To the editor;
Recent articles in Kamloops This Week on domestic violence give me concern that the articles give the impression only women are victims of domestic violence and men are always the perpetrators.
Obviously, that is often true, but singling out one gender for blame in this matter is hardly fair.
A large scale study done by Health Canada (Trocme, 2001) found that the largest single group for violence against children is biological mothers.
Domestic violence in same-sex relationships is almost double that for heterosexual couples, with lesbians couples registering the highest level of violent incidents.
Statistics from Great Britain found that, on average, 40 per cent of the victims of relationship violence were men.
But, men are much less likely to report violence and, when they do, police may actually side with the women.
Statistics Canada’s Family Violence report from 2011 stated that between 2000 and 2009, men were most likely to be killed by a common-law partner (66 per cent), with stabbing as the most common method.
The General Social Survey of 2009 found 4.4 per cent of Canadian men reported relationship violence from their current partner, while 3.2 per cent of women reported such violence.
In other words, women perpetrate more violence against their current partners than do men (it was 20.1 female vs 14.2 male for former relationships, though).
The bottom line is relationship violence is a complex issue, but one hopes police and social agencies will take violence committed by women as seriously as violence committed by men.
Chris Kempling
Kamloops, B.C.
