July, 1995 (Centers for Disease and Control, 1998), 30% of the 3130
women interviewed reported that they had experienced partner abuse
during their lifetime, 6% reported they had experienced partner abuse in
the last year. The National Violence Against Women Survey in 1998
conducted by United States Justice Department estimated that 1.5 million
women were raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner
annually in United States (United States Justice Department, 2000). Many
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of the victims were usually victimized more than once, so the number of
intimate partner victimizations exceeded the number of intimate partner
victims annually, with 4.8 million intimate partner rapes and physical
assaults reported annually. These findings concluded that intimate partner
abuse is a serious criminal justice and public health concern (United States
Justice Department, 2000).
2 The United Kingdom
In The United Kingdom, the most comprehensive survey of intimate
partner abuse was done in 1996 (The British Crime Survey, 1996).
Mirrlees-Blank & Byron (2002) analyzed the above survey and concluded
that among a sample of 10,844 female respondents aged 16 to 59, 4.2% of
women had been physically assaulted by a current or former intimate
partner in the last year; 5.9% of women had experienced physical assault
and /or frightening threats; 23% of women had been physically assaulted
by a current or former intimate partner at some time in their lives. From
the result, it was estimated there were 6.6 million incidents of domestic
assault in 1995. On average, female victims were more likely to
experience repeated assault.
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3 In Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, despite the increased attention given to intimate
partner abuse, there is a dearth of research on prevalence of intimate
partner abuse. As far as this investigator can deduce, there are only three
local studies on the prevalence of intimate partner abuse (Leung, Leung,
Lam & Ho, 1999; Tang, 1994, 1999). In a community survey of intimate
partner abuse in Hong Kong (Tang, 1999), 67.2% of the 1132 female
respondents reported experiencing at least one incident of verbal abuse
and 10% experienced at least one incident of physical abuse by their
intimate partners during the surveyed year. Minor physical violence was
reported to be seven times more common than severe physical violence
(9.8% against 1.4%).
