KKS

Quick Statistics

 

Find some statistics and links here about international, national and Western Australian data on domestic and family violence. 

INTERNATIONAL DATA

 

• Family and domestic violence is a gendered crime. Approximately 95% of the victims of family and domestic violence are female, and 90% of the perpetrators are male (Bagshaw & Chung, 2000)

 

• Women are more likely to experience more severe and ongoing violence including life threatening acts (Bagshaw et al. 2010)

 

• At the start of the 21st century, violence kills and harms as many women and girls between the ages of 15 and 44 as cancer. It is estimated that of all women killed in 2012, almost half were killed by intimate partners or family members (UN Women, 2014).

 

• More often than not, cases of violence against women go unreported. For instance, a study based on interviews with 42,000 women across the 28 Member States of the European Union revealed that only 14 per cent of women reported their most serious incident of intimate partner violence to the police, and 13 per cent reported their most serious incident of non-partner violence to the police (UN Women, 2014). 

 

• In the United States, 11.8 per cent of new HIV infections among women more than 20 years old during the previous year were attributed to intimate partner violence (Sareen, Pagura & Grant as cited in UN Women, 2014).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Find out more

 

Follow the links to find out more about domestic and family violence.

 

Australians’ attitudes to violence against women by Vic Health (2014)

 

Personal Safety Survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2016)

 

Child Protection Australia Recent Findings 2016-17 by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2018)

NATIONAL DATA

 

• The United Nations (2005) State of the World Population report explains that domestic violence constitutes the single biggest health risk to Australian women of reproductive age, and of those women, many have children who witness the violence against them.

 

• The Cost of Violence against Women and their Children report by The National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children (2009) estimated that violence against women and their children cost the economy $15.6 billion in 2009.

 

• It has been demonstrated that domestic and family violence is a significant issue that affects a considerable portion of our young population in Australia.  Studies have shown that one in four children will grow up experiencing domestic and family violence in some capacity (Indemaur, 2001). 

 

The most recent information on violence nationally is documented in the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Personal Safety Survey (2012). The findings of the survey indicated that:

 

• 5.3% of all women aged 18 years and over (467,300) had experienced violence in the 12 months prior to the survey

 

• In 2012 an estimated 25% (2,142,600) of all women aged 18 years and over had experienced emotional abuse by a partner since the age of 15. An estimated 392,100 women (4.5% of all women) had experienced emotional abuse by their current partner since the age of 15 and an estimated 1,840,600 women (21% of all women) had experienced emotional abuse by a previous partner since the age of 15.

 

• Of all women who had experienced one or more of the selected types of sexual harassment behaviours (4,221,100), 98% had experienced these behaviours by a male perpetrator (4,156,300) 

STATE DATA

 

In the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's (AIHW) child protection reports, there are some key areas of concern for WA in terms of the rates of abuse that children and young people face when compared to the national averages. Major areas of concern for WA based on data collected from the period 2012-13 are (AIHW, 2014):

 

• Notifications concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people were greater than for non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people in the areas of sexualised abuse, neglect, the ratio of children and young people experiencing abuse compared to non-Indigenous children and young people (14:1) and the ratio of children and young people in out-of-home care compared to non-Indigenous children and young people (16.1:1)

 

• Notifications for the sexualised abuse of non-Indigenous children and young people (17.2%, compared to the national average 14.9%)

 

• Total number of notifications since 2008–09 (increase of 5042 cases over 5 years). WA, following NSW, had the greatest increase in notifications.

 

• Pregnancy is an especially dangerous time for young mothers as the incidence of domestic violence among pregnant Western Australian teenagers is higher than rates reported for the general community (Quinlivan, 2000).

The number of notifications to child protection in WA from 2004-05 to 2012-13