Impact of Domestic Violence

Across Connecticut, domestic violence invades the public and private lives of women, men, and children, impacting families, friends, co-workers, and communities. Domestic violence crosses all socioeconomic and cultural boundaries. Violence occurs in families for whom money is not an issue and for those who have lived in poverty their entire lives. Violence is reported across all ethnic and racial groups. Domestic violence respects no barriers related to age, social status, abilities, sexual preference or religion. The human costs of domestic violence are devastating for individual victims, their children, and their families.

• Each year, women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner related physical assaults and rapes. Men are the victims of about 2.9 million intimate partner related physical assaults. (1*)

• Domestic Violence resulted in 2,340 deaths in 2007. Of these deaths, 70% were females and 30% were males. (2*)

The financial costs associated with domestic violence are also huge. In March 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report estimating that through their abuse, batterers ring up a tab of over $5.8 billion per year nationally in their victims' health care costs and lost productivity alone. The $5.8 billion total does not include the costs incurred by law enforcement agencies as they respond to and investigate domestic violence calls, nor does it factor in the amount of time and money spent in other branches of the civil and criminal legal system. The medical care, mental health services, and lost productivity (e.g., time away from work) costs that was an estimated $5.8 billion in 1995, updated to 2003 dollars, that's more than $8.3 billion. (3*, 4*)

“If the leading newspapers were to announce tomorrow a new disease that, over the past year, had afflicted from 3 to 4 million citizens, few would fail to appreciate the seriousness of the illness. Yet, when it comes to the 3 to 4 million women who are victimized by violence each year, the alarms ring softly.”

 -Joseph R. Biden, former chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee