A new U.S. Justice Department report released on Sunday, August 24, reveals that nearly half of the 1.4 million people who received emergency-room treatment after a violent attack in 1994 were hurt by someone they knew. Seventeen percent of the victims were attacked by intimate partners such as their current or former spouses or by their boyfriends/girlfriends. Within the group of people abused by their spouses, women were 9 times more likely to be attacked than were men. Relatives composed 8% of the attackers and friends and acquaintances accounted for 23%. Strangers committed 23% of the attacks. The remaining thirty percent of attackers could not be categorized because the victim was not willing to acknowledge the abuse and/or to name the abuser. Bonnie J. Campbell, director of the Justice Department’s Violence Against Women Office, stated that the results of this study confirm feminists’ claims that domestic violence is highly unreported.
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