levels of domestic violence in the survey; 28% said they had been assaulted by a partner at some time and 34% had been threatened or assaulted [too broad a range to the meaningful – Ed].

“The victim was injured in 47% of incidents …. women 47% and men 31% ….. 9% of incidents resulted in cuts and 2% in broken bones”.

Page (ix) “A half of those who were living with their assailant were still doing so at the time of the BCS interview ……”

Page 11. “Young women now tend to live with a greater number of partners so increasing their chances of encountering one that is violent.

Page 28. Summary; Figure 4.1 “Prevalence of domestic assaults” depicts a reversed logistical curve for incidents of domestic violence decreasing with age. Groupings begin from 16-19 and end 55- 59. There is little difference between men and women.

Page 29. Summary; Figure 4.2 “ Risk of domestic assault in 1998 by ethnic group”. There is only half of one percent point differentiating Whites from Blacks, Indians and Pakistanis.

“Women who described themselves as currently separated from their partner [most likely a former cohabitee -Ed] with whom they had previously been living were by far the most likely to have been victims of domestic violence in the previous year”.

“At lowest risk are married women (2%) …… Married men are also at lowest risk (3%) but at greatest risk are the non-married cohabiting (8%) than the separated (5%) [men].”

Page 30. “Women living in households whose head of household’s occupation fell into the two least skilled categories reported the highest rates of assault in the previous year (6%). Women in ‘professional’ households reported the lowest (3%).”

General Note: Home Office Study 191, undertaken by Ms. Mirrlees-Black is an extremely powerful tool. It is based on the best scientific approach and she has deployed a sound and unquestionably good methodological technique. The impartiality is guaranteed by the accuracy and confidentiality of the ‘blind’ computer technique of self-response used.

Appendix B -1

Spousal Assaults expressed as rate per 1,000 couples (1975 – 1992)

Minor Assaults	Year	Assault by husband	Assault by wife
	1975	98	98
	1985	82	75
	1992	92	94
Severe Assaults
	1975	38	47
	1985	30	43
	1992	19	44
Wives report they have been severely assaulted by husband				22 per 1,000
Wives report they have severely assaulted their husband				59 per 1,000
Husbands report they have been severely assaulted by wives				32 per 1,000
Husbands report they have severely assaulted their wives				18 per 1,000
Husbands & wives both report wife has been assaulted				20 per 1,000
Husbands & wives both report husband has been assaulted				44 per 1,000

Tables prepared using data from “Change In Spouse Assault Rates From 1975 to 1992: A Comparison of Three National Surveys In The United States”, by Murray A. Straus and Glenda Kaufman Kantor.

Spousal assaults expressed as rate per 1,000 couples

Minor Assaults	Year	Assault by husband	Assault by wife
	1975	98	98
	1985	82	75
	1992	92	94
Severe Assaults
	1975	38	47
	1985	30	43
	1992	19	44
Wives report they have been severely assaulted by husband				22 per 1,000
Wives report they have severely assaulted husband				59 per 1,000
Husbands report they have been severely assaulted by wives				32 per 1,000
Husbands report they have severely assaulted wives				18 per 1,000

Appendix B –2

Victims of domestic violence by sex – England and Wales

For every 3 ‘reported’ female victims there is approximately 1 male victim. However as the Canadian statistical service has reported, men are 5 time less likely to report a domestic violence incident involving their partner (“Report on Family Violence in Canada”, see abridged article below).

New figures of victims of domestic violence by sex from the Home Office (Oct 2002)

Trend in estimated number of incidents of domestic violence in thousands
England and Wales
Year	Total	Male incidents	Female incidents	% male incidents

1996 BCS (crime in 1995)	987	298	694	30
1998 BCS (crime in 1997)	812	253	564	31
2000 BCS (crime in 1999)	771	203	575	26
2001 BCS (crime in 2000)	503	134	374	27
2001/2 BCS interviews	621	117	511	19

The fall to 19% is uncharacteristic of prior trends particularly when the figure for women reporting victimhood have increased after a steady decline. In this latest table these figures are said to have been ‘adjusted’ and the result ‘weighted’ by reference to the ONS and new population total indices.

Abused males get a statistical break – maybe

By Lynne Cohen, Report Newsmagazine, August 12, 2002, p. 35
[ Abridged ]

At last – reliable statistics showing that women abuse men almost as much as men abuse women. In its fifth annual “Report on Family Violence in Canada,”[*] release June 26, 2002 Statistics Canada reported that 8% of women and 7% of men claimed to have experienced at least one incident of spousal violence between 1990 and 1995.
But Male victims shouldn’t crack open the champagne yet to celebrate all the funding that governments will be redirecting their way. The study also reports that women are five times more likely to report serious abuse, including choking and to seek medical attention.

These findings nevertheless represent a rare masculine breakthrough, a slight dent in the exclusive possession of spousal abuse claims by women’s groups. They are based on a sample of 25,876 respondents, broken down proportionally by gender in accordance with census data. Furthermore, they
may be readily believable.

Why so ? Mainly because of their source, the often-maligned Statistics Canada, which went on a politically correct social analysis binge in the 1990s. Its seems that StatCan, whether or not it is appreciated at home, regularly wins international awards (including one some time ago from Britain’s ‘The Economist’) for the integrity of its work. Indeed, says departmental spokeswoman Karan Mihorean, “people from all over the world train here.” [36]

* Catalogue no. 85-224-XIE, “Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile 2002” Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
<http://www.statcan.ca/english/IPS/Data/85-224-XIE.htm > < http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/85-224-XIE/free.htm >

Appendix C –1

USA

Table 4-4: Maltreatment Fatalities by Perpetrator Relationship, 1999 DCDC

Relationship of Perpetrator to Victim	Number of Fatality Victims	Percentage of Fatality Victims
Male Parent and Other	5	1.1%
Unknown	12	2.7%
Family Relative	20	4.5%
Other	25	5.7%
Substitute Care Provider(s)	27	6.1%
Male Parent Only	47	10.7%
Female Parent and Other	72	16.3%
Both Parents	94	21.3%
Female Parent Only	139	31.5%
Total	441	100.0%

Note. Based on data from 15 States: Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming. Sum of percentage column does not total 100.0% due to rounding of the category percentages. (See also Appendix F)

England & Wales

Often overlooked in discussions relating to violence and perpetrators is consideration of the ultimate form of abuse and violence, namely those acts leading death.

Various groups have rightly made linkage in the past between child abuse and spousal or partner abuse.

Figures from UK and US sources show that children in families where their is no regular contact with a father, or father figure, are more pre-disposed to become murder victims (see Figure 4.4 “Criminal Statistics England and Wales 2000” published by the Home Office. (See also Appendix C -4 )

Appendix C –2

In England and Wales, “child abuse” is divided into 4 primary categories and 4 secondary that are a combination: –

England only 2001

Neglect alone 10,400

Physical injury alone 5,000

Sexual abuse alone 3,200

Emotional abuse alone 4,800

Neglect, physical and sexual abuse 200

Neglect and physical injury 1,600

Neglect and sexual abuse 700

Physical injury and sexual abuse 400

Total 26,800

(Source NSPCC and Dept of Health)

The most readily called to mind forms of abuse other than physical are 1). neglect and 2). child sexual abuse. Certain abuses are historically associated with one parent or the other (ie, either the mother or father). ‘Neglect’ continues to be the most frequent (majority) cause of abuse and has always been associated with female / mother abuse. In 2001 there were out of 26,800 cases 12,900 or 48% involving neglect (see definition overleaf).

Child sexual abuse is more commonly associated with men and father figures. However, this form of abuse represents only 15% of all child abuse. Moreover, it is becoming more widely acknowledged that women can also sexually abuse children on a scale hitherto unrealised and a recent research by the NSPCC (Nov 2000) would indicate that siblings in reconstituted families pose a larger danger.

Table 1.18 below roughly follows the child homicide trend in that the greatest risk is in the infant years.

Table 1.18 Registrations to child protection register during the year ending March 1999 by age sex and category of abuse (rates per 10,000).(NSPCC).

Where: Neglect = Neglect only
Neglect + Ph + Sx = Neglect and physical abuse and sexual abuse
Neglect + Ph = Neglect and physical abuse
Physical abuse = Physical abuse only

Neglect – Definition

A number of studies have sought to measure neglectful behaviour, but there is no standard way to subcategorise neglect. The Virginia Child Protection Newsletter , 1998, p.3, outlines the following subcategories, as recognised by Virginia’s Department of Social Services:-

Physical neglect:

Abandonment
Inadequate supervision
Inadequate clothing
Inadequate shelter
Inadequate personal hygiene
Inadequate food
Malnutrition

Medical Neglect:

Failure to obtain emergency care or treatment
Failure to obtain necessary care or treatment
Failure to obtain necessary dental care or treatment
Failure to obtain necessary mental care or treatment

Mental Abuse
Failure to thrive

E N D

Appendix C –3

England – NSPCC

http://www.nspcc.org.uk/inform/Info_Briefing/ChildNeglect.asp

Neglect – Parental characteristics:

Parents and caregivers that neglect their child(ren) display a wide range of demographic, socio-economic and psychological characteristics. The literature on parents in neglectful families has largely focussed on mothers, with neglect ‘usually seen in terms of the mother’s failure to provide care’ (Stevenson, 1998b, p.49), reflecting the fact that mothers are typically the primary caregivers in society (Schumacher et al, 2001, p.232).

The literature cites many ‘risk factors’ contributing to neglect:

a large number of neglectful families are headed by a lone mother, or have a transient male (Stevenson, 1998b, p.56; Kimball et al, 1980 cited in Ethier et al, 2000, p.20)

mother younger than 21 at the birth of the first child (Zuravin, 1988 cited in Ethier et al, 2000, p.20)

mother having more than one child in her teens (Zuravin and Di Blasio, 1992 cited in Virginia Child Protection Newsletter, 1998, p.3)

mothers have a greater number of live births, more pregnancies and unplanned pregnancies (Chaffin et al, 1996 and Zuravin, 1987 cited in Schumacher et al, 2001, p.235)

prematurity or very low birth weight of child(ren) (Belsky, 1984 and Ross, 1984 cited in Ethier et al, 2000, p.20; Zuravin and Di Blasio, 1992 cited in Virginia Child Protection Newsletter, 1998, p.3)

larger families than controls (Chaffin, 1996 cited in Schumacher et al, 2001, p.240)
low family income (Pelton, 1994 cited in Schumacher et al, 2001, p.20; Sedlak, 1997 cited in Schumacher et al, 2001, p.235)

neglectful parents are less likely to be in paid employment than parents in society as a whole (Creighton, 1992 cited in Minty and Pattinson, 1994, p.735)

low educational attainment (Crittenden, 1993 cited in Ethier et al, 2000, p.20; Zuravin and Di Blasio, 1992 cited in Virginia Child Protection Newsletter, 1998, p.3)

neglectful mothers have lower levels of social support from the community and their families (Polansky, 1985 cited in Stevenson, 1998b, p.42)

presence of marital violence (Erickson and Egeland, 1996 cited in Ethier et al, 2000, p.20)

substance abuse (Browne and Saqi, 1988 cited in Ethier et al, 2000, p.21)

mental health problems, high levels of depression and stress (Kotch, 1995 cited in Ethier et al, 2000, p.21); Browne and Saqi, 1988 cited in Ethier et al, 2000, p.21)

history of physical and sexual abuse or neglect in the parent’s childhood (Egeland et al, 1988 cited in Ethier et al, 2000, p.20; Zuravin and Di Blasio, 1992 cited in Virginia Child Protection Newsletter, 1998, p.3), although ‘the direct cause-effect relationship between parental history of neglect and subsequent neglect of children is not clearly established’ (Gaudin, 1993 cited in Stevenson, 1998b, p.51)

neglectful mothers showed poor attachment to their primary caregivers whilst they were growing up (Belsky, 1984 cited in Virginia Child Protection Newsletter, 1998, p.4)

neglectful families are less cohesive and poorly organised, with parents rarely displaying warmth and positive interactions with their children (Gaudin and Dubowitz, 1996 cited in Browne and Lynch, 1998, p.74)

neglectful mothers have significantly lower self-esteem than control mothers (Christiansen et al, 1994 cited in Schumacher et al, 2001, p.246; Stevenson, 1998b, p.49)

neglectful parents process information about their children differently to other parents, which contributes to a lack of sensitivity and responsiveness towards their child (Crittenden, 1993 cited in Browne and Lynch, 1998, p.73)

However, despite the blindingly obvious, namely the frequency of fatherlessness in the above cases, the report continues in its politically correct terms to state that :-

“Evidently, there is no single ‘type’ of neglectful family. The characteristics of chronically and acutely neglectful families may also differ, with newly-neglecting parents responding to sudden stress points or life changes, for example bereavement, redundancy, divorce or illness (Virginia Child Protection Newsletter, 1998, p.3).”

Source: http://www.nspcc.org.uk/inform/Info_Briefing/ChildNeglect.asp

Scale of Incidence

Neglect is reportedly under-registered in England and Wales (Hallett and Birchall, 1992 cited in Tomison, 1995), and concerns have been expressed that ‘filtering’ out of children referred for emotional maltreatment and neglect concerns without receiving protective or support services has been particularly marked (Department of Health, 1995 cited in Department of Health, 2001, p.231).

Child protection registers are not a measure of the incidence of neglect but do give some indication of the scale of the problem. Neglect constitutes the largest category of registrations, and has increased over the last five years, whilst registrations for sexual abuse and physical injury fell.

Table A: Registrations to child protection registers in England during the years ending 31 March 1997 to 2001

Year	Total number of registrations	Number of registrations for neglect alone	% of registrations	Total number of registrations for all cases of neglect	% of registrations
1997	29,200	8,400	29	10,600	36
1998	30,000	9,300	31	11,600	39
1999	30,100	10,100	34	12,600	42
2000	29,300	10,100	35	12,900	44
2001	27,000	10,100	37	12,400	46

Source: Department of Health (2001).

Appendix C -4

England – NSPCC

Child Homicides –

The untimely death of a child, through injury or other maltreatment, can be thought to represent the ultimate failure of child protection. This section deals with those child deaths either deliberately caused, or where there was a strong suspicion that they were not accidents.

5.1 Homicides – United Kingdom
The Home Office records the number of deaths in England and Wales which are classified by the police as homicide. These include murders, manslaughter deaths and deaths from infanticide. The Scottish Office and the Northern Ireland General Register Office do the same for their respective countries. The numbers and age breakdown of homicides are reported in Criminal Statistics. There are approximately 80 to 110 homicides of children aged between 0 and 16 years each year in the United Kingdom. If we are to protect future children from homicide we need a clear picture of the distinguishing characteristics of these deaths to assist in possible prevention. The fluctuations between years and the numbers in a particular year are too small to do this. Amalgamating the child homicide data over a five year period gives a better base for examining significant risk factors. Table 5.1 shows the number of homicides of children aged less than 16 years in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland between 1995 and 1999 as well as the number for the latest year.

Table 5.1

Child Homicides – United Kingdom (per 1m)
	1995-1999	2000
England and Wales*	397	98
Scotland	50	10
Northern Ireland	8	3

* Year April 1st – March 31st from 1998

(table excludes Dunblane killings)

This table shows that the majority of homicides in these five years were in England and Wales as is the majority of the child population. The period also included the tragic killing of 16 children by an armed man in their primary school at Dunblane in Scotland. Prior to Dunblane there were approximately eight child homicides a year in Scotland so the Dunblane killings tripled the rate of child homicides in Scotland that year.

Figure 5.1 compares the number of child homicides per million child population for England and Wales and Scotland, excluding the 16 killings in Dunblane. The number of child homicides in Northern Ireland is too small for comparison.

(See also Appendix C -1, above, where the data is broken down by age groups and Appendix H).

NB. In the three years to December 31 2000 there were 476 cases of children being killed or severely injured by a parent or carer. – Det Insp Bacon, Sussex police force research. Nov 1st 2002, “Parents ‘getting away with murder” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2384527.stm

Appendix D

Findings About Partner Violence From the Dunedin

Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study.

http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles1/170018.txt

Study by Terrie E. Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi

Extract

Published: National Institute of Justice, July 1999

Series: Research in Brief

References: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

National Institute of Justice Research in Brief

Available from the Web site or order a printed copy from NCJRS at 800-851-3420 (877-712-9279

Subject(s): Domestic violence, family strengthening, victim mental health (21 pages, 50,000 bytes)

Target audience: Mental health practitioners; emergency room and general practice medical professionals; victim advocates; juvenile delinquency, substance abuse, and violence specialists and researchers; public health, juvenile justice, and criminal justice officials and practitioners;

Issues and Findings

Discussed in this Brief: Findings about partner violence from the longitudinal Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study of a representative birth cohort of 1,037 New Zealand men and women born between April 1, 1972, and March 31, 1973.

Key findings: Characteristics of cohort members who were involved in partner violence include the following:

Although both partners in a relationship may not recall the same acts in precisely the same way, 70-80 percent of one partner’s report was in agreement with the other partner’s report on whether physical violence took place and on the extent of the abuse.
Risk factors in childhood and adolescence for male perpetrators included poverty and low academic achievement. Female perpetrators showed risk factors of harsh family discipline and parental strife. Both male and female perpetrators also had histories of aggressive behavior.
The strongest risk factor for both male and female perpetrators and victims was a record of physically aggressive delinquent offending before age 15. More than half the males convicted of a violent crime also physically abused their partners.
About 27 percent of women and 34 percent of men among the Dunedin study members reported they had been physically abused by their partner. About 37 percent of women and 22 percent of men said they had perpetrated the violence.
Domestic violence is most prevalent among cohabitating couples.
Sixty-five percent of females who suffered serious physical abuse and 88 percent of male perpetrators had one or more mental disorders (as defined by the American Psychiatric Association in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association [“DSM-III-R”]).

See over ….. / …..

How trustworthy are the data? Do partners’ reports about abuse

in their relationship agree ? 5

The scientific study of partner abuse is controversial in part because there are concerns about the accuracy of data. Abuse data are usually collected by asking respondents to “self-report” their experiences. The majority of studies usually interview only one member of each couple. Can these self-reports of abuse be trusted? To answer this question, the extent to which partners’ responses were in agreement was analyzed.

Exhibit 4. Rates of mental illness among Dunedin perpetrators and victims of severe physical abuse

Is physical abuse strongly linked with mental disorders? 10

In 1994, the American Psychiatric Association first recognized “physical abuse of an adult” as a “focus of clinical attention.” An analysis was conducted to determine whether physical abuse was often “comorbid” with mental disorders among Dunedin study members. (Comorbidity means that a patient suffers from two or more disorders or problematic conditions at once.) Comorbidity between abuse and mental disorders was examined because studies of comorbidity among mental disorders have shown that coexistence of multiple psychiatric problems predicts more severe life impairment, longer duration of the problems, and poorer response to treatment.11

Sixty-five percent of Dunedin women who were victims of severe physical abuse 12 met criteria for one or more disorders listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (“DSM–III–R”).

“ …. In contrast, female perpetrators’ backgrounds include primarily disturbed family relationships, especially weak attachment, harsh discipline, and conflict between parents. Poverty and school failure were less important. Perpetrators of both sexes have a long history of aggressive behavior problems. For male and female perpetrators, the strongest risk factor is a record of physically aggressive delinquent offending before age 15. However, physically aggressive delinquent offending before age 15 is also the most significant risk factor for victims

Eighty-eight percent of Dunedin men who were perpetrators of severe physical abuse met DSM–III–R criteria (see exhibit 4).

Abused Dunedin women were three times more likely to suffer a mental illness than non-abused women. The male perpetrators were 13 times more likely to be mentally ill than non-perpetrators. The types of mental illnesses among perpetrators varied; they included anxiety disorders, depression, alcohol and drug dependence, antisocial personality disorder, and schizophrenia.

Rates of mental illness among female victims of severe physical abuse, female non-victims, male perpetrators of severe physical abuse, and male non-perpetrators.

The rate for female perpetrators was virtually identical to the rate for female victims, and the rate for male victims was nearly identical to the rate for male perpetrators.

See also :- Violence by Intimates: Analysis of Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, boyfriends, and Girlfriends (Bureau of Justice Statistics Fact book), by Lawrence A. Greenfeld, Michael R. Rand, Diane Craven, Patsy A. Klaus, Craig A. Perkins, Cheryl Ringel, Greg Warchol, Cathy Maston, and James Alan Fox.

Appendix E

Home Office Criminals Statistics.

“Maintaining discipline in prison is a vital but difficult task. In 1994, there were 2.3 offences committed and proved for every male prisoner and 3.3 for every female prisoner” (ie Table 9.22 shows women are around more 50% more violent then men).

Table 9.22 Offences Against Prison Discipline in GB (%) page 170. Rate per 100 prison population

1981 1991 1994

MEN

Disorder/Disrespect 75 100 111

Violence 8 21 24

WOMEN:

Disorder/Disrespect 132 143 142

Violence 16 29 39

Source:- Home Office Criminal Statistics, and ‘Social Trends’.

BBC ‘Panorama’ – Women and violence

“Over the last few years there has been a 76% increase in the number of female prisoners. Politicians and pressure groups say it is unfair to imprison women.” (BBC Panorama, June 97).

Females now account for 4% of the total prison population. The cause, it is said, is the severe sentencing policy that women experience. Politicians and pressure groups say this is unfair to women and the Gov’t (Labour) is to look into the matter. (circa June 97).

Appendix F -1

Canadian Findings

Mothers are perpetrators of abuse upon children at least equally with fathers”. – Senator Anne Cools (Canada) 1995.

Child abuse morbidity – In a 1986 analysis of 100 children (covering the years 1973 – 1982) who suffered abuse and or neglect and who subsequently died found that mothers were the largest perpetrators. Mother’s accounts for 38 deaths, while 12 death were ascribed to “both parents” and 13 to fathers. – Dr. Cyril Greenland University of Toronto.

Seven out of ten cases examined women were the abusers of children. – Bonnie & Sclare 1969

“Physical abuse of children is the only form of family violence in which women are the perpetrators as often as men”. Brienes & Gordon, The Health and Welfare Canada Report 1989, Family Violence; a Review of Theoretical and Clinical literature

50 out of 57 cases women were found to be the child abuser. Steel & Pollock 1968.

Evidence was found that mothers are more likely than fathers to be abusive. – Bell. 1986

Mothers were identified in 38.7% of cases as the abuser and fathers 18.4% rising to 31% where cohabitation ie boyfriends step fathers were involved. – Benedict et al 1985

In 1993 there were 46,683 child maltreatment investigations undertaken by all 54 Children’s Aid Societies. The study defined child maltreatment as any one of physical abuse, sexual abuse neglect or emotional maltreatment. The findings are as follows:

Total number of cases substantiated of child maltreatment showed that mothers were responsible for 49% of all cases and fathers 31% of the cases.

In the category of child neglect mothers perpetrated 85% of cases. In the category of physical abuse mothers perpetrated 39% of cases and biological fathers 40%.

In the category of emotional maltreatment mothers were found responsible for 79% of all substantiated cases.

Mothers were also highlighted as being heavily involved in physical abuse especially in the newly born (zero months) to three-year-old category.

Significantly, 59% of all cases regarded abuse to boy babies by their mothers. This bias continued through into the age group 4 – 11 where recordings were made that showed 55% of cases involved boy children. The largest single family group/style at 35% was the single mother unit. – Dr. Cyril Greenland, University of Toronto.

UK example:-

Mothers and mother substitutes are suspected abusers in 44% of cases and fathers and father substitutes in 46.5% of cases. Dr. Susan Creighton 1979 (UK)

65% of child abuse is committed by women whereas only 8% of child abuse is committed by biological fathers i.e. REAL fathers. – National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC)

See also Appendix C -3 above

Appendix F -2

U.S.A. findings

78% of all children are murdered by women. – Table 6-4, Page 6-11,. NIS-3 (1999).

Child abusers are more likely to be Women. – Richard Gelles 1979 quoted in The Health and Welfare Canada Report 1989, Family Violence; a Review of Theoretical and Clinical literature.

Study after study show that women are the majority of the initiators of domestic violence, and approx. 58% of physical altercations are initiated by the female.

