ONS Releases Figures on Women Suffering Domestic Abuse

30/07/2018

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has issued its latest findings on women suffering domestic abuse by a current or former partner.

The report, which incorporates figures from the years March 2015 to 2017, shows that young women aged between 16 and 24 years were more likely to have experienced partner abuse (15%) than women aged between 45 and 59 years (10%).

Similarly, women who suffered from a long-term illness or disability were more than twice as likely to have experienced some form of partner abuse than those without. In particular, women with an illness or disability that limits their activities were more likely to suffer abuse.

Bisexual women were almost twice as likely to have experienced partner abuse than heterosexual women (10.9% compared to 6.0%). Looking in to the figures further, this consisted of being twice as likely to suffer non-physical abuse (6.8% compared with 3.9%) and, alarmingly, nearly five times as likely to have experienced sexual assault by a partner or ex-partner (1.9% compared with 0.4%).

More than any other group, women who identified as mixed/multiple ethnicity (10.1%), were more likely to have experienced partner abuse. This is three times more likely than Asian/Asian British women (2.8%) while white women suffering abuse accounted for 6.5%.

Women living in households where the income was less than £10,000 were more than four times more likely to suffer abuse at the hands of their partners than women with household incomes of £50,000 or more (14.3% compared to 3.3%). Those in social housing were nearly three times as likely to experience abuse (11.1%) than women who were owner occupiers (4.1%).

Figures for the report were taken from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and are based on the experiences of women aged 16 to 59 years old. The CSEW refers to abuse carried out by a partner or ex-partner as being:

• non-sexual abuse: physical force, emotional or financial abuse, threats to hurt the respondent or someone close to them
• sexual assault: rape or assault by penetration (including attempts), indecent exposure or unwanted touching
• stalking carried: two or more incidents (causing distress, fear or alarm) of receiving obscene or threatening unwanted letters, emails, text messages or phone calls, having had obscene or threatening information about them placed on the internet, waiting or loitering around home or workplace, or following or watching the victim

The full report can be found here.