A quarter of U.S. women suffer violent attacks by their partners It's a startling number: one in four women surveyed by the government say they were violently attacked by their husbands or boyfriends. The study - released Wednesday by the Centre for Disease Control - also says that one in five U.S. women will be or have been raped in the course of their lifetime.
The report showed that as many as 29million women said they've been victim of serious rage, including being choked, beaten, shot, stabbed, or punched.
The survey also revealed If slapping, pushing, and shoving are included in the already horrific definition of abuse, that number rises as high as 36million women in the U.S.
Though polling was anonymous, the claims of aggression are real, and are much higher than many agencies predicted.
A government official who oversaw the research called the results 'astounding.'
'It's the first time we've had this kind of estimate' on the prevalence of intimate partner violence, said Linda Degutis of the centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Experts in domestic violence don't find it too surprising, although some aspects of the survey may have led to higher numbers than are sometimes reported.
One expert called the new report's estimate on rape and attempted rape 'extremely high' — with one in five women saying they were victims.
About half of those cases involved intimate partners. No documentation was sought to verify the women's claims, which were made anonymously.
But advocates say the new rape numbers are plausible.
'It's a major problem that often is under-estimated and over-looked,' said Linda James, director of health for Futures Without Violence, a San Francisco-based organization that advocates against domestic abuse.
The CDC report is based on a randomized telephone survey of about 9,000 women.
Several of the CDC numbers are higher than those of other sources.
For example, the CDC study suggests that 1.3 million women have suffered rape, attempted rape or had sex forced on them in the previous year.
That statistic is more than seven times greater than what was reported by a Department of Justice household survey conducted last year.
There may be several reasons for the differences, including how the surveys were done, who chose to participate and how 'rape' and other types of assault were defined or interpreted, said Shannan Catalano, a statistician with the Bureau of Justice Statistics.