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Domestic Abuse Against Men in Scotland

CHAPTER ONE - LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter summarises the different theoretical perspectives on domestic abuse against men, and assesses these perspectives in the light of the available research data .

Feminist Perspectives on Domestic Abuse

The voluminous literature on the issue of domestic abuse owes much to the work of feminist scholars, researchers and activists. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s feminists sought to raise awareness of the pervasiveness, persistence and effects of domestic abuse, whilst also acquiring resources and establishing services that would help women and children to live without fear for their personal safety (Dobash & Dobash, 1979; Hester et al., 1995; Kelly, 1988). Amongst feminists there are disagreements about the most appropriate ways to understand and research domestic abuse (Kelly, 1990), but most feminist perspectives on domestic abuse make reference to the continuum of emotional, physical, sexual and financial abuses women experience in intimate relationships (Kelly, 1988); and this continuum's relation to the material inequalities, institutional values and historically embedded social practices that confer power and privilege on men.

Within this framework men are often conceptualised either as perpetrators or as complicit bystanders whose failure to effectively challenge the abuses perpetrated by other men sustains women's victimisation (Hearn, 1998). In much feminist research into domestic abuse men's victimisation is only acknowledged within the context of women's defensive and retaliatory responses to the cumulative experience of harassment, intimidation and violence (Ammons, 2001; Lees, 1997).

For certain commentators the lack of recognition given to 'battered men' is interpreted as indicative of: the hegemony of a powerful 'feminist matriarchy' (Rome, 2001); the 'taboo' status of men's victimisation (George, 2001); and the collusive silence that protects female 'family terrorists' from public exposure (Pizzey, 2001). Certainly, there is long history of domestic abuse cases being caricatured in terms of 'nagging wives' attacking 'hen-pecked husbands' (Brogden & Harkin, 2000; Stitt & Macklin, 1995). But this caricaturing has a cultural history that predates feminism (Hammerton, 1992). Indeed, feminism has played a central role in debunking those myths that trivialise, pathologise or otherwise sensationalise violence perpetrated by women (Cameron, 1996; Chesney-Lind, 1997; Worrall, 1990).

If feminist research treats men's accounts of victimisation by women with scepticism, it is probably because male perpetrators of domestic abuse often depict themselves as victims in order to exonerate themselves from blame (Gondolf, 1988; Hearn, 1998; Wolflight, 1999). As a consequence, deciding how and whether to acknowledge men's accounts of victimisation constitutes a problem for academics and practitioners alike, as feminist social workers have explained (Featherstone & Trinder, 1997). Indeed, the polarising of the debate in terms of 'female victims' and 'male perpetrators' can obscure as much as it illuminates (Gadd, 2000; Newburn & Stanko, 1994). Not all men who are victims of women's violence are perpetrators, and not all victims of domestic abuse define themselves as heterosexual (Vickers, 1996). But identifying which men are victims, which are perpetrators, and which are both victims and perpetrators is an unenviable task.

'Family Violence' Research

The paradigm of research that has devoted most energy to this task is often referred to as 'family violence research'. This paradigm is closely associated with the work of US scholars Murray Straus and Richard Gelles (Straus & Gelles, 1986). Straus and Gelles devised the 'Conflict Tactics Scale' (CTS), a measure of the controlling and abusive 'tactics' couples sometimes use against each other. Using the CTS, Straus and Gelles administered two sweeps of The National Family Violence Survey (NFVS) to representative samples of the US population of heterosexual married respondents - one in 1975, the other in 1985 ¹. Both sweeps uncovered similar levels of partner violence perpetrated by men and women. In about half of the cases where violence was encountered both partners were abusive to each other. The remaining half was divided, almost equally, between those cases where men were the primary perpetrators and those cases where women were the primary perpetrators.

During the 1980s some men's rights activists used these findings to argue that funding sources for women's refuges should be shared more equitably with equivalent services for men (Pagelow, 1984). However, Straus (1993) queried the 'equal combatants' interpretation of his research findings, as did a number of contributors to a debate hosted by the American journal Social Work in the late 1980s (McNealy & Robinson-Simpson, 1988; Saunders, 1988). Even though the CTS does not include questions about those forms of violence (like sexual assault, choking, suffocating and stalking) that women are more likely to experience, and although it under-samples those whose victimisation is most likely to be severe (i.e. women living in refuges, divorced and separated women), the two sweeps of the NFVS nevertheless revealed that women sustain more injuries than men ² (Flood, 1999; Straus, 1993).

