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Intimate Partner Violence

The phrase intimate partner violence encompasses a pattern of psychological and emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and stalking between past or present intimate romantic partners. Scientific and clinical evidence indicates that intimate partner violence can result in a plethora of mental health and physical maladies due to ongoing patterns of abuse within relationships, and those most at risk of victimization are women and their children. This entry reviews the incidence and definition of intimate partner violence, the risk factors, and the effects of violence on both victims and perpetrators. Interventions for such abuse now cut across multiple public and private sectors (criminal/civil justice systems, the health care system, child services, battered women's shelters, etc.), and mental health professionals must know how to negotiate such systems in order to help victims and their children. Various prevention and intervention strategies are described below. Finally, current issues concerning intimate partner violence include the controversies surrounding batterer treatment, the unintended consequences of contemporary changes in the law (e.g., mandatory/preferred arrest), and the recent increase in effective yet damaging manipulation of criminal, civil, and family court processes by batterers.

Incidence of Intimate Partner Violence

According to the latest reports from the United Nations and the World Health Organization, intimate partner violence extends across class, culture, ethnicity, and nationality and results in devastating physical and financial costs to individuals, families, and communities across the globe. In the United States, it is estimated that nearly 5.3 million incidents occur each year among women 18 years or older, and 3.2 million occur among men. Fortunately, most intimate partner violence assaults within the United States are relatively minor and are limited to pushing, grabbing, or slapping.

Nevertheless, intimate partner violence results in nearly 2 million officially reported injuries and 1,300 deaths each year, with the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of such severe violence being men and the majority of victims being women. Even so, most intimate partner violence incidents are not officially reported to the authorities, and the Centers for Disease Control Injury Center estimates that only about 20% of intimate partner sexual assaults/rapes, 25% of physical assaults, and 50% of stalkings against women are reported. Thus, most authorities agree that available data nationwide are gross underestimates of the problem.

Defining Intimate Partner Violence

Research points to the importance of societal factors that influence individual and collective perceptions of the abuse. For some intimate partner violence victims, the abuse is perceived as a normal part of relationships and is not defined as criminal behavior. For many perpetrators, the abuse is perceived as the correct and most effective way to get their needs met within an intimate romantic relationship. This should not be surprising, because intimate partner violence has only recently been defined as criminal behavior. During the Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, intimate partner violence was named and brought out from behind closed doors. Prior to that time, violence between partners was viewed as private business and not a place for the state to intervene. Battered women's shelters and rape crisis centers sprang up across the country and are now located within every major metropolitan area in the United States. Due to the work of women's rights advocates, intimate partner violence is now defined as a crime worthy of police intervention and prosecution, similar to assaults that might occur on the street between strangers. Every state in the union now has some form of intimate partner violence law on the books (often referred to as “domestic violence” in the statutes), and many states now also include stalking within these laws. In addition, most states no longer require intimate partners to be married or living together for these laws to apply. Based on variation by state, a complex set of laws protecting intimate partner violence victims now exist (ranging from civil protective orders to mandatory/preferred arrest at the scene), and perpetrators can no longer abuse their partners with impunity.

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