DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON THESE NEW ZEALAND AND BRITISH STUDIES?
(From message dated 19 March 1966)
The Good Weekend magazine made interesting reading this weekend - it's the fourth annual women's issue.
One story concludes with a mention of a recent study by "the British futures think-tank Demos... suggesting that girls are becoming more like boys and vice versa... what really surprised the researchers was a significant attachment to violence amongst young women, with 13% of 18 to 24-year old women agreeing with the proposition that 'it is acceptable to use physical violence to get something you want'... The report's authors said they expected female violence to become a major issue in the years ahead".
(From message dated 11 January 1996)
* Partner Violence Among Adults
As part of a multidisciplinary health and development longitudinal study of all individuals born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972, researchers with NIJ support, are exploring issues of partner violence. This study is the first to obtain data on cohabitating individuals as well as those who are dating who may or may not have gone to college. Initial findings indicate that 19 percent of the women and 6 percent of the men reported they had performed an act of severe violence against their partners and 37 percent of the women and 22 percent of the men had performed minor forms of violence, such as slapping and hitting.
Terrie Moffitt, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin, discussed this project as part of NIJ's Research in Progress Seminar series. Moffitt's presentation is available on a VHS tape, "Partner Violence Among Adults" (NCJ 154277).
(the following quote is from here)
Additional figures are gleaned from the Kia Marama report. This was in a report tabled by the NZ Justice Dept to the NZ Parliament in 1993. It was in regards to setting up a second unit and was buried in a mass of figures. It reported of the men that the Kia Marama sexual offenders unit had treated, 67% reported childhood sexual abuse, 30% reported the primary or sole abuser to be a woman, typically a mother or cousin.
On a similar theme, the New Zealand Listener, June 1 1996, published an article by Pamela Stirling entitled "The Last Taboo: sexual abuse of children by women is now on the rise" (pp.18-23). It includes the following:
Current research by Auckland clinical psychologist Ian Lambie into sexually abused males who have themselves sexually offended shows that 15 of the 97 males were abused by females. 'Sexual abuse by females is clearly underreported in New Zealand,' says Lambie. 'These figures give the lie to the myth that it doesn't happen here.'" (p.18)
Auckland University senior law lecturer Joanna Manning points to disturbing new Australian research. It shows that 50 percent of sexually abused males who were serving time for sexual offences had been sexually abused by a female. (p.20)
Last modified 20 June, 1996