Recent Crime Surveys

Although the CTS remains a focal concern in the debate about men's victimisation, its claims are increasingly eclipsed by the findings of crime surveys based on much larger samples. In the 1980s some commentators argued that the CTS was a methodologically better measure of abuse prevalence rates because many people do not recognise their experiences of abuse as 'criminal victimisation'. Perhaps aided by increased public awareness about domestic abuse, together with the use of more nuanced terminologies and question formats ³, crime surveys in the UK, US and Canada have since proved themselves capable of detecting abuse which interviewees do not themselves consider 'criminal' - although whether the impact of this is different for men and women is still a matter for debate.

The British and Scottish Crime Surveys

The use of the self-completion questionnaires in the 1996 British and Scottish Crime Surveys revealed considerably higher rates of domestic abuse amongst the general population than previous UK surveys had suggested ⁴. This was all the more remarkable given that the surveys narrowed their focus to 'partner abuse', as opposed to abuse by any household member. The effect of this increased detection was more pronounced amongst male respondents than amongst females.

Table 1.1 Domestic Assault and Abuse in the SCS and BCS 1996

As Table 1.1 (above) indicates, in 1996 ⁵ the proportion of men reporting experiences of force or threat in the self-completion component of the Scottish Crime Survey was over forty times the proportion reporting 'domestic assaults' in the survey's main-sweep (MVA, 1998) ⁶. The proportion of women who reported having experienced force or threats from their partner using the Scottish Crime Survey's 1996 self-completion questionnaire was ten times higher than the proportion reporting 'domestic assault' in the main-sweep. When a computer assisted self-interviewing methodology was introduced into the British Crime Survey in 1996 the proportion of men who reported having been forced or frightened by a partner was ten times the proportion who reported domestic assaults in the main sweep. The proportion of women who reported being forced or frightened in the self-completion component of the BCS 1996 was just over three times the proportion who reported domestic assaults in the main sweep (Kershaw et al., 2000).

In England and Wales this enhanced level of reporting produced data suggesting that similar proportions of men and women (four per cent) had experienced some form of domestic abuse within the last twelve months. In Scotland in 1995 gender differences remained, but narrowed. The Scottish Crime Survey 1996 reported that four per cent of men and six per cent of women in Scotland had experienced force or threats from their partners or ex-partners within the last twelve months. Neither of the crime surveys indicated that women and men were 'equal victims'. In England and Wales in 1995 women were (Mirrlees-Black, 1999):

• Twice as likely as men to have been injured by a partner;
• Three times more likely than men to have suffered frightening threats;
• One and a half times more likely than men to have been assaulted three or more times, and;
• One and a half times more likely than men to say a current or former partner had ever assaulted them.

Likewise, MVA (1998) reported that in 1995 women in Scotland were:

• More likely than men to have been injured at least once by a partner;
• Twice as likely as men to have ever experienced threats or force by a partner.

Throughout the UK, pushing, shoving and grabbing were found to be the most common forms of force used against both male and female victims. Female victims were much more likely than male victims to have been choked, strangled, suffocated, or forced to have sex than were male victims. However, in 1995 Scottish men were much more likely to say they have been stabbed or cut by a partner than were Scottish women ⁷. In England and Wales slightly over half of all domestic assault victims said they had also used some force against their partner at the time of the incident. Women were slightly more likely to report this than men (Mirrlees-Black, 1999: 35-36) ⁸.

Other Assaults and Homicides in the UK

The overriding finding from all Scottish and British Crime Surveys is that men, unlike women, are at a considerably greater risk of assault from acquaintances and strangers than intimates ⁹. This finding is also evidenced in research into homicide. In Scotland women are two and a half times more likely than men to be killed by their partners. In England and Wales women are over four and a half times more likely to be killed by a partner ¹⁰ (Soothill et al., 1999). Furthermore, Scottish men are eight times more likely to be killed by an acquaintance than by a partner, whilst in England and Wales men are only two times more likely to be killed by an acquaintance than a partner (Soothill et al., 1999) ¹¹.

