Yes, men suffer, but women more severely
CATHY YOUNG ( "Battered women - and men,'' Op-ed, July 16) is right to point out that more services should be devoted to male victims of intimate partner violence. However, she does a disservice by glossing over that women suffer more serious injuries and other consequences, and by suggesting that services for battered women are misguided and misappropriated.
Women are at least three times more likely to be injured by domestic assaults, and the more severe the injuries, the greater the tilt toward female victimization.
The ultimate example of this is intimate partner homicides. Over the 30-year period ending in 2005, the proportion of American female victims relative to males increased from 55 percent to 78 percent.
In Massachusetts, women are even more likely the victims and men the perpetrators. Of the 152 domestic violence homicide cases from 2003 to 2008, 91 percent of the killers were male.
More services should be allocated to protect victims of both genders and to hold both male and female batterers accountable for their actions. But since men continue to commit most violent crime, it is entirely appropriate to challenge the distorted notions about manhood and the poor role modeling that contribute to it.
David Adams
Newtonville
The writer is a psychologist and a researcher on domestic violence homicides.
CATHY YOUNG'S "Battered women - and men'' is but another muddled attempt to convince us that men suffer from domestic violence, too. Indeed, they do.
However, the physical violence men suffer compared to the fate of many battered women is markedly disparate.
There are two major types of domestic violence, according to sociologist Michael P. Johnson: situational couple violence and intimate terrorism.
The situational type, equally perpetrated by males and females, begins as a disagreement, progresses to an angry argument, and climaxes in violence. It is episodic, and occasionally frequent. Male violence does more damage than female violence in the situational type.
Intimate terrorism is the dreaded condition. It begins with the male asserting control, demeaning the female partner constantly; it progresses to more pervasive control of the female's life, later punctuated by threats of violence. It often climaxes with severe physical battering and, all too often, with death of the female.
Anger management can work for both males and females in situational couple violence. Now we must devote our energy to prevention of intimate terrorism. That is why we must focus on how to modify male behavior in relationships.
Dr. Ganson Purcell Jr.
Amesbury
The writer is a board member of the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center in Amesbury and Newburyport.
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