Approximately 60% of all female murderesses premeditate their murder. – Coramae Richey Mann, “Getting Even ? Women Who Kill in Domestic Encounters”. Justice Quarterly. March 1988.

Mothers commit 55% of child murders and biological fathers commit 6%; the NIS-3 shows that Mother-only households are 3 times more fatal to children than father-only households, children are systematically removed from the natural fathers who are their most effective protectors and men are imprisoned at rate 20 times that of women. – US Bureau of Statistics.

96% of physical altercations resulting in injury to a spouse occurs after the date of separation.- Chadwick and Heaton, “Statistical Handbook of the American Family“.

Appendix G

NSPCC SHATTERS CHILD ABUSE MYTHS

Common stereotypes about child abuse are overturned in the NSPCC’s largest ever study of child maltreatment. – the NSPCC’s website.

Myth: the most common form of abuse suffered by children at home is sexual abuse.

Fact: children are 7 times more likely to be beaten badly by their parents than sexually abused by them.

Myth: most sexual abuse occurs between fathers and their daughters.
Fact: this type of incestuous relationship is rare, occurring in less than four in a thousand children. The most likely relative to abuse within the family is a brother or stepbrother.

Myth: adults are responsible for most sexual violence against children and young people outside the family.

Fact: children are most likely to be forced into unwanted sexual activity by other young people, must usually from someone described as a boyfriend. Less than three in a thousand of the young people reported sexual behaviour against their wishes with professionals working with children.

Myth: sexual attacks on children from strangers are common.
Fact: sexual assaults involving contact by strangers are very rare. Even with indecent exposure, only seven per cent of the young people reported ever having been flashed at, and just over a third of these said the person was a stranger.

Myth: most physical abuse is carried out by men, especially fathers.

Fact: violent acts towards children are more likely to be meted out by mothers than fathers (49% of the sample experienced this from mothers and 40% from fathers).

NSPCC Director, Mary Marsh stated, “Modern myths about child cruelty have emerged from the public attention given to horrific and frightening cases of child abuse by strangers. Other traditional stereotypes come from a historical wellspring of children’s stories about wicked adult bogey figures. These stereotypes have become part of popular culture. This report challenges us to re-examine preconceived ideas about child cruelty. In some cases it calls on policy-makers and professionals to overhaul thinking and reconsider how to approach different kinds of child maltreatment.”

Appendix H

Homicides – Relationship of victim to principal suspect (NSPCC)

England and Wales
The Home Office maintains data on the relationship of the homicide victim to the principal suspect. For those 98 homicide victims aged less than 16 in 2000/2001 Table 5.6 shows the relationship to the principal suspect.

Table 5.6

Relationship	Number	%

Son or daughter	76	(78)
Other family	2	(2)
Friend or acquaintance	5	(5)
Course of employment	1	(1)
Not known	7	(7)
No suspect	7	(7)
Total number	98	(100)

This shows that the majority of child homicide victims were killed by their parents. Unfortunately this table, in common with many others, suffers from a modern trend where the sex and age of the perpetuator is not revealed.

Source: Home Office

Clare’s Law – just more ‘gesture’ politics ?

Posted on March 12, 2014 by rwhiston | Leave a comment

Rarely do I find myself agreeing with any barrister in Family Law matters but Lucy Reed must be one of the exceptions (though in Feb 2013 I did find myself speaking in Madrid in defence of a family court judge who had been penalised and fired by his (female) peers for simply doing his job.

This rather attractive barrister, Ms. Reed, in a recent article on her blog site ( http://wp.me/p13Ss8-1dD ), summed up how futile she feels the impact of the so-called ” Clare’s Law” is likely to be.

Left: Lucy Reed

Lucy Reed is a family barrister who wrote an article about Clare’s Law in The Guardian when it was first mooted, circa 2011. The Guardian’s sub-editors re-titled it “Why Clare’s Law Won’t Work” [1] which rather took the polished nuance out of the piece, but it was fair to say she had concerns about why Clare’s Law might put some women at greater risk, and might not assist the vast majority of actual or potential victims of domestic abuse. (Actually, it needs to be said that this move towards a state register of alleged perpetrators has a longer pedigree. I can recall being in Sky’s London studios debating with Assistant Chief Constable Jim Gamble of the National Crime Squad and ACPO [who was their lead spokesman for DV], and putting forward some of the very points that Reed raises in her March 2014 blog).

When one reads the Home Secretary’s announcement one immediately thinks of the practicalities. For instances, how would you limit ‘all and sundry’ from cheap voyeurism; how do you determines who exactly is a partner when most DV offending does NOT occur within marriages anyway ? I suspect for these reasons alone it will have limited application and will prove to be a damp squib if not a Pyrrhic victory (it now seems apparent there will have to be several police reports of DV before entry onto the register – which rather limits its usefulness).

The “Sun”, a newspaper never known for its intellectual prowess or reflective powers, firmly trumpeted in November 2013 the news of the pilot projects; “Victory for Clare’s Law – Women can check if fella’s a brute.”

In press releases this month the Home Office more prudently (but still wrongly) described the gender neutral issue of Domestic Violence and Abuse as:

“A scheme to enable women to check whether their partner has been violent in the past is to go nationwide.”

Why just women ? The problem with the “Sun” and the chatter found in the Twitter sphere is that they tend to think always in the short-term and don’t see the real dangers of such moves in the longer term. Most women also have this lack of perspective. More importantly Clare’s Law will further undermine the sovereignty and the integrity of the individual and will sweep us ever deeper into a ‘1984’ or Stalin-esque era of governmental intrusion using state apparatus.

But read below what barrister Lucy Reed has to say about Clare’s Law in her own words on her Pink Tape blog, bearing in mind her fem-centric stance and lack of appreciation of what male victims are expected to do:

“. . . . . As a result of that [Guardian] article I was contacted by various media organisation, did a brief slot on The One Show and have intermittently ever since received calls and emails from people wondering if I will give a quote or do an interview – and it began again last week as the National Roll-out of Clare’s Law was announced to coincide with International Womens’ Day.

The truth is I am no expert on Clare’s Law, but there is (was) comparatively little discussion out there about the scheme (who’d be fool enough to criticise it, right?) and comparatively little is understood by the public about the way that domestic violence victims become embroiled in violent relationships and the journey they must go on to extricate themselves and to subsequently keep safe. People don’t realise that domestic violence is cyclical – for both perpetrator and victim. For a woman [2] who thinks abuse is normal, simply removing her from the immediate risk does not make her better able to recognise the warning signs, does not make her better able to make good judgments and keep herself safe. And my concern about Clare’s Law was that the policy makers seemed not to understand these complexities either.

I won’t rehash all the arguments – they are set out in the Guardian article and in my subsequent posts here on Pink Tape. And furthermore, I feel a little bit less like a lone voice here than I did when I last wrote on this topic – a recent article can be found here from Sian and Crooked Rib, and Refuge have come out against the policy.

I recently worked with a young, vulnerable mother who had grown up in an extremely violent household. She had acknowledged the relationship between herself and the father of their baby was toxic and yet weeks later was explaining his violent behaviour away to the police, refusing to give a statement because she loved him. I’ve lost count of the clients for whom I have obtained injunctions who have gone back and gone back and gone back. Or who have picked an almost identical violent partner the next time round. You cannot keep people safe by the mere provision of information. After the first punch, or the first slap they know he’s violent. BUT THEY DON’T LEAVE. We know this. This is not news. It is not rational but it is what happens. [3]

Vulnerable adults need to be empowered to keep themselves safe. And that takes time. And it costs money.

The thing is, Clare’s Law isn’t law at all, it’s procedure:

The Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme has not introduced any new legislation. Therefore, any disclosure must be within the existing legal framework and, in particular, have due regard to established case-law, the Human Rights Act 1998, the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. (Pilot Scheme Guidance)

It’s a procedure which hands responsibility to victims, with no guarantee of medium to long-term support for those who exit that is required to actually keep them and their children safe in the future, and with the double whammy effect of weakening of any sense of duty to the “fools” who knowingly stay. It’s meant to be empowering, but it might just be dangerous.”

E N D

Addendum – 12th March 2014

Much as I hate the use of anecdotal stories to prove a point – something beloved of all female writers generally (see above) – the following is one story that even for me proved irresistible.

It involves the enthusiastic ‘rehabilitation’ of the singer, Boy George, after, to quote Patrick Strudwick of the Independent, serving time for a vicious attack on another man and which speaks volumes about our disregard for male victims of violence ( http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/boy-george-bad-karma-9185122.html):

“It is the same person everyone else has overlooked, too: his victim. The man – Audun Carlsen – he chained up in his London flat in April 2007, threatened and attacked. The man who, in fear for his life, broke free of his shackles and ran out into the street in the early hours, nearly naked, bruised, bleeding and hysterical. Anyone who has met his victim would not forget. In 2011, I tracked Carlsen down to interview him. The singer had hired him twice in 2007 to take photographs of him. On the second occasion, the Norwegian model told me, O’Dowd, [aka Boy George] under the influence of cocaine and convinced that Carlsen had broken into his computer, “asked me to come into the bedroom. He and another guy are standing there and suddenly they are both jumping and beating on me and kicking on my back, my face, dragging me along the floor… tying me up… handcuffing me…screaming abuse… I’ve never seen a person so full of hate. I thought he would kill me.”

Footnotes:

[1] See http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jul/22/why-clares-law-wont-prevent-domestic-violence, Friday 22 July 2011

[2] I’ve talked about women in this post – as noted in the previous posts on this topic, Clare’s Law is open to both men and women, although it was predominantly used by women during the pilot phase.

[3] I generalize, of course. Domestic Abuse is not homogenous. And neither are its perpetrators or its victims.

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Child Homicides 2010 – 14

Posted on February 15, 2014 by rwhiston | Leave a comment

Child deaths 2010 – 14 (England & Wales)

See also “Family Court Reporter” http://mensaid.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/6/

Every week, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the death toll of children under the age of 15 in the UK averaged 2 children per week – and they died from maltreatment. [1]

In the past – say, 20 or 30 years ago – many of these child homicides were categorised as ‘sudden infant death syndrome’ or (SIDS), which is also sometimes called a cot death. However, there have been strenuous efforts to understand SIDS and it is now clear that many were murders by neglect or deliberate homicide by physical abuse. Since 1986 the deaths attributable to SIDs has plummeted and for no apparent biological / medical reason (see graph left).

In our “Politically Correct” era even the NSPCC has to be cautious in its wording when it explained the statistics (in March 2013):

“There is no single source of statistics for the number of children who are killed by another person in the UK.”

This, of course, is not quite true – yet it has a grain of truth within it.

No one can say emphatically that child abuse is greater in to single mother households (SMH); no one can say that mothers murder more children than ‘fathers’, but the statistics point in that direction. It is individual circumstances surrounding these homicides that tends to corrupts a clear picture being formed combined with “the exception that proves the rule” maxim.

Another ‘fashion’ that has come and gone as a cause of child murder and/or abuse is Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, a diagnosis disputed by some psychiatrists while advocated by others.

Current state of play

The impression often given to the general public is of a rising tide of child abuse murders – and certainly newspapers lend weight to that perception. But in reality the murder rates of children has been falling in recent decades.

The following graph (below) shows child homicides rates for England & Wales stretching from 1977 to 2011. [2]

England & Wales

Homicides rates per million victims aged 0 – 15 years (1977 – 2011-12) (Trend line in green) (highest rate was in 1985 at 10 per million)

It would be reassuring to be able to say that the actual number of child murders was decreasing but since no one single source exist in Britain for child deaths one has to take an average of those listed on official government websites.

The fall in a). the rate per million, and b). the trend (green line) has fallen since 1985 which also coincides with the realisation that cots deaths were perhaps not due to SIDS.

Political climate

With one catastrophic child abuse scandal following hot on the heels of another the political class and governing elite is in a quiet panic. The press has not unnaturally fed on the horrifying and sensationalist details. This has had the effect of making Social Services err on the side of caution – yet they still manage to miss the real danger cases – if press reports are to be believed.

As a by-product of all this kerfuffle children are reportedly being snatched from ‘good enough’ parents on an increasing scale and creating yet another cause célèbre where parent find themselves subject to a witch-hunt.