Domestic Abuse Prevalence Rates in the USA and Canada

The US National Crime Victimization Survey 2000 (NCVS) suggests relatively low rates of domestic abuse. In 1998 0.75 per cent of women and 0.015 per cent of men in the US disclosed intimate partner violence to NCVS researchers: a ratio of five to one (Rennison & Welchans, 2000). However, the subsequent National Violence Against Women Survey 2000 (NVAW) ¹² found higher rates of victimisation amongst the general population of the US. According to Tjaden and Thoennes (2000) 1.8 per cent of US women and 1.1 per cent of men had been either raped, physically assaulted, or stalked by a partner within the twelve months prior to interview. Nearly one in four women in the US, compared to one in every fourteen men, reported being either raped or physically assaulted by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime.

The 1999 Canadian General Social Survey (CGSS) ¹³ discovered more equivocal rates of partner assault amongst men and women (Pottie Bunge, 2000). In the CGSS eight per cent of women and seven per cent of men reported some form of spousal violence (excluding emotional abuse) committed against them by a partner or ex-partner within the past five years. Four per cent of men and four per cent of women reported violence by a current partner. However, in line with other recent national surveys, the CGSS found that female victims were much more likely to have endured severe and repeated forms of violence, suffered injury, sought medical attention, and to have reported fearing for their lives as a consequence of violence.

Qualitative Studies of Male Victims

Two qualitative studies of male victims of domestic abuse have been commissioned in the UK to date, and there is at least one published in the US and another in Australasia. All four of these studies are based - almost exclusively - upon semi- and unstructured interviews with non-representative, 'convenience' samples of self-identifying 'male victims'.

'Battered Husbands' in the North-West of England

In their study 'Battered Husbands': The Hidden Victims of Domestic Violence, Stitt and Macklin (1995) interviewed 20 male victims of female-on-male abuse aged between 19 and 72 years old. All of the men in Stitt and Macklin's sample had endured severe forms of physical abuse, ranging from stabbing, having teeth knocked out, being scalded with boiling water, attacks to their genitalia and being beaten with implements. Some respondents were still living with abusive partners, in some cases to protect their children.

Many of the men in this study claimed their partners had consciously sought to subject them to embarrassment and stigma by trying to injure them on the face and arms so that others would see. In most cases the abuse also involved verbal, emotional and psychological forms of cruelty. However, in common with female victims of domestic abuse, many of the male victims argued that the fear of further violence, together with the emotional abuse, was worse than the actual physical harm done, even if this was extensive. Some female partners were said to have constantly threatened to attack men in their sleep, told the police that self-inflicted injuries were caused by the man, flirted with other men, damaged the man's clothes, or threatened to take their children away from them.

Only one of Stitt and Macklin's 20 respondents said that he was 'occasionally' to blame for instigating the violence. Eighteen said they were 'never' responsible, and one abstained from answering this question. Twelve of the men cited 'causes' for their partner's aggression, including alcoholism, post-natal depression, childbirth, PMS, eating disorders, retirement and unemployment. Eight, however, said that violence was just part of their partner's 'normal behaviour'.

In the Stitt and Macklin study, on the few occasions when the police had been called, it was the male victims, as opposed to female perpetrators, that were arrested. Consequently, Stitt and Macklin (1995: 6) argue that many of the men ended up coping alone through,

Total withdrawal, mainly from contact with other males, isolation, and an acceptance that they were indeed 'weak', 'inadequate', 'not a real man' and 'wimps'. They felt de-skilled, powerless, even impotent… Invariably, the males perceived the situation for battered men as being worse than for battered women because the latter were not imprisoned by stereotypical attributes which militate against even acknowledging that female-on-male abuse exists.

Male Victims in Northern Ireland

For their report to the Northern Ireland Domestic Violence Forum Male Victims of Domestic Violence, Brogden and Harkin (2000) interviewed fifty men, aged between 29 and 60, who said they had been victims of domestic violence. Three of these men had been in abusive relationships with male partners. The remaining forty-seven were victims of abuse perpetrated by female partners.

