Sobering Numbers

There are 1,500 shelters for battered women in the United States.

There are 3,800 animal shelters.

Each year, medical expenses from domestic violence total at least $3 to $5 billion.
Businesses forfeit another $100 million in lost wages, sick leave, absenteeism and non-productivity.

It is estimated that 25% of workplace problems such as absenteeism, lower productivity, turnover and excessive use of medical benefits are due to family violence.

Violence is the reason stated for divorce in 22% of middle-class marriages.

Almost 6 times as many women victimized by intimates (18%) as those victimized by strangers (3%) did not report their violent victimization to police because they feared reprisal from the offender.

Annually, compared to males, females experienced over 10 times as many incidents of violence by an intimate. On average each year, women experienced 572,032 violent victimizations at the hands of an intimate, compared to 48,983 incidents committed against men.

75% of the calls to law enforcement for intervention and assistance in domestic violence occur after separation from batterers. One study revealed that half of the homicides of female spouses and partners were committed by men after separation from batterers.

The saddest fact: Those stats are from 1991.

The numbers are much worse since 1991:

On average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in this country every day.

An estimated 3 million women are physically abused by husbands and/or boyfriends per year.

In 2000, intimate partner homicides accounted for 33.5 percent of the murders of women and less than four percent of the murders of men.

A gun is the weapon most commonly used in domestic homicides. In fact, more than three times as many women are murdered by guns used by their husbands or intimate acquaintances than are killed by strangers’ guns, knives or other weapons combined.

In 2002, 54 percent of female homicide victims were shot and killed with a gun.

As of today:

85-95% of all domestic violence victims are female.

Over 500,000 women are stalked by an intimate partner each year.

5.3 million women are abused each year.

1,232 women are killed each year by an intimate partner.

Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women.

Women are more likely to be attacked by someone they know rather than by a stranger.

Phone Numbers To Memorize:

National Domestic
Violence Hotline
1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
1-800-787-3224 (TDD)

What's all this about?

Women have more important issues to deal with every cotton-pickin' day than jumping onto the Unity Pony Express and singing Kumbaya, damn it.

As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world, as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and outside their homes -- the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, 1995

"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are."
-Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)


Best bar bet in the world: Delilah didn't do it.
Judges 16:19-- And she made him (Samson) sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head.