For us to better be able to tackle domestic violence and support men across Scotland, we first need to understand why it occurs and what it feels like.
‘Any form of physical, verbal, sexual, psychological or financial abuse which might amount to criminal conduct and which takes place within the context of a relationship. The relationship will be between partners (married, cohabiting, civil partnership or otherwise) or ex-partners. The abuse can be committed in the home or elsewhere including online’.
Police Scotland
Over the past decade at AMIS, we have heard from hundreds of men regarding their experiences of domestic abuse and how it has affected them, and often their families. We’ve also heard a lot from concerned friends and relatives of abused men who have not felt able to come forward themselves. These accounts give crucial insights into how lives can be devastated by the actions of an abusive spouse or partner – abject misery, humiliation, fear, exhaustion, walking on eggshells, feeling totally controlled, completely powerless.
Crime statistics, surveys and research can provide an indication of just how widespread these experiences are but do not always give an insight into the lived experiences.
The main sources of statistical data on domestic or partner abuse in Scotland are Scottish Government publications. The most recent figures for domestic abuse incidents and crime recorded by Police Scotland are here: Domestic Abuse in Scotland: 2020-2021 Police Statistics while The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey: 2014-15 contains responses provided by general public samples, on self-completion questionnaires.
Large-scale government surveys (6000 adults each year, in private households) suggest a smaller disparity between the numbers of men and women affected. In the last SCJS Partner Abuse survey, approximately 3.4% of women and 2.4% of men stated that they had experienced at least one abusive incident from a spouse or partner in the previous 12 months. Of these, 6.5% of the men and 4.4% of the women said they had experienced ‘too many incidents to count’ during the previous year.
These surveys also provide an indication of the impact on victims. 52% of the affected men and 74% of the affected women reported at least one psychological impact. Perhaps unexpectedly, the authors also state that ‘there were no significant differences between men and women in the physical impacts’.
Though the term ‘coercive control’ was coined by Evan Stark in 2009 to describe men’s abuse towards their female partners, this type of abuse is also exerted over men by women and in same-sex relationships. The SCJS has captured some aspects of coercive control: respondents were asked about their experience of, for example, having been prevented from seeing family or friends. This was reported by around a third of both men and women who say they have experienced abusive behaviour.
At AMIS, we believe that much of the controlling and coercive behaviour described to us on the helpline could well meet the criteria for prosecution under the terms of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act (2018).
Denise Hines et al (2007) found in a study of men who had sought help from the only US helpline for men, that not only had the abuse experienced by the men included controlling behaviour, but it also included forms of abuse identified by Hines as peculiar to female perpetrators who sometimes misuse the very supports that are in place to support abused women, sometimes referred to as ‘legal and administrative abuse’.
In a recent qualitative study by Dr Elizabeth Bates (2019a), clear evidence emerged that men experience serious and impactful coercive control by their female partners.
There are two main approaches to domestic abuse research. ‘Feminist’ research tends to involve qualitative studies of female victims in refuges or shelters and with men who have domestic abuse convictions. It tends to conclude that domestic abuse is overwhelmingly enacted by men against women. ‘Family’ researchers conduct surveys in communities, counting incidents using ‘conflict tactic scales’ and tend to conclude that domestic abuse is enacted equally between men and women. The former method is open to criticism as data provided from samples of female victims and male perpetrators is used to generalise to the whole population. The latter approach is criticised as ignoring the seriousness or the context in which the abusive incidents occur.
While there has been a move for even feminist researchers to accept that one-off incidents between partners, often referred to as ‘common couple violence’ can be enacted equally by males and females, controlling, coercive behaviour is enacted as a ‘course of conduct’, and is seen as almost always enacted by men against women.
It is the feminist approach that guides public policy on domestic abuse in Scotland and in the rest of the UK.
Qualitative studies of male victims have until recently been rare. However, both Denise Hines et al, and Dr Elizabeth Bates have researched men’s experience in this way. Dr Bates has just published a paper which describes a qualitative study of men who self-identified as having experienced abuse from a female partner but who had not sought any help. The men gave a large number of harrowing accounts of abuse, including serious violence and coercive control. Such evidence of men’s lived experiences is invaluable in raising awareness of the reality of men’s victimhood. It also highlights the need to find ways to help such men feel confident to report their abuse.
AMIS has been working with Dr Elizabeth Bates to develop and circulate a questionnaire for men or their families and friends who have been in touch with AMIS. The aim is to find out about their experience of searching for and receiving support, to guide AMIS’s future approach. These surveys were shared on social media, and will be evaluated late in 2019.
In 2013, AMIS published a Review of the Literature (Dempsey, 2013). A recent update to this research is available on the website (Bates, E. 2019).
While the majority of partner abuse is reported by women, it is not overwhelmingly so and men who experience abuse should not be made to feel that they are at all unusual in their experience. Whatever the figures, the damaging effects on men and their families can be as serious as for any other victim.
Domestic abuse has been well researched over the years though most of it has concerned male abuse of women. In 2013, AMIS commissioned a Literature Review (Dempsey, 2013): Men’s Experience of Domestic Abuse in Scotland: What we know and what we need to know.
