INTRODUCTION

As mentioned in Chapter 1, the terminology to describe violence between those in close relationships has long been subject to dispute. In the old days people talked of ‘wife battering’ : the problem of husbands beating their wives. The language morphed into domestic violence. Now, agreement over the precise terminology has broken down: domestic abuse, intimate partner violence, gender-based violence and intimate relationships abuse have all been proposed. Disputes over definition plague this area of the law. But these disputes involve much more than a group of philologists shouting past each other; the different definitions reflect disagreements about the nature of domestic abuse and the wrong that is at the heart of the abuse. Until we know what domestic abuse is, we cannot really produce an effective response to it. At the core of the approach taken by this book in relation to this debate is the claim that there are a set of special wrongs that are at the heart of domestic abuse and it is these that should form the basis of defining what domestic abuse is. Before looking at some official definitions, we will start with the statistics.

STATISTICS

The statistics on domestic abuse are horrific. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that:

• – Just over one-third (35%) of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.

• – Most of this violence is intimate partner violence. Worldwide, almost one-third (30%) of women who have been in a relationship report that they have experienced some form of physical and/or sexual violence committed by their intimate partner in their lifetime.

• – Globally, as many as 38% of murders of women are committed by a male intimate partner.

The United Nations also cites the figure of 35% of women having experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence. However, it notes that in some individual countries, up to 70% of women have suffered physical and/or sexual abuse by a partner. It has been estimated worldwide that those responsible for the deaths of half of all women who were killed were intimate partners or family relatives.

A study of the 28 EU Member States found that 43% of women had experienced psychological violence at the hands of an intimate partner.