Why Domestic Violence Victims Don't Leave

2012 | Vanderburgh County

• 2,122 protective orders requested

2012 Domestic Violence Program Report Albion Fellows Bacon Center and YWCA
These numbers are for service incident and may count some victims more than one time if there were several calls/incidents in the year.

• 2,538 women, 449 children with a parent, and 167 men presented need for services.

• With these, there were 2,532 requests for overnight shelter.

2012 Domestic Violence Calls to Vanderburgh County 911 January 2012-December 2012
• 1,643 cases of domestic violence in progress, city and county.

• 425 cases of post-incident domestic violence, offender has left; calls and dispatch officers.

Children Harmed by Witnessing Domestic Violence
Each year an estimated 3.3 million children are exposed to violence against their mothers or female caretakers by family members. (American Psychological Association, Violence and the Family: Report of the APA Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family,1996)
A child's exposure to the father abusing the mother is the strongest risk fact for transmitting violent behavior from one generation to the next (American Psychological Association, Violence and the Family: Report of the APA Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family,1996)
Male children who witness the abuse of mothers by fathers are more likely to become men who batter in adulthood than those male children from homes free of violence. (Rosenbaum and O'Leary, "Children: The Unintended Victims of Marital Violence," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1981)
In a 36-month study of 146 children, ages 11-17 who came from homes where there was domestic violence, all sons over the age of 14 attempted to protect their mothers from attacks. Some 62 percent were injured in the process.(Roy, 1988)