Domestic abuse in England and Wales, year ending March 2025
| Population | Estimated victims | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Women | 2.2 million | 9.1% |
| Men | 1.5 million | 6.5% |
| Everyone | 3.8 million | 7.8% |
Men therefore represented approximately 41% of estimated domestic-abuse victims. These figures come from the Crime Survey, which includes abuse not reported to police. Totals differ slightly because of rounding.
A defensible preliminary conclusion
A fair starting policy position would be:
Women experience more recorded domestic abuse and bear a disproportionate share of its most severe physical and sexual consequences. However, male victimisation is substantial, is inadequately represented by police and service statistics, and may approach gender parity for certain forms of physical and nonphysical partner abuse when measured through anonymous behavioural surveys. Existing evidence does not yet justify treating all domestic abuse as numerically or consequentially equal between the sexes.
That conclusion leaves open the possibility that the conventional picture substantially underestimates female perpetration, without deciding the answer in advance.
Follow this link for further analysis: https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6ab24b4e7b4c8191bd52294c5481153e
Female Abuse Compared to Men in Detail and Why Policy Requires Significant Change to Bring Things Into Balance.
Your central concern is valid: official police and service data almost certainly understate male victimisation. But the proposition that the sexes are “much closer to even” should be treated as a hypothesis to test, because the answer changes substantially depending on what is counted.
The strongest analysis would examine domestic abuse by women against men, rather than “violence” alone.
What the evidence already suggests
The latest Crime Survey for England and Wales is more informative than police data because it asks people directly about experiences—including conduct never reported to authorities. The ONS explicitly warns that police statistics provide only a partial picture. (Office for National Statistics)
The emerging picture is not simply “men perpetrate, women suffer”:
Women report more domestic abuse overall.
For physical domestic abuse in the year ending March 2025, however, the ONS found no statistically significant difference between male and female victimisation.
Women reported significantly higher prevalence for most other categories, including emotional and economic abuse.
Emotional abuse was the most commonly reported form of domestic abuse overall. (Office for National Statistics)
A representative Canadian study found near-identical five-year prevalence of nonphysical partner abuse: 17.3% for women and 16.9% for men. But it cautioned that equal prevalence does not necessarily mean equal frequency, severity or impact. (academic.oup.com)
Therefore, parity is plausible for some measures, particularly whether somebody experienced at least one act. It is not presently established across abuse as a whole.
Why different studies produce different answers
There are several distinct questions that must not be collapsed into one statistic:
| Measure | What it tells us |
|---|---|
| Number experiencing at least one act | Whether victimisation occurred |
| Number of abusive acts | Frequency and repetition |
| Type of conduct | Physical, sexual, emotional, economic or controlling |
| Context | Aggression, retaliation, self-defence or systematic domination |
| Consequences | Fear, injury, trauma, isolation, financial loss or loss of children |
| Pattern over time | Isolated conflict versus sustained coercive control |
| Reporting | Disclosure to surveys, police, doctors, friends or nobody |
Research based on act counts often finds considerably greater gender symmetry than police, refuge, homicide or serious-injury statistics. Neither dataset is necessarily false: they may be measuring different portions of the problem.
Male undercounting
Your proposed mechanisms should be examined directly:
Men may normalise being hit, threatened or humiliated.
They may believe they are expected to endure it and preserve the household.
They may not identify themselves as victims.
They may fear ridicule or disbelief.
They may fear being treated as the perpetrator if police attend.
They may fear losing contact with their children.
Men may interpret questions such as “Were you frightened?” differently from questions about actual conduct.
Services and police records necessarily miss people who never seek assistance.
Direct anonymous surveys reduce—but do not necessarily eliminate—these problems. We should therefore avoid claiming that the reporting gap is entirely corrected by the Crime Survey.
Psychological abuse
This should be measured behaviourally, without initially labelling the respondent or partner an “abuser.” Questions might cover:
threats and intimidation;
repeated humiliation or degradation;
isolation from friends and family;
monitoring communications or movements;
financial control or deliberate financial damage;
threats involving children or contact with them;
destruction of reputation or employment;
threats of self-harm used to control a partner;
malicious allegations or manipulation of institutions;
prolonged withdrawal, sleep disruption or calculated destabilisation.
The same questions must be asked of both sexes. We should not begin by assuming women dominate psychological abuse, because existing findings are mixed and depend heavily on definition. That is a proposition for the evidence to establish.
Male Domestic Abuse Refuges
There is no need to do a study on how men are woefully underrepresented in equal rights terms here too. If elected, my policy will include a harsh 'levelling up' for men. Preferably with more refuges and support to make up the systemically sexist lack of support for men. If that cannot be funded the levelling up will need to come out of existing women's refuges. The idea being to deliver equity.
