Battered husbands a "significant problem": study

By Steven Edwards

NEW YORK — A rare study of men as victims of domestic violence shows nearly three out of ten have been battered or otherwise abused.

The survey headed by Canadian researcher Dr. Robert Reid also found abused men often remain in the home even though the common expectation may be they could more easily leave than an abused woman.

“We’ve found these experiences happen repeatedly over multiple years in a similar way that reporting on women victims has shown they will stay,” Reid said in an interview from the Group Health Cooperative Center for Health Studies in Seattle, Washington, where he serves as associate medical director for preventive care.

“The perception is men can walk out because they are more often breadwinners, and women stay because they have children or are working in the home – but the process is more complicated than that.”

The study, which will be reported in next month’s issue of American Journal of Preventative Medicine, looked at a sample of 420 men, with more than 19 out of 20 listing their partners as women.

Two said they had suffered forced intercourse or unwanted sexual contact, while more common forms of “physical” abuse included hitting, kicking and slapping.

“Non-physical” abuse included threats, expressions of anger and application of controlling behaviour.

“Abuse of men is generally a hidden problem that has been largely understudied,” Reid said. “Men often don’t talk about violence [against them], and people don’t generally ask.”

The study found men under 55 are more likely to be victims of abusive partners, but older men suffer greater mental anguish when they are targeted.

It calls “shortsighted” the failure of many healthcare workers to inquire about “intimate partner violence” when treating men, but says doing so “may open a conversational space about abuse … in their relationships.”

The aim of the study was to raise awareness among the centre’s health care providers that domestic violence against men was a “significant problem,” Reid said.

In Canada, seven per cent of women and six per cent of men said they’d been victims of spousal abuse in the previous five years, the second of a five-yearly General Survey on Victimization reported in 2004.

“We see a lot of couples where there is mutual violence,” said Rick Goodwin, executive director of the Men’s Project headquartered in Ottawa.

“But guys are generally very reluctant to say they have been a victim of violence by a woman because a horrible amount of shame is involved.”

He said the US finding of three out of 10 males as victims could even be higher – though he cautioned the level of violence against men in a relationship is usually lower than that against women.

Indeed, the US study itself bore this out when its results were compared to a similar study the centre did aimed at quantifying the level of domestic violence against women.

“About 61 per cent of the women who reported physical abuse described it as severe, but for men it was between 20 and 40 per cent, depending on their age,” Reid said.

Canwest News Service