Brogden and Harkin present a similar picture of men's experiences of domestic violence to that of Stitt and Macklin. Few of the assaults described by the men in Brogden and Harkin's study were isolated incidents. Many of the male victims had endured a combination of biting, scratching and pulling, having things thrown at them and being hit with domestic instruments. However, attacks to the genitalia, knifings, and scaldings, along with a miscellaneous list of cruel and unusual behaviours were also reported. Again, some men reported being attacked whilst asleep, although spontaneous assaults were more common. Yet, few regarded the physical attacks as the worst aspect of the abuse:

Most respondents regarded emotional abuse as more sustained and significant than physical violence, resulting in cumulative effects, including the destruction of self-confidence and self-esteem, demoralisation, depression, suicidal impulses, nervous breakdown and mental instability…Abuse was often cumulative and relentless. (Brogden & Harkin, 2000: 42)

Some men reported threats to harm children (both born and unborn) and claimed that their partners would routinely deride their sexual potency in front of others (including their children) to humiliate them further. Others reported being ridiculed for their reluctance to fight back, despite constant fear for their lives. However, according to Brogden and Harkin, sleep deprivation was probably the most pervasive form of abuse endured by male victims. Some women were said to use the threat of making false allegations to the police to control male victims. Indeed, some men said they had been wrongfully arrested. Other respondents reported being attacked by other men who wrongly assumed that the woman involved was the victim. In some parts of Northern Ireland, fear of reprisals by the paramilitaries is also an issue if others assume the man is the abusive partner.

Like Stitt and Macklin's battered husbands, some of Brogden and Harkin's respondents said they had been too embarrassed to tell peers what had happened. Other respondents reported feeling uncomfortable about the mixture of disbelief and accusation that typically followed disclosure. Concealment was a relatively common way in which male victims 'coped', as were 'withdrawal from social interaction', 'turning the other cheek', 'lying' about the causes of injuries, 'alcoholism', 'physical exercise', working long hours and 'leaving the family home'. Some men reported chronic weight loss, self-harming, overdosing, together with mental health problems as consequences of the abuses they had endured. Nevertheless, some men in Brogden and Harkin's sample had received valuable support from friends, although sympathetic and helpful responses from statutory service providers were apparently a rarity.

'Abused Men' in the US

In his book Abused Men Phillip W. Cook (1997) documents his analysis of thirty US male victims. Like their British counterparts, Cook's male victims expressed an unwillingness to hit back because of traditional gender stereotypes. Like British male victims, the American sample also mentioned their desire to conceal their victimisation from friends and family, their fear of being perceived as wimps, and their investment in the belief that family matters should be kept private, as factors that inhibited them from seeking support. Some of the men in Cook's sample claimed their partners had made false accusations of partner abuse and child sexual abuse against them in order to retain custody of their children ¹⁴.

Abused Men In Australia and New Zealand

Lewis and Sarantakos (2001) report on a qualitative study of forty-eight Australisian men abused by female partners. Most of the men in this study were contacted via 'men's support groups'. The most common abuse described by Lewis and Sarantakos' sample was 'unreasonable and unprovoked verbal attack'. Physical abuse, limiting the man's friendships, child abuse, and 'inappropriate and improper use of money' were other abuses described by the men in this sample. At the more 'psychological' end of the abuse continuum, some men reported being labelled 'inadequate', being told that their children were not theirs, and being subject to malicious allegations of violence. In spite of their conclusion that "women are equally dangerous and destructive at home" (p.8), Lewis and Sarantakos point out that the physical abuse they uncovered did not appear to be as severe as that reported in studies of female victims.

Gay Men's Experiences of Domestic Abuse

There is a relative dearth of academic research into domestic abuse in gay men's and lesbian women's relationships. This is more noticeable in the UK than in the US, partly because the BCS and SCS do not collect data explicitly about the sex of victims' partners. As a consequence there are no reliable prevalence rates on which to base an analysis of gay men's experiences of domestic abuse within the UK. In fact, many of the research findings about this issue have emerged in projects primarily concerned with sexual minorities' experiences of 'hate crimes' (Richardson & May, 1999) and clinical studies of men who have been sexually assaulted (Mezey & King, 2000).