It is clear from the data shown in he following Table (Child deaths 2010 – 2014), that the press and media is now sensitised to child abuse and child deaths, with more reporting of such murders than ever before This is demonstrated by the Tables for preceding decades shown separately on this blog. However, while the publicity is heightened so to is public concern when in cold facts the rate per million is slowly falling. This is not to be complacent but to underline the positive trend which is perennially overlooked.

What is very noticeable, from the more recent cases shown in the Table below, is that the prevalence of maternally inflicted child deaths predominates and has, in recent years, migrated while still including starvation and neglect (which were the natural preserve of mothers), and has entered the once all-male preserve of physical violence leading to a child’s homicide.

Listed here are 19 child deaths in 4 years of which 6 occurred just between Jan and mid-Feb 2014.

The search terms used to bring up these names on the internet were “child homicides” and “infant homicide” with no regard paid to either male or female perpetrator. yet in this series (2010 – 2014) as with others the instances found are predominately those of female, i.e. mother, perpetrators.

Year	Child deaths (2010 – 2014) – by age and location England & Wales NB this is not an exhaustive list and nor is it complete. Information has been gathered from public sources, reports and websites; as a result some errors in name spellings and date are likely to have occurred. There are far more child deaths per year than are here listed.* Signifies more than one family murder
2014	*Vageswaran, 7 mth baby, murdered by mother (Jeyavani Vageswaran, aged 33) before killing herself in (London, Jan).
	*Vageswaran, 5-year-old boy, murdered by mother (Jeyavani Vageswaran, 33) before killing herself in (Harrow, north-west London, Jan).
	Mikaeel Kular aged 3, body found in Fife Mikaeel’s mother has been estranged from his father. (Edinburgh, Jan)
	Thomas Gacek, 7 week-old baby boy died of head injuries. His mother, Katarzyna Gacek aged 24, arrested (Oldham, January).
	Unknown, 9 mth baby girl, both parents (35 & 32) arrested (Wolverhampton January).
	Unknown, 7-week-old boy, died from severe head injuries. Two men (26 & 35) and a woman (23) arrested (Oldham, February)
2013	* Joshua Patterson, aged, 5 – his mother Katherine Hooper leap off a cliff taking Joshua with her. (July).
	* Samuel Patterson, aged 2, murdered by his mother Katherine Hooper. (July).
2012	Riley Pettipierre, 2-year-old boy, class A drugs, methadone and alcohol found in a child’s beaker. His mother Sally Dent (33), and ‘father’ (i.e. new partner ?) Shaun Binfield (45), jailed. (Belper, March).
	Daniel Pelka, aged 4, starvation and systemic cruelty died march 2012 (Coventry, March).
	Daniel Jones, 23-month-old baby boy, death by ingesting heroin. Mother and father both known heroin users. (Wolverhampton, May).
2011	Keanu Williams, (known as Kiwi), his body had 37 injuries. (B’ham, Jan).
	Hamzah Khan, aged 4, his mummified body was found in 2011, two years after his actual death (2009). He had been starved by his alcohol addicted mother Amanda Hutton (43). (Bradford, Sept).
	Child G, 3-month-old baby boy, history of maternal depression and incidents of maternal and paternal self-harm. Father previous convicted foe child cruelty during former relationship. (Southampton Sept).
	Callum Wilson, boy, 13 mths old. Unmarried mother Emma Wilson, 25 inflicted “unsurvivable brain injury”, broken bones and bruising, and died in hospital (Windsor, March).
2010	Ajit Singh, aged 12, poisoned using bleach by his mother, Satpal Kaur-Singh (44), after attending a social services meeting (warned her parenting skills meant he might be taken ‘into care’. (East London, Feb).
	* Harry Donnison, boy, aged 3, body found locked in the boot of a car. Mother Fiona Donnison (43) had then tried to commit suicide (East Sussex, Jan).
	* Elise Donnison, aged 18 months, her body found locked in the boot of mother’s a car. Fiona Donnison (43), had then tried to commit suicide (East Sussex, Jan).
	Violet Mullen, girl, 15-mths-old, Gary Alcock (mother’s new boyfriend) ruptured baby’s internal organs. Violet’s mother, Claire Flanagan, failed to report previous abuse (Oldham, November).

Note here how we have to put this into ‘a context that dare not speak its name’ in public. Government policies of liberalising marriage and relationships generally for over 30 years, are embraced as a positive, and as a sign of modernity and “progress. [2]

Yet those artificial ‘choices’ bestowed by legal reform and tax regimes (in the form of subsidies by a Welfare State), fail to mention or include the consequences, namely the verboten spectre of the SMH which lies at the epicentre of child abuse and neglect.

In the next episode “Child Homicides 2000 – 2010″, we see how the dreadful trend continues unabated, decade after decade.

Go to: https://genderviolence.wordpress.com/2014/02/14/47/

Footnotes:

[1] ‘Child deaths: homicides’, NSPCC http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/findings/howsafe/indicator01_wdf95539.pdf

[2] “UK child abuse deaths could be double official figures, says UN” 18 Sept 2003 http://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/sep/18/childrensservices.childprotection

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Child Homicides 2000 – 2009

Posted on February 14, 2014 by rwhiston | Leave a comment

Child deaths 2000 – 2009

This decade, i.e. 2000 – 2009, saw the publicity surrounding child abuse and child homicide cases reach unprecedented levels in Britain.

Hardly a week seemed to go by without either another murder being discovered or a trial beginning – and in many of them Social Services was closely involved.

The ‘Baby P’ case (baby Peter Connelly), where a 17-month-old was horribly injured and died in Haringey, London (August 2007), is perhaps the best example of this – and of the subsequent clamour to find the culprit, or a scapegoat, depending on one’s view of the entire fiasco (see ‘Sharon Shoesmith – reborn ?’ http://motoristoppression.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/8/ ).

Had there not been an earlier child abuse sandal (the highly publicised case of Victoria Climbié) also connected to this London borough involving death by systematic tortured together with a catalogue of institutional failings (all listed in a damning report by Lord Lamming), it would perhaps have receive less attention than it did.

The Table below, and the sheer number of names it includes, conveys the utter hopelessness felt at the time and the impotence to alter events.

Year	Child deaths (2000 – 2009) – by age and location England & WalesNB this is not an exhaustive list and nor is it complete. Information has been gathered from public sources, reports and websites; as a result some errors in name spellings and date are likely to have occurred. There are far more child deaths per year than are here listed.
2009	Seven children died while in the care of Doncaster’s Social Services. Details unclear as to dates.
	Hamzah Khan – aged 4, killed/starved by mother. (Amanda Hutton, aged 43). His mummified body found in house 2 years later
2008	* Delayno Mullings-Sewell stabbed to death by his 21-year-old mother who is now “sectioned “
	* Romario Mullings-Sewell – see Delayno Mullings-Sewell above.
	Khyra Ishaq, aged 7, starved to death by her mother and stepfather who were charged with murder following her death in (B’ham, May)
	Sanam Navsarka, aged 2, daughter suffered more than 100 injuries
2007	Baby P (baby Connelly see (Haringey, London, August). Injuries included a broken back, broken ribs, mutilated fingertips and fingernails missing. His mother Tracey Connelly and her new live-in boyfriend Steven Barker. Both also stood trial for rape of a 2-year-old child. Found guilty of the rape charge. Tracey Connelly was ordered to be held indefinitely, until “deemed no longer to be a risk to the public and in particular to small children.” Barker was sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape and death of Baby P.
	Infant Harte, aged 4, (girl) had cerebral palsy. Scalded with boiling liquid over the child’s hands, ripped out her hair, kicked her repeatedly in the groin and locked her in the toilet. Kimberley Harte, 23 and Samuel Duncan, 26 sentenced.
	*Antoine, Gamor, aged 10, beaten to death by mother. (Jan).
	*Kenniece Gamor, aged 3, suffocated to death by mother. (Jan).
	* Joseph Talby, aged 4, suffocated death by mother. (March).
	* Paul Talby, aged 3, suffocated to death by mother. (March).
	Rio Ross, a 14-month-old baby was found dead from an overdose of heroin, cocaine and methadone. (Bristol, July 2007).
	Ruby Spink, aged 11 mths, died of neglect and abuse. (Sept).
	Alisha Allen, aged 5 mths, died from serious head injuries Catalogue of errors by care staff led to death. (Jan).
2006	Rhys Biggs, 2 months old, mother (aged 17), repeatedly crushed his ribs (East London).
	Trae-Bleu Layne, aged 3, died from an overdose of methadone, the heroin substitute, supplied to her mother. (Reading, Oct).
	Baby Owen, a newborn boy’s dead body found in a bin bag, his mother Angela Owen arrested some years later. (Halifax, July).
2005	Phillip O’Donnell, 6-year-old, smothered by his mother. (Feb).
	David Stocker, 9-year-old, poisoned by his mother who added salt to his hospital drip. Was this MSbP ? (London, March). [See also Prof Southall].
	Ukleigha Batten-Froggatt, girl, 6-year-old, strangled by her mother’s boyfriend
	Aaron Gilbert, aged 13 months, brain damage, abused by both his mother Rebecca Lewis & Andrew Lloyd her boyfriend. (Swansea).
2004	Michael Dickinson, 7-year-old boy poisoned by mother (aged 32), induced illness first detailed investigation in Britain Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.
	10 mth old baby boy, starved to death despite being under the care of at least nine doctors, social workers and health visitors. HIV-positive mother 29 arrested (London March).
2003	Toni-Ann Byfield girl aged 7 [and her father] gunned down (Kensal Rise, London).
	Chloe Thomas, aged 14 weeks, at her death she had 40 fractures to her skull, wrist, rib, leg and fingers. January Chloe’s father, Ceri Thomas (23) was cleared of murder but he was jailed for three months after admitting child cruelty. (Bridgend, April).
2002	Ainlee Walker, [aka Ainlee Labonte], 2-year-old, death through starved cruelty and neglect. (Jan).
	Perrin Barlow, 9 mths old, died of bronchial pneumonia.(July)
	Erin Gilmour, six-year-old, head hammered. (Sept)
	Danielle Reid, 9-year-old, battered, put in canal (mother’s partner involved). (Nov).
	Angus Fell, 6 mths. Parents Angela Fell (37) and Anthony Fell (43) tried to make it look like a ‘cot death’, i.e. SIDS. Police could not prove the unlawful killing of Gareth, aged 2 months, in Dec 1999. murdered brother, but failed to find any evidence of (Barrow-in-Furness)
	Carla Nicole Bone, 13-mth daughter, battered to death [by mother’s non- biological partner]. (May).
	* Holly Wells, aged 10 (Soham murders). (4^th August)
	* Jessica Chapman – aged 10 (Soham murders). (August 4^th)
2001	Wayne Bennett, 3 mths, froze to death. Mother was prostitute drug user. (Dec).
	* Henry Bluestone, 3 years-old bludgeoned to death by 36-year-old policemen father. (Aug).
	* Chandler Bluestone, 18 mths, bludgeoned to death by 36-year-old policemen father.
	Caleb Ness, 11 mths old, killed by father. (Edinburgh).
2000	Sarah Payne, 8-year-old murdered by paedophile (July).
	Michael Dickinson, 7-year-old, poisoned by his mother (32). Suspected MSbP. Official report listed 35 procedural errors (Leicester, Oct). Her conviction for attempted murder was overturned on appeal but the 16-year sentence for child cruelty stands.
	Victoria Climbie, 8 years old girl, tortured to death by her aunt, died from hypothermia, with 128 injuries (Haringey, London, Feb).
	* Stephen Crowther, 8 year-old son, poisoned by mother. (Nov).
	* Stephanie Crowther, 9 years old, daughter, poisoned by mother. (Nov).
	Lauren Wright, aged 6 , “vile and sadistic” stepmother. Was under the protection of Norfolk social services. Father did not know of abuse but was jailed anyway. (May).
	Emma Dyson, 12-week-old, drowned by mother, who was under medical care. (March).
	* Baby MacLeod # 3 female, age unknown, smothered by mother (see also 1999 and 1997)

See also:

‘Mothers Who Kill’ http://robertwhiston.wordpress.com/2008/05/26/

‘Sharon Shoesmith – reborn ?’ http://motoristoppression.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/8/

‘How many child murders are there every year ?’ https://motoristmatters.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/19/

END

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Child Homicides 1990 – 1999

Posted on February 14, 2014 by rwhiston | Leave a comment

Child deaths 1990 – 1999

It is difficult to contemplate “fashion” as a factor in the manner by which children meet their deaths but looking back, this is what seems to have happened.

