Domestic violence in the United States

Domestic violence is a form of violence that occurs within a domestic relationship. Although domestic violence often occurs between partners in the context of an intimate relationship, it may also describe other household violence, such as violence against a child, by a child against a parent or violence between siblings in the same household. In the United States, it is recognized as an important social problem by governmental and non-governmental agencies, and various Violence Against Women Acts have been passed by the US Congress in an attempt to stem this tide.

Victimization from domestic violence transcends the boundaries of gender and sexual orientation. Women are more often the victims of domestic violence, and are more likely than men to suffer injuries or health consequences as a result of the incidents,^[1][2] but men are also subject to domestic violence in significant numbers, including in incidents of physical partner violence.^[3] Significant percentages of LGBT couples also face domestic violence issues.^[4] Social and economically disadvantaged groups in the U.S. regularly face worse rates of domestic violence than other groups. For example, about 60% of Native American women are physically assaulted in their lifetime by a partner or spouse.^[5]

Many scholarly studies of the problem have stated that domestic violence is often part of a dynamic of control and oppression in relationships, regularly involving multiple forms of physical and non-physical abuse taking place concurrently. Intimate terrorism is an ongoing, complicated use of control, power and abuse in which one person tries to assert systematic control over another psychologically. Homeless shelters exist in many states as well as special hotlines for people to call for immediate assistance, with non-profit agencies trying to fight the stigma that people face in reporting these issues.