One in four older women victims of intimate partner violence.
Some pretty dismal statistics here.
A survey of women over the age of 65 in Washington and Idaho found about one-quarter have been the victim of physical, sexual or psychological violence.The survey of 370 women, published in The Gerontologist, showed that 26.5 percent of the women surveyed reported violence by an intimate partner over their lifetimes, while about 3.5 percent of the women surveyed had suffered violence in the past five years and 2.2 percent in the past year.
Interesting that they chose Washington and Idaho. I wonder how this would look different if we looked at other states.
Thoughts?
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The data here are old, but according to that UofM study, they estimate that as many as 10% of the 65+ crowd are thought to be victims of abuse. That would put Washington and Idaho on the low end. By a fair bit, in fact.
When I was in middle-school, a similar statistic was paraded in sex-ed class as stranger-danger evidence; that one in four women will be abused by the time they reach 18. I agree with roymac that the actual rate, especially over a whole life time, would be, infuriatingly, much higher.
That is very sad indeed.
And yes, its much higher than 25%
"Nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their"
Closer to a third actually.
http://www.endabuse.org/resources/facts/
The headline is confusing. It makes it sound like one in four women are assaulted when they are older, not over their lifetimes.
I read that, too, and thought, "Yeah, that's low." Notice that the survey asked for an "intimate partner." That excludes random assault (where the victim does not know the assailant), which is why this is only 25% and not 30ish%.
It's sad to see how much people can skew statistics by asking slightly different questions - sadly, those high numbers underestimate violence done to women.
I imagine that the stats will be even higher when we are in our old age, given the prevelance of date rape on college campuses. Some 20-25% of college girls are raped or sexually assaulted during their four years.
I wonder how the statistics would look if they interviewed a larger number of women.
370 women out of two states is hardly enough to be conclusive. I'd think it'd probably be a much higher number when talking about how many women have been assaulted over their lifetimes, sadly...especially if the clause "by an intimate partner" was removed.