In the 1970s the fashionable cause of child death, among the medical fraternity and caring professionals, was Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP).

In the past – say, 20 or 30 years ago – many of these child homicides (up to 1,300 over a decade) were categorised as ‘sudden infant death syndrome’ or SIDS), which is also sometimes called a cot death. However, there have been strenuous efforts to understand SIDS and it is now clear that many were murders by neglect or deliberate homicide by physical abuse. Since 1986 the deaths attributable to SIDs has plummeted – and for no apparent biological or medical reason (see graph left and Table below right) .

By the mid-1990s yet another new ‘fashion’ to explain away child deaths had burst onto the scene in the form of “shaken baby syndrome” (SBS). The 1997 case of English nanny Louise Woodward went “viral.” (Woodward, then aged 19, was found guilty of second-degree murder for violently shaking 8-month-old Matthew Eappen and causing his death. This was later overturned).[1]

If in the 1980s the explanation for child deaths shifted to ‘cot deaths’, or SIDS, and prior to that MSbP, one wonders what, in retrospect, will be the decided fashion for the 2000s ?

‘One in 73 million‘

Journalists and the general public share a distrust of statistics – and judges have little time for them in their world. So it comes as no surprise that the probability that in an affluent family the chances of 2 or 3 successive children dying in suspicion circumstances, and all about the same age, was put at ‘1 in 73 million.’ This was pounced upon and the evidence given by Professor Sir Roy Meadow at the various trials was discredited.

As the large Table below demonstrates, serial killings at first go unnoticed and it is only after the 2nd or 3rd child’s death that authorities decide to act and thereafter a long protracted trial begins.

Notorious era

What is clear is that from 2003 to 2005 saw the clearing out of much of this science and in some instances, its debunking. This was the decade which saw Sally Clark, Trupti Patel and Angela Cannings, etc who had been put on trial and convicted for murdering their children (against a backdrop of alleged ‘cot deaths’ and huge publicity), released from jail:

Sally Clark was convicted of the murder, in 1999, of two of her sons. After a very public Court of Appeal hearing where the benchmarks for a conviction was effectively raised (too high, many say) she was released in Jan 2003 (Sally Clark died of acute alcohol poisoning a few years later in March 2007).

Angela Cannings, who also had her conviction ‘overturned’ by the Court of Appeal (in 2003) had been convicted of murdering her 3 babies, her 7 week-old son, Jason, who died in 1991, her 18-week-old son, Matthew, who died in 1999, and her first-born, Gemma, who died in 1989 aged 13 weeks. Perhaps incredibly, the Appeal Court decided the boys had not been smothered but were victims of cot death, just like the couple’s first-born, Gemma (at a time when the veracity of cot death claims were being questioned). Angela Cannings’ fourth and only surviving child, Jade, has disowned her mother and lives apart from her.[2] She was freed in Dec 2003.

Trupti Patel was charged with murdering three of her children, Amar (between 5 Sept 1997 and 10 Dec 1997), Jamie (between 21 June 1999 and 6 July 1999), and Mia, found to have four broken ribs (between 14 May 2001 and 5 June 2001). She was acquitted in June 2003.

Donna Anthony was jailed in 1998 after being convicted of the murder of her two babies. Her daughter died in Feb 1996, at the age of 11 months. Her four-month-old son died in March 1997. It was suggested that she had smothered her son in order to get sympathy from her estranged husband. She made an unsuccessful appeal against her conviction in 2000 but was freed in April 2005.

NB. Sally Clark, Trupti Patel and Angela Cannings et al, prompted the UK government to review more than 250 cases where parents might have been ‘wrongly’ jailed for injuring or killing their children. In all, 297 cases were identified as baby-death cases with only 3 cases out of 88 convictions for ‘shaken baby’ syndrome adjudged unsound; these were then referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2006.

The down side to this eventual ‘justice’ for mothers was a fear that in future police, social workers and hospital staff would be loathed to alert the authorities as to their fears of child abuse. The public ridicule, shaming, wrecking of careers and general abuse directed at Sir Roy Meadow and Prof. Southall, is proof enough for the caring professionals to perhaps turn a blind eye in those “50 / 50” cases.

Just how convoluted and driven by spite can be gauged in a cautionary tale (especially for the GMC), written by Beatrix Campbell of child protection published in the Guardian (May 6^th 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/may/06/david-southall-gmc-mandy-morris ).

However, as the cases shown in the Table below (and in the decade for 2000 show elsewhere), there is room to believe that some driver for child homicide – be it MSbP, SBS, SUID, or SDS – is still at work and still being used to cover up murders.

Year	Child deaths (1990 – 1999) – by age and location England & Wales (& Scotland)NB this is not an exhaustive list and nor is it complete. Information has been gathered from public sources, reports and websites; as a result some errors in name spellings and date are likely to have occurred. There are far more child deaths per year than are here listed.
1999	Chelsea Pickering, 11 months, died after being neglected.
	* Baby MacLeod # 1, male, age unknown but thought to be only a few months old, smothered by his mother, Ms. Susan MacLeod aged 26 (Glasgow Scotland). NB. Susan MacLeod also smothered her newborn daughter at a flat in between 30 June, 1998 and 30 Dec 1999 (see below). During her trial (circa April 2001), she was cleared of killing a second baby girl born in Nov 2000, but did not reveal she was pregnant for a 4th time (which she aborted during her trial in 2001).
	Chelsea Brown, two, was battered to death by her father, who was jailed for life. Her mother, Maria Brown, was jailed for 18 months for child cruelty. [2001 ?]
	Sally Clark – mother charged with murder of her 2 children aged 11 weeks and 14 months over a number of years. Later she stood accused of smothering her 8 week old child. Later released from jail in 2003 (ref: Sir Roy Meadow). This became the notorious case of ‘1 in 73 million’.
	Angus Fell, 6 mths. Parents Angela Fell (37) and Anthony Fell (43) tried to make it look like a ‘cot death’, i.e. SIDS. Police could not prove the unlawful killing of Gareth, aged 2 months, in Dec 1999. murdered brother, but failed to find any evidence of (Barrow-in-Furness).
1998	Baby MacLeod # 2 female (?), age unknown (see 2000). Susan MacLeod admitted guilt in 2003 trial but her plea of “not guilty” to murdering a 3rd baby in Govan, Glasgow, circa 2000 was accepted. She was spared jail and ordered to receive ‘psychiatric’ treatment for 6 months and then be released.
1997	Baby MacLeod # 3, female, age unknown (see ‘1999’ above) but thought to be only a few months old – smothered by mother, Ms. Susan MacLeod (26), between Aug 1996 and 31 Jan 1997 (Glasgow, Scotland). Both rotting corpses were kept in plastic bags for about 4 years in her flat.
1996	No data found – but see Baby MacLeod story
1995	No public data found
1994	Paul, aged 15 months, died of neglect in a pool of urine. Grandmother alerted social services; no one acted. Paul’s father, never named for legal reasons, was jailed for manslaughter.
	Rikki Neave, six years old, throttled with his coat zipper. Social workers “scared” of his drug-addict mother Ruth.
1993	* Anthony Robinson, five-months-old [ this may be a case linked to Prof Roy Meadows] mother Maxine Robinson, aged about 25, was given two life sentences in 1995 (Newcastle).
	* Christine Robinson, 19 months-old [ Meadow] see case above. [She has since confessed to a 3^rd murder by suffocation claiming it was SIDS in 1989]. Her first husband, Les, doted on his little girl when she died he was “absolutely broken-hearted” and later had “a nervous breakdown”].
1992	Sophie Merry, aged 3, had a ruptured intestine and 170 bruises
	Leanne White, aged 3, beaten to death by stepfather. Doctors found 107 marks on her body.
	Toni Dales, aged three, died in Feb’92.
1991	No public data found
1990	No public data found

Footnotes:

[1] In her statement to police she said she had popped him into bed meeting placed him there. In American jargon ‘popped’ is a transitive verb meaning “to strike or knock sharply” i.e. use violence.

[2] Daily Mail, 1st Feb 2014. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2550132/Shunned-surviving-child-tragic-mum-lost-3-babies-cot-death.html

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Child Homicides 1980 – 1989

Posted on February 10, 2014 by rwhiston | Leave a comment

Child Homicides 1980 – 1989

[ See also ‘Family Court Reporter Survey’ http://mensaid.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/6/ ]

Apart from the headline grabbing case of utterly horrific child maltreatment that rivet our attention – usually about once a year – most child abuse and child murder incidents fly silently under our radar.

This page spans child murders during the decade 1980 – 1989. Additional and separate pages cover the subsequent decades, e.g. 1980 – 2000.

All of the following child murders are taken from public records and the list is therefore not comprehensive. It depends entirely on press reporting and public records for its accuracy – and as the reader will note, often reporting standards of the time omitted key items such as a child’s age, method of murder, parent and town etc.

NB. A case not included for 1989 is that of Gemma Cannings, aged 13 weeks. whose mother, Angela Cannings, jailed for her murder but later freed (see also Child Homicides 1990 – 1999).

Year	Child deaths (1980 – 1989) – by age and location. England & Wales NB this is not an exhaustive list and nor is it complete. Information has been gathered from public sources, reports and websites; as a result some errors in name spellings and date are likely to have occurred. There are far more child deaths per year than are here listed.
1989	Victoria [ Vicki] Robinson, 9-month-old, smothered to death by mother – listed as ‘cot death’
	Daniel Vergauwen, aged 2, his mother had punched him extensively (East London)
	Stephanie Fox, age unknown (Wandsworth)
	Doreen Aston, age unknown (Lambeth, Lewisham & Southwark)
1988	Gavin Mabey, age unknown (Leeds)
	Sukina, aged 5, beaten to death by her [step] father in a “sustained and ferocious attack” at their home – reblended, mixed race family (Bristol)
1987	Doreen Mason, 16 months, died of neglect and had been tortured
	Liam Johnson, aged 3, killed by his father on Christmas Day (Islington)
	Tyra Henry, age unknown (Lambeth)
1986	Kimberley Carlile, aged 4, starved & beaten by her stepfather (Greenwich, East London)
	Charlene Salt, age unknown (Oldham)
	Karl McGoldrick, aged 2, injuries inflicted by his mother’s sadistic boyfriend (Cumbria)
1985	Reuben Carthy, age unknown (Nottinghamshire)
1984	Jasmine Beckford, aged 4, battered to death and starved, by her stepfather Maurice Beckford while her mother looked on (Brent, North London).
	Tyra Henry, aged 22 months old, dies with 50 bite marks in local authority care. A report found that central to the case was the families being black and the social workers white (London)
	Heidi Koseda, aged 5, died of starvation. Body decomposed. Her stepfather Nicholas Price was jailed for life while her mother Rosemary Koseda was sent to a psychiatric hospital (Hayes, West London)
	Jasmine Lorrington, aged 4 (Brent, London)
1983	No public data found
1982	Richard Fraser, age unknown (Lambeth)
	Lucy Gates, age unknown (Bexley)
	Jason Caesa, age unknown r (Cambridgeshire)
	Gerard Fenlon, age unknown (Cheshire)
	Shirley Woodcock, 3 years old, died from blow or blows to head (Hammersmith & Fulham)
1981	Daniel Frankland, age unknown (Bradford)
	Emma Hughes, age unknown (Calderdale)
	Christopher Pinder, age unknown (Bradford)
1980	Paul Brown, age unknown (The Wirrall)
	Claire Haddon, age unknown (Birmingham)
	Darren Cooper, age unknown (Leicestershire)
	Carly Taylor, age unknown, social services ignored info (Leicestershire)

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Child Homicides 1970 – 1979

Posted on February 10, 2014 by rwhiston | Leave a comment

Child Homicides 1970 – 1979

This one page spans child murders during the decade 1970 – 1979. Additional and separate pages cover the subsequent decades, e.g. 1980 – 1989.

