HAIPP REPORT FORMS:

Appendices in Robertson N, Busch R, Ave K and Balzer R (October 1991) The Hamilton Abuse Intervention Pilot Project: The First Three Months, Family Violence Prevention Co-ordinating Committee, contain the administrative forms for the Hamilton Abuse Intervention Pilot Project (HAIPP):

• The crisisline report form has, inter alia, sections for name, address, etc., for the "Victim" and the "Assailant".
• The advocate report form has, inter alia, sections for name, address, etc., for the "Victim" and the "Assailant", plus "victim" details.
• The victim impact statement has sections on

......................i) injuries (Photographs taken? Medical attention required? Describe visible injuries.)

.....................ii) assault (Describe use of any weapons. Describe any threats made. Describe physical assault.)

....................iii) children and witnesses

....................iv) history of violence (by this assailant).

Comments:

1. The terms "victim" and "assailant" are used, not "alleged victim" and "alleged assailant". As far as the reports are concerned, the "victim" is believed, and there is no information provided by the "assailant".
2. Evidence of injuries is gathered for possible use in court. No similar evidence is gathered on possible injuries to the "assailant".
3. A "victim's" description of assault by the "assailant" is taken. There are no questions on any assault by the "victim" on the "assailant".
4. Details on any history of assault by the "assailant" are taken. There is no question about a history of assault by the "victim".

Straus MA, in "Physical Assaults by Wives: A Major Social Problem" [Chapter 4 in Gelles RJ and Loseke DR (eds) (1993) Current Controversies on Family Violence, London: Sage] describes some of the results of a U.S. National Family Violence Survey in 1985:

"Of the 495 couples in [the survey] for whom one or more assaultive incidents were reported by a woman respondent, the husband was the only violent partner in 25.9% of the cases, the wife was the only one to be violent in 25.5% of the cases, and both were violent in 48.6% of the cases. ...

Perhaps the real gender difference occurs in assaults that carry a greater risk of causing physical injury, such as punching, kicking and attacks with weapons. This hypothesis was investigated using the 211 wives who reported one or more instances of a "severe" assault. The resulting proportions were similar: both, 35.2%; husband only, 35.2%; and wife only, 29.6%.

... regardless of whether the analysis is based on all assaults or is focused on dangerous assaults, about as many women as men attacked spouses who had not hit them during the one year referent period." (p.74)

The two year review of HAIPP (August 1993) states that, from the database, 98% of assailants are male, 99% of the victims are female. If the U.S. pattern applies in New Zealand, in approximately two thirds of the HAIPP cases, the violence would have been mutual, and for every three cases identified by HAIPP, there would have been one case not reported of one way violence by a woman on a man. The 98% figure is interesting, because New Zealand women's refuge annual reports in 1992 and 1993 state that, of the cases where women and children (not men) turned to them for "protection and support", 3.84% and 3.65% of abusers respectively were female.

(Note that Lapsley, in a 1993 report for the Social Policy Agency, is critical of the Straus, et al. approach.)

Stuart Birks

8 August, 1995