A spoonful of statistics

Part of my healing process and transition into advocacy has been learning more about abuse, abusive patterns, abuser profiles, and the frequency/results of abuse as captured in statistics.

Most studies or synthesized numbers are from the '90s, which is frustrating, but still offer a glimpse into the wide impact of the destruction.

Here are a few that jumped out at me from a summary (PDF) posted on Stanford's Sexual Assault & Relationship Abuse Support & Prevention website: (emphasis mine)

• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the USA -- more than rapes, muggings and car accidents combined (Surgeon General, United States, 1992)
• A woman is beaten every 9 seconds in the USA (Family Violence Prevention Fund Report, 1994)
• According to the Center for Disease Control, a woman is in nine times more danger of violent attack in her home than on the streets.
• In 1993, 3.9 million American women who were living with their spouse or partner were physically abused, while 20.7 million American women in the same living situation suffered emotional or verbal abuse (The Commonwealth Fund, 1993).
• Over 50% of the women killed in the USA are killed by male intimate partners or ex-partners (Journal of the American Medical Association, 1992)
• Approximately 50% of the homeless women and children in the USA are on the streets because of violence in the home (Joseph Biden, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Violence Against Women: Victims of the System, 1991)

Reading the warning signs of an abusive relationship broke my denial. It was the first time I reconsidered my loved ones' doubts as something worth considering, and not an attack on the man that I loved. It started the long process of breaking away, even though I went back and forth for months on whether those warning signs might apply to my situation (I felt that since we were intercultural, the signs might not be the same for us, and I explained away a lot of the red flags)

The next month, Redbook happened to highlight emotional abuse ("Invisible Violence") in their October 2008 issue. A loved one recommended I read the article, which hit me profoundly again with the similarities between my situation and other women's relationships. I kept it beside my bed and read it for strength each time I tried to call things off with my ex, only to be talked into staying and convinced that I couldn't trust my perceptions (or loved ones).

I found the Power and Control Wheel online in the final days of our relationship and was stunned by how accurately it portrayed -- in all but two of the segments -- my experience. Shocked that a stranger who knew nothing about either my partner or myself could grasp everything that I had known for the last few years, I relinquished my rationalizations. Surrendering to the truth was the next step.