All of the following child murders are taken from public records and are therefore the list is not comprehensive. It depends entirely on press reporting and public records for its accuracy – and as the reader will note, often reporting standards of the time omitted key items such as a child’s age, method of murder, parent and town etc.

Year	Child deaths (1970 – 1979) – by age and location NB. this is not an exhaustive list and nor is it complete. Information has been gathered from public sources, reports and websites; as a result some errors in name spellings and date are likely to have occurred. There are far more child deaths per year than are here listed.
1979	Darryn Clarke, age unknown (Liverpool)
	Lucie Gates, aged 2 years, burned to death by mother
	Malcolm Page, aged 14 months
	Lester Chapman, age unknown (Berkshire & Hampshire)
1978	Karen Spencer, aged 6 months (Derbyshire)
	Maria Mehmedagi aged 11 months, massive head injury, killed by father
	Malcolm Page, age unknown (Essex)
	Simon Peacock, age unknown (Cambridgeshire and Suffolk)
1977	Wayne Brewer, age unknown (Somerset)
1976	Neil Howlett , age unknown (Birmingham)
	Stephen Menheniott, 19 months old
1975	Stephen Meurs age unknown (Norfolk)
	Lisa Godfrey, age unknown (Lambeth, Southwark & Lewisham)
	Richard Clark, age unknown (Perth)
1974	David Naseby, age unknown (Staffordshire)
	Max Piazzani, age unknown (Essex)
1973	Graham Bagnall, aged 2, (Shropshire)
	Maria Colwell, girl aged 7 years, the murder that awakened public interest in child murders; she was beaten to death by her stepfather in Brighton in 1973
1972	No public data found
1971	No public data found
1970	No public data found

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Ouster orders & Censorship

Posted on June 25, 2013 by rwhiston | Leave a comment

Why fathers are evicted from their homes on the pretence of giving it to the children.

Stupidity in law reform tramples on property rights and in its wake follow ‘unintended consequences.’

How is it women can get the law changed but men can’t ?

Taking back the castle (2007)

Erin Pizzey noted in Aug 2007 that she was mentioned by Ms. Ludo McFerran (right) in a then recent Report [* see below] that seems to not understand the core issues of domestic violence.

She was cited as an ‘inspiration’ to the ‘Elsie’ Feminists in Australia. It was the Elsie feminist who in 1978 banned Erin from continuing my tour of New Zealand and Australia to visit the refuges when they discovered that while she was in New Zealand she was talking about domestic violence and saying it was not and never has been a gender issue.

Overnight all invitations to Australia were withdrawn and she was informed that she was not welcome at any of the refuges. This contrasted sharply with her tour of New Zealand where her views were respected. Unfortunately in time, New Zealand adopted the feminist ideology.

In the mid-seventies a woman called Jenny Johnston came into Erin’s refuge in Chiswick with her small daughter.

“I was fed up with the fact that in domestic violence cases in those days if the woman was unmarried she could be evicted from the family home with her children. We decided (Tina Wood and a brilliant solicitor called Alured Darlington) that we need to change the law so we fought the case through to the House of Lords and it was then established that the right to the roof belonged to the children of the union so that unmarried victims (whether it was the mother or the father) could stay in the home. This seems to me to be the right way to protect children. It is not and should not be about demonizing men and evicting them from the home.

Reading this report I wonder how much Ludo McFerran and her colleagues understand about domestic violence? In most cases where there is serious domestic violence one or other of the complainants has a personality disorder and sometimes both.

How dangerous it will be to leave the victim in the house is a primary consideration. In thirty six years of this work, I find that if the perpetrator has a history of serious assault against the partner, is also morbidly jealous, and has vowed to kill their partner, then whatever the rights and the wrongs of the case, the victim is obliged to leave not just the home, but the area as well.

What I am often looking at when I have to evaluate the safety of a person is whether the partner has the capacity to kill the partner. On the first occasion in my refuge, the mother was in my refuge with six children. The home was privately owned. We went to court and the judge put restraining orders on the father and ordered the mother to move back in. I was adamant that she should not return and began to make arrangements for alternative accommodation. The father went back to court after a matter of months and told the judge that he wanted the house sold and the proceeds divided because she had not moved back in.

In his profile he habitually told his wife that he would kill her. He beat her regularly. He fantasised that she was having affairs. He checked the bed sheets when he came in from work. He rifled through her underwear. He grilled her about her day and monitored her phone calls. He kept her isolated from her friends and family and we was violent to all the children. Nora was a good woman, a wonderful mother and a great home-maker. Finally the judge told us that if she didn’t move back in the house would be sold. After all he said, there were restraining orders out and the police were warned to watch out for him.

No doubt these days she would be provided with a ‘safe room’ a mobile phone linked directly to the police station and a whistle to blow if she saw him on the street. As it was she said she had to go back. She saved all her life for the house and its contents. She knew that I could not provide her with a comparable standard of living for her children. I warned her that I thought he would kill her as he predicted. She went back and he got into the house that night and stabbed her to death.

This sort of paper can only be written because the authors have a political agenda to oust men from their homes. If you look at domestic violence as we can begin to understand it now that we have access to MRI scans of the brain you can see quite clearly that the plastic brain of a new-born child
can be horribly damaged by trauma. As far as I am concerned Dr. Bruce Perry [see attached and appendix] is a leading exponent of these new findings in neurobiology. Not only is the baby exposed to violence and trauma in the early years brain-damaged but also within the womb the baby shares the alcohol, drugs, rage, fear with the mother.

These findings are heresy to the feminist movement and so is my contention that baby boys suffer greater damage than girls. This statement of mine is anecdotal at the present time but for all these years of looking after thousands of children [anecdotal in those days but today a concrete statistical fact – RW ],

I have been very aware of how resilient the girls were when contrasted to the boys. I’m not saying that the girls were undamaged by the violence many of them were indeed damaged. Many of the girls in the refuge were as violent as the boys but overall the girls seemed able to negotiate their damage far more easily than the boys. May be as we become more able to map the brain in those early years we can use the findings to educate parents and workers in the field about the responsibility that we all have to our children. We can teach them that ‘experience’ shapes the brain.

These children born into a nightmare of betrayal and violence can grow up to become the abusers of the next generation. The same can be said for sexually abused children. A percentage become the sexual abusers of the next generation. Those of us who have suffered in the hands of abusive
parents, or partners know that anything the law can offer will be useless in the face of the compulsive violent behaviour of a person who is oblivious to court orders, the police or the law.

To ignore these factors is to condemn innocent people to death. I was talking to a young woman the other day whose father (a vicar) strangled her mother in front of her when she was eleven years old. She was put into care and shuffled around children’s homes until she was old enough to live independently. No counselling was offered to her. She has transcended most of the damage and it is at this point we should looked at the factors that saved her. For far too long we have been besieged with misleading information that has covered the terrible cost and suffering of the true victims of domestic violence. This report is yet another cover up.”

Reference:

[*] “Taking back the castle: how Australia is making the home safer for women and children” – by Ludo McFerran, Staying Home Leaving Violence Coordinator, Bega, NSW, Australia (2007)
http://www.austdvclearinghouse.unsw.edu.au/Publications.htm#Other%20Publications
http://www.austdvclearinghouse.unsw.edu.au/PDF%20files/Issues%20Paper_14.pdf

—————————————

Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation and Use-dependent Development of the Brain: How States become Traits

Official citation: Perry, BD, Pollard, R, Blakely, T, Baker, W,
Vigilante, D Childhood trauma, the neurobiology of adaptation and
‘use-dependent’ development of the brain: how “states” become “traits'”.
Infant Mental Health J, 16 (4): 271-291, 1995.

http://www.childtrauma.org/ctamaterials/states_traits.asp

The ChildTrauma Academy http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/perry96.php

*This is an ‘Extract’ only and an Academy version of an article originally published in the Infant Mental Health Journal.

ABSTRACT
Childhood trauma has profound impact on the emotional, behavioral, cognitive, social and physical functioning of children. Developmental experiences determine the organizational and functional status of the mature brain. The impact of traumatic experiences on the development and function of the brain are discussed in context of basic principles of neurodevelopment. There are various adaptive mental and physical responses to trauma, including physiological hyperarousal and dissociation. Because the developing brain organizes and internalizes new information in a use-dependent fashion, the more a child is in a state of hyperarousal or dissociation, the more likely they are to have neuropsychiatric symptoms following trauma. The acute adaptive state can become persistent and maladaptive traits. The clinical implications of this new neurodevelopmental conceptualization of childhood trauma are discussed.

Adults interpret the actions, words and expressions of children through the distorting filter of their own beliefs. In the lives of most infants and children these common adult misinterpretations are relatively benign. In many cases, however, these misinterpretations can be destructive. The most
dramatic example occurs when the impact of traumatic events on infants and young children is minimized. It is an ultimate irony that at the time when the human is most vulnerable to the effects of trauma — during infancy and childhood – adults generally presume the most resilience.

This destructive misperception has permeated the mental health field. In the last ten years, our society has spent billions of dollars studying and treating adult trauma victims, primarily male combat veterans – this despite the fact that many more females are traumatized by rape in our society than males by combat. In comparison, few resources have been dedicated to research or treatment focusing on childhood trauma, and only a fraction of those on studying or treating the traumatized infant (Perry, 1994a; Perry, 1995).

The purpose of this paper is to discuss various aspects of the impact of traumatic experiences on infants and young children focusing specificically on the relationships between neurodevelopment and traumatic experience. The conceptual views articulated in this paper represent an evolving understanding based upon our extensive clinical experience with young children and infants who have been severely traumatized (n = 175). To some extent, these conceptual views are based upon well-established principles of neurodevelopment applied within the context of less clearly delineated ideas (and data) emerging in the field of traumatology. This is intended as only a preliminary perspective to guide future studies in the clinical phenomenology and neurobiology of child maltreatment.

Scope of the Problem

Millions of children across the world are exposed to traumatic experiences. These may be pervasive and chronic (e.g., course-of conduct maltreatment such as incest; war) or time- limited (e.g., natural disaster, drive-by shooting). Conservative estimates of the number of children in the United States exposed to a traumatic event in one year exceed 4 million (Perry, 1994a). These experiences — physical or sexual abuse, living in the fallout zone of domestic or community violence, surviving a serious car accident – all have an impact on the child’s development (Taylor, Zuckerman, Harik, and Groves, 1992; Pynoos, Frederick, Nader, Arroyo, Steinberg, Eth, Nunez, and Fairbanks, 1987; Osofsky, 1995). Depending on the severity, frequency, nature, and pattern of traumatic events, at least
half of all children exposed may be expected to develop significant neuropsychiatric symptomatology (Schwarz, and Perry, 1994). Children exposed to sudden, unexpected man-made violence appear to be more vulnerable – making the millions of children growing up with domestic violence or community violence at great risk for profound emotional, behavioral, physiological, cognitive and social problems.

One of the most studied neuropsychiatric syndromes which develops following trauma is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The majority of this work has been with adult combat veterans (Krystal, Kosten, Perry, Mason, Southwick, and Giller, 1989; DaCosta, 1871). In the last five years,
however, childhood PTSD has been widely observed in various populations of traumatized or maltreated children (McFarlane, 1987). Children exposed to trauma may have a range of PTSD symptoms, behavior disorders, anxieties, phobias, and depressive disorders (Schwarz and Perry, 1994). This includes children who were kidnapped (Terr, 1983), witnessed violent crime (Schwarz
and Kowalski, 1991); have been abused (Browne and Finkelhor, 1986; Kiser, Heston, and Millsap, 1991) or survived other severe trauma (Kaufman, 1991). Traumatic experiences in childhood increases the risk of developing a variety of neuropsychiatric symptoms in adolescence and adulthood (Davidson and Smith, 1990; Famularo, Kinscherff, and Fenton, 1991; Ogata, Silk, Goodrich, Lohr, Westen, and Hill, 1990; Teicher, Glod, Surrey, And Swett, 1993).

Trauma is an experience. How is it that this experience can transform a child’s world into a terror-filled, confusing miasma that so dramatically alters the child’s trajectory into and throughout adult life? Ultimately, it is the human brain that processes and internalizes traumatic (and therapeutic) experiences. It is the brain that mediates all emotional, cognitive, behavioral, social and physiological functioning. It is the human brain from which the human mind arises and within that mind resides
our humanity. Understanding the organization, function and development of the human brain, and brain-mediated responses to threat are the keys to understanding the traumatized child.

