A chara, - I refer to the article "Violence between men and women is not equally divided" by Michael Kimmel, in which he discusses existing research on domestic abuse and gender.
It is also interesting to note the difference in the ways in which the Government has responded to Mr Kimmel's report and that from McKeown and Kidd, both of which it sponsored. Kimmel's paper was launched into the public domain four months ago; the latter report has been lying on the Government's desk for the past 18 months, with no sign of it seeing the light of day. Given the almost sole focus on women in social policy debates, this exclusion of men's issues is highly predictable.
The main criticism levelled by Kimmel against Dr Kieran McKeown's research is that "the study was not conducted with a nationally representative sample" . By way of pointing to a more valid sample, Kimmel's offering is the United States Department of Justice.
He chooses to ignore one of the main findings of most research into domestic violence and men - i.e., the level of under-reporting by men of such abuse is rampant. (My own research in Britain found that 90 per cent of my sample of abused men did not report their experiences to any agency.)
The reluctance to report abuse by their female partners stems from: the fear of not being believed; rejection and criticism for being a "wimp", not a "real man"; fear of being arrested themselves. In this light, Kimmel's nationally representative sample excludes nine out of 10 abused men.
He also fails to acknowledge the emotional and psychological damage done by women to their male partners. Existing research (including my own) shows that such non-physical abuse causes much more damage, for longer, than assaults.
Highly selective and exclusive reporting of research has been a tactic used by women's groups to deny the extent and nature of male victimisation in the domestic arena and to ensure that these hidden targets of abuse remain excluded from the social policy debate. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Sean Stitt, Branch Co-ordinator, Amen, Galway.