The places the state, charity and NGO scams use to shelter abused women are usually called domestic-abuse refuges, women’s refuges, or safe houses.
Most women’s refuges do not accommodate men, principally because they provide women-only communal housing, often for women accompanied by children. Some domestic-abuse organisations nevertheless support men through:
confidential helplines and advice;
safety planning;
counselling and advocacy;
assistance obtaining injunctions or emergency accommodation;
referral to a specialist male refuge or dispersed safe flat.
Provision for men is much smaller and may take the form of individual safe accommodation rather than a traditional communal refuge. A man seeking help in the UK can contact:
Men’s Advice Line: 0808 801 0327
ManKind Initiative: 01823 334 244
National Domestic Abuse Helpline: 0808 2000 247 — principally designed for women, so a man would generally be directed to a specialist male service.
Emergency: 999 if someone is in immediate danger.
In policy writing, the most inclusive term is “specialist domestic-abuse safe accommodation and support services.”
How to respond to resistance from entrenched interests
If organisations resist recognising or supporting male victims, use this three-point response:
Agree on the common principle
“Women’s specialist provision must remain protected. Recognising male victims does not always require taking services away from women.”Return to the evidence
“ONS estimates indicate that men constitute about 41% of domestic-abuse victims. What provision currently exists for that substantial minority, and what unmet need has been measured?”Demand a practical, accountable remedy
“Will you support separately funded, specialist accommodation and services for men—and publish provision, waiting-time and outcome figures by sex?”
This avoids a competition between victims. It requires opponents either to support proportionate provision or explain, on the record, why a recognised victim group should remain underserved.
How much profit is being made out of this systemic injustice?
The financial scale is extremely large, but the figures require care because “national loss” includes human suffering valued economically, while infrastructure funding is fragmented across government, councils, charities and the NHS.
1. Losses to the nation
The most comprehensive Home Office estimate remains for England and Wales in 2016–17:
| Cost arising from domestic abuse | Annual estimated cost |
|---|---|
| Physical and emotional harm to victims | £47.3bn |
| Lost economic output and productivity | £14.1bn |
| Health services | £2.3bn |
| Police | £1.3bn |
| Victim services, including housing | £724m |
| Criminal and civil justice | £476m |
| Other costs | £17m |
| Total | £66.2bn |
The government subsequently described this as approximately £74bn in 2021–22 prices, but that was only an inflation adjustment—not a new measurement of prevalence or current costs. (GOV.UK)
The distinction is important:
Approximately £14.1bn was a comparatively direct economic loss through absence and reduced productivity.
Approximately £4.8bn represented the combined cost of health, housing and victim services, policing and justice.
The largest component—£47.3bn—was an economic valuation of victims’ physical and emotional suffering, rather than money literally leaving the Treasury. A signal for Reparations essentially.
We cannot safely attribute 41% of the £66.2bn to male victims. That would produce a crude figure of about £27bn, but it assumes identical duration, severity and consequences across sexes. The available evidence does not support that assumption. A proper male-victim cost study is missing.
2. Funding for abuse infrastructure
There is no single transparent domestic-abuse budget. Parliament has criticised funding for being divided among departments, councils, police commissioners and charities, with government unable to provide granular consolidated figures. (publications.parliament.uk)
The clearest current figures are:
| Infrastructure or programme | Funding |
|---|---|
| English Domestic Abuse Safe Accommodation Grant, 2025–26 | £160m |
| Home Office specialist VAWG services, 2025–26 | £19.9m |
| Of which: specialist helplines | £6m |
| Of which: support for affected children | £5.3m |
| Of which: emergency Flexible Fund | £2m |
| High-risk perpetrator programme | £53m over four years |
| Safe-accommodation commitment | Nearly £500m over three years |
| Justice-related victim support commitment | £550m over three years |
| Combined announced future package | Just over £1bn over three years |
The £1bn package averages roughly £343m annually, although it covers different services and should not be treated as one refuge budget. It also does not capture all council, NHS, policing, welfare, charitable or privately donated expenditure. (publications.parliament.uk)
The male-provision disparity
The available figures expose a striking difference:
| Indicator | Figure |
|---|---|
| Estimated male share of domestic-abuse victims | Approximately 41% |
| Men receiving safe-accommodation support in England, 2024–25 | 2,140 |
| Male share of everyone supported, including children | 3% |
| Male share of supported adults with recorded sex | Approximately 4.4% |
| Women receiving support | 46,100 |
| Children receiving support | 28,110 |
| Home Office funding for the Men’s Advice Line, 2024–25 | £200,000 |
| Funding for the National Domestic Abuse Helpline, 2024–25 | £1m |
Altogether, 76,850 people received safe-accommodation support. Capacity constraints prevented support for 8,580 referred households, while another 4,030 could not be supported because services could not meet their needs. (GOV.UK)
The 41% and 4.4% figures are not directly comparable measures of unmet need: refuge need depends on severity, danger, homelessness, children and alternative accommodation. Nevertheless, the scale of the difference justifies asking government to publish:
spending on male victims separately;
male demand, referrals, refusals and waiting times;
available male safe-accommodation places;
outcomes per pound, broken down by sex.