The Human Central Nervous System

The human brain is an amazingly complex organ comprised of over 100 billion neurons and ten times as many glial cells, all organized into systems designed to sense, process, store,perceive, and act on information from the external (e.g., visual, tactile, olfactory, auditory) and the internal (e.g., hormonal signals associated with hunger) environment (see Appendix 1, Key Points: Brain Organization and Function). All of these complex systems and activities work together with one overarching purpose –
survival (Goldstein, 1995). The major working units of the brain are neurons, and neurons are interconnected into networks, and networks into systems, and systems work together to mediate a set of specific functions (e.g., vision). Different systems in the brain mediate different functions.

Systems in the frontal cortex are involved in abstract thought; systems in the brainstem are responsible for regulating heartrate, blood pressure and arousal states; systems in the limbic areas are responsible for attachment, affect regulation and aspects of emotion; and systems in the cortex are
responsible for abstract cognition and complex language. Each of these systems vary somewhat with regard to function, specific primary neurotransmitter networks, synaptic structure, and regional localization.

All of these neural system, however, function in a similar fashion on the molecular level. They obey similar molecular rules mediating development, changes in response to chemical signals, and storage of information (see Table 1) The single most significant distinguishing feature of all nervous
tissue – of neurons – is that they are designed to change in response to external signals. Those molecular changes permit the storage of information by neurons and neural systems. Indeed it is this capacity which allows the brain to be responsive to the environment (external and internal) to allow survival of the organism.

. . .. cut . . . . .

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DV statistics get a spanking

Posted on May 21, 2013 by rwhiston | Leave a comment

Yes, the truth is out there, and, yes, it was all lies and mirrors !

by Robert Whiston FRSA May 21st 2013

Politician and pundits can’t resist quoting numbers and statistics in debates regardless of whether they fully understand them or not. The BCS and ONS are often at the top of their list. Now the ONS has produced statistics on DV that show it to be equal among married men and married women. Radical feminists and academics will now begin to quake hoping we will not spot the obvious as they realise their argument against father custody and shared parenting is evaporating before their eyes. It follows that if there is no difference in the aggression of married men and married women, no one sex poses more of a danger than the other to children. Thus, there can be no argument against fathers having full equal or shared custody.

Domestic violence and the industry that has grown up around it has been a ‘one way street’ since day one. Rarely does the other side of the coin get a mention – that of men abused and stabbed by their female partners and spouses. However, that did happen on April 14^th this year when the ‘Independent’ featured a large article by Emily Dugan on the topic. [1]

In an ONS publication released in recent months (“Focus on: Violent Crime and Sexual Offences, 2011/12”) the truth has finally been acknowledged, namely, that men can suffer as much DV as women, especially married men, as Table 4.08 shows.

Emily Dugan wrote in the ‘Independent’ of a man willing to tell his story; of him suffering 2 years of abuse at the hands of his girlfriend; and of being too embarrassed (and loyal to her) to report her to the police. In the end he had to sleep in his car for weeks before speaking to his local council, who found him a place at a men’s refuge.

All of this is very much ‘run of the mill’ for those small organisations trying to cope with the weekly avalanche of DV calls from men, but it would appear novel – even faintly absurd – to everyone else.

Vindication

American import Betsy Stanko, who has risen through the ranks to be at one time DV advisor to London’s Metropolitan Police, has since 1999 (see ‘Counting the Cost’) maintained the ‘1 in 4 women are DV victims’ figure. She and a host of other alleged researchers now stand rebuffed and refuted by the new ONS data. Together with ‘Women’s Aid’ acting in concert with ‘Refuge’ they have suppressed the numbers of men suffering the same DV experience. Women’s Aid have known about the problem of male victims and funding for many years.

In 1992 Sandra Horley, the director of the Chiswick Family Refuge, was quoted by Isabel Wolff, as saying;

“Refuges for women are struggling to survive, and if we put across this idea that the abuse of men is as great as the abuse of women, then it could seriously affect our funding”. (‘Domestic Violence: the other side’, – by Isabel Wolff, The Spectator, 28 Nov 1992, p 24).

Vindication, if ever one were needed, of the validity of the stance adopted by fathers’ and civil rights groups has thus finally occurred.

The situation today

The fact is that last year an estimated 7,000 + calls are made each year by men seeking advice or even protection. The problem is that those 7,000 calls were handled by unfunded men’s charities and there is the problem of no funding for them on the horizon. For over 10 years Whitehall has repeatedly denied fathers’ and men’s groups access to the millions of pounds made available to women’s groups. As a result women’s groups are well-funded and can cater for what is required of them but men’s and fathers group have one of these advantages. Women’s groups can offer a Rolls Royce service that men’s and father’s groups can only dream about. Of the puny amount of money earmarked by government for male victims of DV all is sent to women’s groups to administer.

The resulting provision of refuges for victims (by gender) is clearly visible in the graphic below, and amounts to overt ‘gender supremicism.’ Sex discrimination has allowed the funding of over 7,500 refuges for women but no government finance has been made available for one to cater for men and fathers.

Stanko and the Home Office maintained that men only represented 10% of all DV victims yet as the above graph shows even that low figure is not catered for. Ten percent of central funding has not been diverted to men’s and fathers’ organisations to provide sheltered housing. In fact, more than 40% of domestic violence victims are male according to campaign group ‘Parity’ which reveals in a recent report that claims of assaults made by wives and girlfriends are often ignored by police and media.

In our culture – and within how our present society is constructed – it is easy to make the case for female victims and for everyone to be prompted into being sympathetic. It presses all our chivalric buttons.

But as a man it’s very difficult to say you’ve been attacked and injured (beaten up, I suspect is Emily’s journalistic florid flourish). Had a male victim of DV gone to any police station 10 years ago and he would have been told to ‘pull himself together’ and or ‘stop wasting their valuable time’. Maybe things are different now ?

Nicola Graham-Kevan, an expert in partner violence at Central Lancashire University,is right when she says:

“Society is blind to women’s aggression. The biggest disparity is women’s ability to seek help which makes men very vulnerable to false allegations. People often won’t believe that men are victims. Men have to be seen as passive, obvious victims with clear injuries, whereas, if a woman makes allegations, they are believed much more easily.”

This women, Dr Graham-Kevan knows her onions. She believes, and rightly, that the system needs to adjust to make it safer for male victims and their children.

Right: Dr Nicola Graham-Kevan

Why ? Because she believes false allegations are too easily made by a mother and can result in custody being given to a dangerously abusive mother.

“The biggest thing for me as a parent is that children are being placed in significant positions of harm. It sounds anti-feminist, but I think we’re allowing women too many rights in the family court, because courts assume that the women are the best parent as a starting position, rather than looking at it equally.”

We all know that some fathers can be dangerous and/or abusive and the system acknowledges this and takes steps to avoid the occurrence – but what procedures are their in place to prevent dangerously abusive women being put in charge of children’s lives ? None.

As one would expect the Home Office does not like to be seen as actively being gender racist in its approach. Ten years after repeated request to Whitehall and personal letters to Baroness Scotland, then in change of DV funding, the Home Office claims that:

“We recognise that men are victims of domestic violence, too, and they deserve protection.. . . and set up the Male Victims Fund to support front-line organisations working with male victims of sexual and domestic violence. We also fund the Male Advice (and Inquiry) Line.”

It’s just a pity that the organisations concerned are so unsuccessful in receiving central funding that one wonders just how magnanimous is the Home Office really. Is this yet more “spin.”

In all probability it is, the £150,000 given by government to a men’s helpline is, in fact, a sub-division of Refuge and run by Women’s Aid. It is these funded but politicised charities that then have the temerity to pass on some of its cases to the unfunded sector, i.e. to fathers’ and men’s charity helplines.

Funding withdrawn

Funding for male victims has never occurred – not even in the 1990s when the Merton based “MALE” male help line was the only one in existence. MALE’s helpline and services were dependent on excess funds from Merton’s Women’s Aid of about £5,000 pa. When Merton’s Women’s Aid found their budget reduced in 2000, they stopped financing MALE’s helpline. This is not to criticise Merton’ actions but to highlight their equality approach, their recognition of an unmet demand and their gender neutrality given the funding restrictions.

Validation at last

So why all the fuss this time around ? the answer is simple For a generation or more the mantra has been that DV is a gender problem faced by al women regardless of class social standing or income. The actual analysis has clearly shown that this is untrue and that those who are disadvantaged by class, social housing low-income or unmarried are far more likely to become victims. This has been the view propagated by the men’s movement throughout that time.

Now there is statically analysis from the Home Office verifying that very position. Indeed, it goes further and says married men are assaulted more often that married women – remember only a few years ago the government line and that of Whitehall as that males items while a few did existed mounted to only about 10% of all cases. Well the BCS of 10 years ago knocked that claim on the head with the revelation that 1 in every 3 DV cases reported was of a male victim.

New broom

ONS (which has undergone a management shake up of late following continued criticism by some statisticians of its performance and reliability), published “Focus on: Violent Crime and Sexual Offences, 2011/12” in Feb of this year (2013). [2] It is this publication that has ruffled feathers.

While Table 4.06 is interesting (“Estimated number of victims of intimate violence in the last year, by headline categories, 2004/05 to 2011/12 CSEW”), it is Table 4.08 that is truly riveting (see first graphic above). What grabbed headlines was the revelation that married men suffered more abuse at the hands of their partner than did married women (see emphasis in the Table shown below).

Indeed, the annual abuse rate among cohabiting couples is more or less at a parity of 3.2 and 3.3. This is very much of a surprise given data published earlier which indicated a higher rate of combativeness. in actuality it is high by 50% (e.g. 2.3% v 3.2%) but what is surprising is again the parity among the sexes.

What this table does show most clearly and earlier ones did not was the steep jump in likelihood of abuse when women fell into the single, separated and divorced categories. in these subsets incidences double and treble the rate found between married couples.

This is key since it was established and claimed by the fathers movement that being married was the safest not the most dangerous place for a woman to be and yet feminist dogma since the 1970s has claimed he very opposite ,i.e. most dangerous.

The other key finding is that since 2004 violence, within a domestic and partner setting, has fallen by around 20%. This fall is reflected in North America and the phenomenon commented upon by Prof Steven Pinker of Harvard. The decade long decline in crime beginning in the 1990s was brought to the Prime Minister’s attention at the time (Tony Blair), started around 3 years later than the US but was just as dramatic.

The graph below depicts the headlong tumble in all types of violent crimes beginning in 1996 (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/hosb1210.pdf).

Muddied waters

Of the high-impact articles which appear to have light the touch-paper on domestic violence this time around, three stand out:

1/. “Domestic violence: ‘As a man, it’s very difficult to say I’ve been beaten up’, Independent, 14 April 2013. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/domestic-violence-as-a-man-its-very-difficult-to-say-ive-been-beaten-up-8572143.html

2/. Full Fact, “How many people were victims of domestic violence over the last year ?” July, 2012 http://fullfact.org/factchecks/how_many_people_were_victims_of_domestic_violence_over_the_last_year-27625

3/. “UK: More Married Men DV Victims than Married Women”, National Parents Organization, April 15th, 2013 by Robert Franklin http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/2013/04/15/uk-more-married-men-dv-victims-than-married-women/

Full Fact, by publishing in 2012 did not have the advantage of the latest number but did focus as site dedicated to “Promoting accuracy in public debate” accuracy on contradictions (the “confusing, seemingly conflicting”) claims that existed at the time with regard the number of DV victims.

By way of example it cited The Times, dated 19^th July 2012 :

“Domestic violence has fallen from a peak of more than one million incidents in 1993 to just under 400,000 last year, the crime survey said.”

It then gave The Guardian, (22^nd July 2012) as an example:

“The latest statistics from the British Crime Survey show that every year in the UK more than 1 million women suffer domestic abuse.”

And not forgetting Ms. Sandra Horley, Chief Executive of Refuge (23^rd July 2012), who maintains that there were more than double the number of cases for females alone last year, stating:

“We are concerned that the British Crime Survey tells us that there are an estimated 1.2 million women who experience domestic abuse each year in the UK.”