Nevertheless, Soothill et al.'s (1999) homicide research suggests that gay men are at increased risk of partner homicide relative to heterosexual men and women. Lesbian women appear to be much less likely to be killed by their current or former partners. Soothill et al. report that between 1985 and 1994 none of the women killed by partners in Scotland were killed by women, whereas 21 per cent of the men killed by partners were killed by men.

The US National Violence Against Women Survey also suggests that men living with male partners are at a greater risk of domestic abuse. Tjaden and Thoennes (2000) report that women living with male partners are almost three times more likely than women living with female partners to report having ever been either raped, physically assaulted or stalked by a partner. Conversely, US men living with male partners are over two times more likely than men living with female partners to report having ever been either raped, assaulted or stalked by a partner.

However, the risk of assault that gay male partners pose to each also needs contextualising in terms of the risk posed by male strangers and acquaintances. One recent Scottish 'self-completion' survey of 246 gay men living in Edinburgh uncovered rates of violent victimisation four times the national average (Morrison & MacKay, 2000). This exceptionally high rate of victimisation was largely a consequence of the number of stranger assaults perpetrated against gay men, only one in ten violent incidents being perpetrated by a 'partner, friend or relative'.

The few qualitative accounts of gay's men experiences of domestic abuse suggest that gay men typically endure similar continuums of physical, emotional, sexual and financial abuses to those more widely recognised as characterising the experiences of heterosexual male and female victims. However, there are some issues that are unique to gay men that can prolong and exacerbate their experiences of abuse (Elliot, 1996; Mondimore & Hopkins 2000; Vickers, 1996). These include:

• The threat of 'outing' to family members, employers, landlords, isolating gay male victims from potential sources of support;
• Perpetrators persuading partners that their behaviour is an expression of 'masculinity', not domestic abuse;
• The lack of service provision for gay men, and the limited legal recognition afforded to gay couples (enabling perpetrators to dissuade victims from seeking support or justice);
• Homophobic attitudes, which serve to 'blame' gay and lesbian people for their own victimisation on the basis of their sexual difference. Some perpetrators tell victims who had previous female partners that they are not 'really' gay and thus relationship problems are attributed to the victim's sexuality. Concomitantly, some gay victims of male rape attribute their victimisation to their sexual orientation (Etherington, 1995) ¹⁵.

Summary

The finding that women report more injuries and repeat victimisation is one that has been consistently demonstrated in recent UK and US national crime surveys as well as research conducted using the CTS. Nevertheless, different methodologies and question formats uncover vast variations in the ratios of male to female victims of domestic abuse. For example, the self-completion methodologies used in the 1996 Scottish and British Crime Surveys uncovered higher rates of domestic abuse amongst men and women than the interviewer-guided main sweep questions about domestic 'assaults'. The results of the main sweep surveys indicate that women were at a much greater risk of domestic assault than men were. However, the self-completion methodologies uncovered rates of domestic abuse against men closer to the rates uncovered for women. Without greater standardisation of methodologies across countries it remains impossible to tell whether different gender ratios reflect real national differences, as opposed to methodological artefacts. It cannot be assumed that North American or Australasian men's experiences of abuse are necessarily the same as the experiences of men living in the UK.

The available survey evidence suggests that fewer men than women are victims of domestic abuse. However, qualitative studies reveal that those men who are victims often find the experience of abuse severely emotionally and physically harmful. Nevertheless, the finding uncovered in US family violence research that some male victims are also perpetrators has yet to be adequately investigated in either quantitative or qualitative research studies in the UK. Similarly, there is a lack of UK research documenting the nature and prevalence of domestic abuse amongst same-sex couples.

Disbelief and lack of service provision are both factors that can compound male victims' experience of abuse regardless of their sexual orientation. The limited qualitative research on this topic suggests that there are some differences in the nature and context of the abuses experienced by gay and heterosexual men, as well as between male and female victims generally, although there are also many similarities.

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