Program & Services

Dating Violence

Dating violence is when one does harm to their partner. Violence can be committed or threatened. Following are forms of dating violence:

• sexual assault
• physical violence
• verbal abuse
• emotional abuse

Scope of the Problem

Violence when dating is not rare. An estimate of this problem varies. This is because studies and surveys used do not use the same measures. Some findings are as follows:

• amount of nonsexual, courtship violence ranges from 9% to 65%-this depends if threats and emotional or verbal aggression were included in the definition
• study of 8th and 9th grade male and female students indicated that 25% had been victims of nonsexual dating violence and 8% had been victims of sexual dating violence
• average rate for nonsexual dating violence is 22% among male and female high school students-32% among college students-females are somewhat more likely than males to report being victims of violence
• national study of college students shows 27.5% of the women surveyed said that they had suffered rape or attempted rape at least once since age 14-only 5% of those experiences were reported to the police
• Over half of a representative sample of more than 1,000 female students at a large urban university had experienced some form of unwanted sex-12% of these acts were by casual dates and 43% by steady dating partners
• Studies of college students and high school students show both males and females give and receive dating violence the same-but women use it more often as a defense
• studies have found that women and girls were victims of dating violence twice as often as men and boys
• a survey found that women were 6 times more likely than men to experience violence at the hands of an intimate partner (intimate partners include current or former spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, dating partners)
• half of the 500,000 rapes and sexual assaults that get reported of all ages were committed by someone they know
• 80% to 95% of rapes that occur on college campuses are committed by someone known to the victim

Risk Factors

Characteristics of Victims

Young women under age 18 are more likely to say that they knew the person who hurt them. Becoming a victim of dating violence is associated with the following:

• having female peers who have been sexually victimized
• lower church attendance
• greater number of past dating partners
• acceptance of dating violence
• personally having experienced a previous sexual assault

Characteristics of Perpetrators

Studies have found the following to be found with this problem of abuse:

• the male having sexually aggressive peers
• heavy alcohol or drug use; and the man's acceptance of dating violence
• the male's assumption of key roles in dating such as initiating the date
• being the driver, and paying dating expenses
• miscommunication about sex
• previous sexual intimacy with the victim
• interpersonal violence
• traditional sex roles
• adversarial attitudes about relationships
• rape myths

Men who have a family history have more of a problem. If a person sees abuse they may end up being an abuser. If a person is abused, then they may end up being an abuser too. Also, if alcohol is being used it can cause more problems. More alcohol equals more abuse.