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Before we proceed to outline the psychological profile of the stalker, it is important to try and gauge the extent of the problem by quantifying its different manifestations. More plainly, studying the available statistics is both enlightening and useful.
Contrary to common opinion, there has been a marked decline in domestic violence in the last decade. Moreover, rates of domestic violence and intimate partner abuse in various societies and cultures - vary widely. It is, therefore, safe to conclude that abusive conduct is not inevitable and is only loosely connected to the prevalence of mental illness (which is stable across ethnic, social, cultural, national, and economic barriers). There is no denying that the mental problems of some offenders do play a part - but it is smaller than we intuit. Cultural, social, and even historical factors are the decisive determinants of spousal abuse and domestic violence. The United States The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) reported 691,710 nonfatal violent victimizations committed by current or former spouses, boyfriends, or girlfriends of the victims during 2001. About 588,490, or 85% of intimate partner violence incidents, involved women. The offender in one fifth of the totality of crimes committed against women was an intimate partner - compared to only 3% of crimes committed against men. Still, this type of offenses against women declined by half between 1993 (1.1 million nonfatal cases) and 2001 (588,490) - from 9.8 to 5 per thousand women. Intimate partner violence against men also declined from 162,870 (1993) to 103,220 (2001) - from 1.6 to 0.9 per 1000 males. Overall, the incidence of such crimes dropped from 5.8 to 3.0 per thousand. Even so, the price in lost lives was and remains high. In the year 2000, 1247 women and 440 men were murdered by an intimate partner in the United States - compared to 1357 men and 1600 women in 1976 and around 1300 women in 1993. This reveals an interesting and worrying trend: The number overall intimate partner offenses against women declined sharply - but not so the number of fatal incidents. These remained more or less the same since 1993! The cumulative figures are even more chilling: One in four to one in three women have been assaulted or raped at a given point in her lifetime (Commonwealth Fund survey, 1998). The Mental Health Journal says: "The precise incidence of domestic violence in America is difficult to determine for several reasons: it often goes unreported, even on surveys; there is no nationwide organization that gathers information from local police departments about the number of substantiated reports and calls; and there is disagreement about what should be included in the definition of domestic violence."
The copyright of the article Statistics of Abuse and Stalking in Domestic Abuse is owned by Sam Vaknin. Permission to republish Statistics of Abuse and Stalking in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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