Overlooked Victims of Domestic Violence: Men

Abstract

Forty years of research has documented the sometimes severe intimate partner violence (IPV) men can sustain from their female partners, yet research into these men’s experiences has remained largely stagnant, and policies and procedures for handling IPV have been based on a patriarchal model that assumes that perpetrators are men and victims are women. We conducted the first large-scale study of 302 men who sustained severe IPV from their female partners and sought help. In this paper, we address five questions: (1) Who are these men? (2) What types of and how much IPV are they experiencing? (3) What are the consequences of this IPV? (4) What prevents them from leaving? (5) What happens when they try to get help? We compare our findings with smaller-scale studies of male victims and research on female IPV victims. We conclude with a discussion of the policy and practice implications of this research.