So in 25 years from now will the entire female population of Britain have been abuse din this way ? This is not even remotely possible – one again we find them playing with numbers without understanding them. (This is reminiscent of the Dr Susan Edwards’ scandal and claims made by Women’s Aid back in 1995. For those not familiar with The Sunday Times exposé of Edwards in Jan 1995 she was shown to have grossly distorted and manipulated DV data provided by Met Police). [3]

If we go back to another year, Sunday Sept 5th 2010 we find Denis Campbell’s article in The Observer, entitled “More than 40% of domestic violence victims are male, report reveals” and a commentary about the campaign group Parity claiming that assaults by wives and girlfriends are often ignored by police and media.

Fake or fact

How, asks Full Fact, can all 3 be right at the same time ? Well, now we have a more definitive answer in the form of the ONS publication “Focus on: Violent Crime and Sexual Offences, 2011/12” – and, of course, we have always had the motive – securing next years funding.

Firstly, the headline that has attracted most attention of the one portraying married men as more often attacked than married women:

More married men (2.3%) suffered from partner abuse last year than married women, according to the latest British Crime Survey. Yet help is still much harder to find for men.

On the broader measure of ‘all victims’ the new gap is very small. Based on the 2010/11 British Crime Survey’s (BCS) self-completion module, 7% of women aged 16 to 59 were victims of domestic abuse in the past year compared with 5% of men (see p 62, and ONS Table 3.01). [4]

As one would expect with family violence and abuse the BCS makes the valid point that despite using a self-completion module (which is acknowledged as by far the more accurate technique to deploy) under-reporting still exists (p. 62). In addition the BCS estimates that:

“ . . . . for the proportion of people who were victims of domestic abuse have decreased compared with 2004/05 for both male and female victims, but there have been no statistically significant changes in recent years (Tables 3.02 and 3.03).”

So this would suggest that the real figure for male victims was, for many years, much higher than officially acknowledged in the past when it was begrudgedly put as low as 10% of all DV victims.

Looking at the above chart (sourced from Full Facts) one wonders whether the ‘spike’ seen in the years around 1993 – 97 were actual or a result of hysteria or sections of the public the succumbing to propaganda messages. It is surely remarkable that with a population that has not only grown substantially in 30 years but that has attracted ever more diverse cultures that the level of incident in 2009 should be at the same level as 1981 (see dotted red line). It s true that stretching or compressing a graph can give different impressions so the reader is invited to return to the previous graph above listed as Figure 3.1 and compare.

The problem with DV conversations in latter years is that the numbers have been conflated with sexual offences and the number of personal abuse incidents has fallen. This no doubt is to maintain the revenue stream that some charities have become addicted to. Hence one arrives at paragraph like this in official publications, taken from the 2009/10 British Crime Survey (BCS) self-completion module on intimate violence: [5]

“Women who were separated had the highest risk of both domestic abuse (22.3%) and stalking (11.4%) compared with all other groups by marital status. The pattern was slightly different for sexual assault, with separated women (4.3%) only having a statistically significantly higher risk of being a victim than women who were married (0.9%) or cohabiting (1.4%).”
7% of women and 4% of men reported having experienced any domestic abuse in the past year (Table 3.01 and Figure 3.2), equivalent to an estimated 1.2 million female victims of domestic abuse and 700,000 male victims (Table 3.03). [NB in the following year this had become 7% and 5% – RW].

Twenty-nine per cent of women and 16% of men had experienced any [some form] of domestic abuse (i.e. inc. all emotional, financial or physical abuse, sexual assault or stalking by a partner or family member), since they were 16. These figures are equivalent to an estimated 4.8 million female victims of domestic abuse and 2.6 million male victims.

And finally

At long last comes the other official concession about the socio-economic implications, lifestyle choices and circumstances dictating or at least being shown as a linkage with personal abuse incidents.

Logistic regression shows that those characteristics that contributed most to explaining the risk of domestic abuse were use of any drug in the last year, marital status, having a long-term illness or disability and the respondent’s sex. However, other variables such as household structure, age, tenure, occupation, household income, alcohol consumption and number of visits to a nightclub in the last month were also important (Table 3.08).
People who had used any drug in the last year had higher odds of being a victim of domestic abuse compared with those who hadn’t.
People who were separated, divorced or widowed had higher odds of being a victim of domestic abuse compared with all other marital status groups.
It is interesting to note that no characteristics based on the respondent’s local area were independently associated with the risk of domestic abuse.

On the ManKind Initiative website [6] they have picked out the following as worthy of special mention.

1.1% of men and 1.3% of women were victims of severe force at the hands of their partner during 2011/12. Over a lifetime the figures are 6.1% and 13.2% respectively.
More married men (2.3%) suffered from partner abuse in 2011/12 than married women (1.8%)
More men in managerial and professional occupations (3.0%) in 2011/12 than women with the same occupation (2.6%)
Men with children (3.0%) are as likely to be victims of partner abuse than men without children. The figure is the same for female victims (3.5%)

Men in the North West are twice (4.5%) as likely to be a victim of domestic abuse than men in the South West (2.0%) in 2011/12

ONS’s “Focus on: Violent Crime and Sexual Offences, 2011/12” also vindicated our position regarding marital status:

Looking at marital status, single people had the highest chance of being a victim (6.6%). The logistic regression analysis carried out on the 2009/10 survey suggests that this reflects a difference from married people who cannot be explained simply by differences in the age profiles of these groups.

The picture gets worse for women who were ‘separated’. They had the highest risk of all for falling foul of domestic abuse in the last year at 21.0%. Likewise married women at 0.8% were the e;ast likely to encounter a sexual assault but for single women it was 6.5%, and for separated women 4.1%.

By contrast single, divorced or separated men were more likely to be victims of domestic abuse (than married men) in the last year at 3.4%.

Full Facts concludes that the large discrepancy between the figures quoted in the Times and the Guardian / Ms Horley can be traced to two factors – the different definitions used and the different methods by which the data was gathered.

The Guardian’s higher figure is in part because ‘emotional and non-violent coercive factors’ are being considered, due to the more reliable data collection method obtained by self-completion for this particular type of crime. However the Times’s figure, while only referring to domestic ‘violence’, may still underestimate even this given the face-to-face nature by which the figures are gathered. (However, the 2013 ONS data means that conclusion will have to be revisited).

No more can it be claimed that DV / personal abuse a ‘gender specific’ crime.

No longer is it possible to say it affects everyone no matter what their walk of life. The Tables above makes that abundantly clear.

Now we await a rebalancing of budget expenditure – a wait it would be unwise to hold one’s breath in anticipation of its arrival

E N D

Footnotes:

[1] “Domestic violence: ‘As a man, it’s very difficult to say I’ve been beaten up’, Independent, 14 April 2013. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/domestic-violence-as-a-man-its-very-difficult-to-say-ive-been-beaten-up-8572143.html

[2] See ONS http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-290621

[3] “Knocked for six: the myth of a nation of wife-batterers”, by Neil Lyndon and Paul Ashton, The Sunday Times, London 29/01/95 (Copyright 1995. http://www.eastb.freeserve.co.uk/dv-panl.htm (see also Appendix B):

[4] See https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/116417/hosb1011.pdf

[5] See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs11/hosb0111.pdf

[6] ManKind http://www.mankind.org.uk/pdfs/21%20Key%20Facts_May%202013.pdf

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Scandinavia gives up on gender studies

Posted on April 30, 2013 by rwhiston | Leave a comment

by Robert Whiston April 30th 2013

Greg Andresen, of Men’s Health Australia, based in New South Wales, sends this post about Nordic Countries defunding gender ideology.[1] It was a dilemma as to whether this article was best suited to the Gender violence or False allegation blog site – as the reader will discover.

[ originating text by Greg Andresen ]

A devastating blow for “Gender Theory” has been dealt when the Nordic Council of Ministers (a regional inter-governmental co-operation consisting of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland) decided to close down the NIKK Nordic Gender Institute.

The NIKK had been the flagship of “Gender Theory”, providing the “scientific” basis for social and educational policies that, from the 1970s onward, had transformed the Nordic countries to become the most “gender sensitive” societies in the world.

The decision was made after the Norwegian State Television had broadcasted a television documentary in which the hopelessly unscientific character of the NIKK and its research was exposed.

The producer of the series is Harald Eia (pictured), a Norwegian comedian, who had gained some popularity in Norway with his satirical TV shows. Besides being a comedian, Mr. Eia also holds a degree in social sciences. He was puzzled by the fact that, despite all efforts by politicians and social engineers to remove “gender stereotypes”, girls continued to opt for typically “female” professions (such as nurses, hairdressers, etc.) whereas boys continued being attracted by “male” careers (such as that of technicians, construction workers, etc.). Indeed, rather than being reversed by “gender equality” policies, the trend became more accentuated.

Left: a rather unkempt Harald Eia

In his documentary, Mr. Eia just went, in the company of a camera team, and asked some innocent questions to the leading researchers and scientists of the NIKK. Then he took the replies and brought them to leading scientists in other parts of the world, notably in the UK and the US, asking them to comment on the findings of their Norwegian peers. As was to be expected, the results of the Norwegian bogus science provoked amusement and incredulity among the international scientific community – especially because it was based on mere theory, never supported by any empirical research. Mr. Eia filmed those reactions, went back to Oslo, and showed them to the NIKK researchers. It turned out that, when confronted with empiric science, the “Gender Researchers” were speechless, and completely unable to defend their theories against the reality check.

What is more, the bogus was exposed to ridicule in front of the entire TV audience, and people began to ask why it was necessary to fund with 56 million Euro of taxpayers’ money some ideology-driven “research” that had no scientific credentials at all.

As it turned out, a few innocent questions, asked by a comedian, were sufficient to bring down the pompous edifice of “Gender Theory”. It is hoped that the lesson will be heard in other countries, or in the EU and the UN, where this ideology still holds sway in the corridors of power…

To watch Mr. Eia’s documentary in full length, visit this site and, when asked to enter a password, type “hjernevask” (the Norwegian word for “brainwash”, which was aptly chosen as title for the documentary). Non-Norwegians don’t need to worry – there are English subtitles.

Part 1 – ”The Gender Equality Paradox”
Part 2 – ”The Parental Effect”
Part 3 – ”Gay/straight”
Part 4 – ”Violence”
Part 5 – ”Sex”
Part 6 – ”Race”
Part 7 – ”Nature or Nurture”

[1] See http://www.menshealthaustralia.net/content/nordic-countries-defund-gender-ideology.html

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	Boys	Boys	Girls	Girls	Total	Ratio to Fathers
	1-4 year old	5-14 year old	1-4 year old	5-14 year old
Residual	868	938	697	752	3,255	101.7
Other Accidents	835	995	492	458	2,780	86.9
Car Accidents	455	1,188	365	792	2,800	87.5
Congenital Anomalies	325	273	313	184	1,095	34.2
Cancer	246	582	178	446	1,452	45.4
Heart	111	181	106	153	551	17.2
Flu	91	69	77	67	304	9.5
HIV	74	20	73	81	248	7.8
Lung		145	56	114	315	9.8
Septicemia	10	10	36	10	66	2.1

Suicide	– –	225	– –	77	302	9.4

Killed By Other Men	40	59	36	38	173	5.4
Killed By Fathers	7	9	9	7	32	1.0
Killed By Mothers	167	243	161	158	729	22.8
All Causes	3,349	5,003	2,599	3,327	14,278
Homicide	214	311	206	203	934

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An introduction to

Male victims of domestic violence – the unseen side of domestic violence

Conclusion

E n d

Appendix A

Home Office Study 191 (Jan 1999)

Appendix B -1

Spousal Assaults expressed as rate per 1,000 couples (1975 – 1992)

Spousal assaults expressed as rate per 1,000 couples

Appendix B –2

Victims of domestic violence by sex – England and Wales

Appendix C –1

USA

England & Wales

Appendix C –2

Appendix C -4

England – NSPCC

Child Homicides –

Extract

Issues and Findings

Appendix E

Home Office Criminals Statistics.

BBC ‘Panorama’ – Women and violence

Canadian Findings

See also:-

Yes, the truth is out there, and, yes, it was all lies and mirrors !

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