The defensible headline is:
Domestic abuse imposed an estimated annual social and economic cost of £66bn in 2016–17, while identifiable specialist victim-service expenditure was a small fraction of that loss. Male victims constitute roughly two-fifths of surveyed victims, but only a small proportion of recorded safe-accommodation recipients, and government does not publish a complete male-specific funding account.
RS: How much does all this boost the excess death toll?
Domestic abuse appears to contribute roughly 300–350 recorded deaths annually in England and Wales, although this is not normally classified as an official “excess-deaths” statistic.
Recorded domestic-abuse-related deaths, year to March 2025
| Category | Deaths |
|---|---|
| Suspected suicides following domestic abuse | 150 |
| Intimate-partner homicides | 80 |
| Adult-family homicides | 45 |
| Child deaths | 17 |
| Unexpected deaths under investigation | 43 |
| Other cohabitant-related deaths | 12 |
| Total recorded | 347 |
The reasonably firm central estimate is therefore:
125 adult domestic homicides
17 child deaths
150 suspected victim suicides
292 deaths across those three categories
The broader figure of 347 includes unexpected and other deaths whose precise classification may remain unresolved. (news.npcc.police.uk)
Important interpretation
The increase from 262 deaths in 2023–24 to 347 in 2024–25 was 85 cases. However, police state that much of this increase reflects improved recognition and recording of suicides, following new checks for histories of domestic abuse. It cannot be interpreted as an 85-death deterioration in a single year. (news.npcc.police.uk)
The ONS separately recorded 111 legally classified domestic homicides in the year to March 2025:
75 female victims;
36 male victims;
67 killed by a partner or former partner.
The different total reflects different definitions and data systems. (Office for National Statistics)
Likely unmeasured deaths
The true attributable toll could be higher because current figures do not reliably quantify deaths caused indirectly through:
long-term depression and later suicide;
alcohol or drug dependency arising from abuse;
cardiovascular and other stress-related illness;
homelessness and exposure;
delayed medical treatment;
deaths initially recorded without an identified domestic-abuse history.
There is presently no sound UK method for assigning a number to these longer-term premature deaths. Consequently, 347 is better understood as a recorded minimum or surveillance count, not a complete causal estimate.
Male victims and female perpetrators
Across the five-year Domestic Homicide Project dataset, 27% of recorded victims were male, suggesting roughly 390 male deaths among 1,452 cases—around 75–80 annually when averaged. However, this does not mean they were all killed or driven to suicide by women. Adult-family cases, same-sex relationships, suicides and male perpetrators against male victims are included. The published headline data do not provide the sex-by-sex perpetrator cross-tabulation needed to calculate deaths caused specifically by women’s abuse of men. (news.npcc.police.uk)
The strongest defensible statement is:
Domestic abuse is associated with approximately 300–350 identified deaths annually in England and Wales, with suicide now exceeding intimate-partner homicide. The full premature-death burden—and the portion involving female perpetrators and male victims—remains insufficiently measured.
RS: Whats the big number for both sexes worldwide?
The best defensible worldwide headline figure is approximately 90,000 people a year killed by an intimate partner or another family member, across both sexes.
Using UNODC’s 2021 global data:
| Victims | Approximate annual deaths |
|---|---|
| Women and girls | 45,000–50,000 |
| Men and boys | About 40,000 |
| Both sexes | Approximately 85,000–90,000 |
This estimate is derived from approximately 458,000 global homicides in 2021:
Men and boys were 81% of homicide victims, with approximately 11% killed by partners or family members.
Women and girls were 19%, with approximately 56% killed by partners or family members. (UNDERSTANDING HOMICIDE FIG. 7 Share of)
The concise statement is:
Around 90,000 people worldwide are killed by an intimate partner or family member each year—roughly one person every six minutes.
That remains an incomplete figure. It excludes:
suicides following domestic abuse;
deaths from neglect and coercive control;
premature deaths from trauma, addiction or stress-related disease;
homicides where the victim–perpetrator relationship was not recorded.
Unlike England and Wales, there is no credible worldwide suicide-inclusive domestic-abuse death total. Therefore, 90,000 should be described as the estimated global homicide toll, not the complete death toll from domestic abuse.