Letters
Domestic Violence
Contributor / 2007-08-22 13:13:39
The article, 'Domestic Violence - Spain's Biggest Disgrace' (edition 172) unfairly ignored violence by women and left Spanish male victims and their children invisible.
I'm sure the author would have said 'men and women' when discussing soldiers or firefighters, even though women are the minority of these categories. Why not domestic violence victims?
Although men underreport more than women in crime data, sociological data shows women initiate domestic violence as often as men, that women use weapons more than men and that 38% of injured victims are men. California State University Professor Martin Fiebert summarises almost 200 of these studies online at http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
This was recently confirmed again in a 32-nation study by the University of New Hampshire, which also found controlling behaviour exists equally in perpetrators of both sexes.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2006/may/em_060519male.cfm?type=n
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID41E2.pdf
It is wrong to ignore male victims just because they don't fit into a certain man-bad/woman-good ideology. When we ignore male victims, we also ignore their children, who continue to be damaged by witnessing the violence regardless of how severe it is. This is a serious problem worldwide.
That's why a global coalition of experts has formed to support research-based, inclusive approaches, and their website has solid data showing women initiate the violence as often as men, at http://www.nfvlrc.org/
M. E. Angelucci
President of Los Angeles chapter
National Coalition of Free Men
http://www.ncfmla.org
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