Facts about domestic violence

• 1 in 3 NZ women experience physical and/or sexual abuse at the hands of a partner at some point in their lifetime. (Fanslow and Robinson, 2004)
• A woman is killed by her (ex)partner every 3.7 weeks
• Between 20 November 2005 and 3 January 2006, six women were killed by their partners or previous partners - leaving 19 children orphaned.
• During December 2005 and January 2006, NZ Police attended nearly 11,000 instances of reported family violence - this is about one incident every eight minutes. 
• Women’s Refuge provided services to 17,773 women and 12,161 children during 2005/06.
• In a NZ Department of Justice study, 1 in 5 men admitted to assaulting their partners in the last year (Leibrich, Paulin, Ransom, 1995)
• In 2000, 50% of homicides in NZ were family violence related (NZ Police Internal Report, 2003)
• In 2005, 29 of 61 murders were domestic violence related.
• During December 2005 and January 2006, NZ Police attended nearly 11,000 instances of reported family violence - this is one incident every eight minutes. 
• In December 2005, CYFS received over 5,000 notifications of suspected child abuse.
• 12 children are killed every year in New Zealand.  Most deaths are caused by people responsible for the child’s care (Kotch, Chalmers, Fanslow, 1993)
• The co-relationship between child abuse and partner abuse is estimated to be between 45-65% (Edelson, 1999)
• About 10 children are killed every year in New Zealand by a member(s) of their family.
• Around 22% of New Zealand girls and 10% of New Zealand boys have experienced sexual abuse (Anderson 1993, Youth 2000).
• Only 12% of all victims of abuse ever come to the notice of the justice system
• The annual cost of family violence in New Zealand is at least $1.2 billion – this conservative figure based on notifications to police is more than the $1.0 billion earned from our wool exports in 1993-1994 (Sniveley, 1994)
• Police deal with more than 70,000 family violence calls a year but estimate only 18% of incidents are reported.
• Police attend 120 calls a day to incidents of family violence.
• In 2005 Police attended 63,685 incidents of violence and estimate that at least 62,625
  children and young people aged under 17 were involved.
• The Domestic Purposes Benefit gives options for abused women and enables them to take a stand against violent child rearing.  Most spend less that 3 years on the DPB (Nixon and McCulloch, 1994)
• Abused women are five times more likely to need mental health services and three times more likely to need other health services.  Violence causes severe health deterioration across all mental and physical health measures (Elvidge, 1997)

Link to NZ Family Violence Clearinghouse fact sheets

remember:

domestic violence is against the law, you have a right to be safe and protected.