I must believe passionately in lying in favour of a good cause and for police abuse of power.

I can’t imagine any other reason for reacting angrily to a national discussion of violence against women becoming a discussion about the ethics of an Amnesty campaign headline.

NB Sarcasm may well be the lowest form of wit, but I don’t think a higher form of wit has been earned here.

Presumably, if the police were to lie to put a known rapist behind bars, then anyone who criticised the police’s lying would be similarly beyond the pale? After all, it’s in all a good cause, so opposing their actions would be tantamount to condoning rape.

“Shorter Sunny: “any claim is to be supported, if it is useful to the cause”. Thank you for telling us never to trust you.”

Oh well done, for catching Sunny trying to promote his slick anti-rape agenda. There goes the left again, always dedicated to the cause of reducing rape and battery.

Pat yourself on the back. Today you did something good.

“Sunny. Are you “satisfied with that response” because it dovetails neatly with your social and political prejudices or because you have any evidence that there is a grain of truth in the statement?”

Could there a grain of truth in the statement that large numbers of women are raped, beaten, kicked or slapped by their male partners?

Could there? Even a single grain? Even like unto a mustard seed of truth?

No, it is Sunny’s social and cultural prejudice against rape and assault all over again.

“Lying about a problem, (and lets split no hairs here, that is what they are doing), is not helpful.”

But concern trolling Amnesty International is really very helpful.

Not to split hairs, but this entire thread is a sorry disgrace.

I hope the women I know who have been subjected to rape and “the other violence” which we all consider so spurious of the commie liars Amnesty to bring up never, ever read it. And so should you.

>Seriously, why don’t you you just fuck off with your “undermining other work that they do”

No, I’m not “fucking off” with anything. VAW matters, and addressing it matters, which is why I’m supporting the day, and why I’ve taken the trouble to ask the questions.

>?How dare you say that male on female violence needs take – what? fade into the background? pretend it doesn’t exist?

I didn’t say or suggest that.

>What bit do you not understand – Violence against Women is just as important as Prisoners of Conscience.

I didn’t suggest that it wasn’t; however Amnesty have got this seriously wrong and of course that is going to impact on their reputation and their work. It’s already been in this debate that “Amnesty have a reputation for this kind of thing”.

I don’t see how suggesting that we need decent data to run campaigns and make policy decisions is controversial. What will happen is that anybody scratching beneath the surface will find that this campaign is using inaccurate information to create screaming headlines. That will *not* help anyone.

>As I’ve just said in another thread I am a survivor of domestic violence.
>And, here, your rhetoric and flippancy about violence against women is soul destroying.

I don’t see *any* rhetoric or flippancy.

The headline grabbing media presentation is going to come back and bite them in the arse, and it will be the interests of victims of violence that suffer as a result.

I suggest any further comment on theother thread.

Seriously, why don’t you you just fuck off with your “undermining other work that they do”

How dare you say that male on female violence needs take – what? fade into the background? pretend it doesn’t exist? What bit do you not understand – Violence against Women is just as important as Prisoners of Conscience.

As I’ve just said in another thread I am a survivor of domestic violence. And, here, your rhetoric and flippancy about violence against women is soul destroying.

The Map of Gaps thing comes around every year at the end of January (this is year 2).

I think the presentation (as well as the statistics) are undermining the campaign – which, I’m assuming, we all agree is very important.

The headlines for the first two Maps of Gaps on the BBC have been:

29 January 2008: link: “Rape support service ‘in crisis’”. It says:

“The Fawcett Society said fewer than one in four local authorities currently provided services for rape victims.
Of the 38 support centres that did exist, half were struggling due to a lack of funding and they needed more government support, it said.
The Home Office said it was looking at ways of expanding such services.”

30 January 2009: link: “Legal threats over rape support”. It says:

“More than 100 councils could face legal action for not providing specialist support services for women affected by sexual violence.
..
The Local Government Association said the threats were “irresponsible”.
..
The study, called the “Map of Gaps,” charts services across Britain and suggests more than 100 local authorities, a quarter of the total, have no specialised help at all.”

We all know that these services take a long time to set up and start running. Based on their own statistics I’d have thought that progress from “38″ (or even a quarter) to about 75% (or 300) in 12-14 months is bloody amazing.

Amnesty say in point 4 to Rachel:

“We are saying 1 in 10 suffer rape or domestic violence every year and there is not enough support, service or resources invested in meeting demand at all let alone in providing the option of specialist service provision.”

and in their slogan:

“Each year, around 1 in 10 women in Britain experience rape or other violence”

They cite the Map of Gaps 2 report as their source.

Yet the report they cite actually says (page 15, “the extent of VAW”):

“data from the British Crime Survey (BCS) on domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking (Walby & Allen 2004; Finney 2006) were used to calculate a maximum of 2,861,900 and a minimum of 2,513,464 potential service users who were currently
experiencing or had recently experienced at least one incident of domestic violence, rape or stalking in England and Wales.”

Matthew has demonstrated that, whatever it is, all stalking cannot be defined as “rape or domestic violence”, and is the biggest category of these incidents, and the Map of Gaps report specifically excludes it from those 2 categories.

Yet Amnesty conflates it back in with “rape and domestic violence”.

They are are being dishonest, and I think the biggest problem here is that they are wrecking their own reputation. That risks undermining the other work they do, such as with Prisoners of Conscience.

I’d agree with Mat (on the other thread?) that if you are doing a high-profile campaign then getting your stats right is even more critical than it is normally, otherwise you are just giving people an excuse to conclude that your campaign is wrong and you are crying wolf.

I think there are other problems with the rigour of the Map of Gaps report, but I’ll keep those for an article on my own site when I have done my digging.

What a waste of a campaign opportunity.

There may well be such a sense of chivalry, but the quoted ststistic does not prove it. There might be other expanations. For example, if women were, on average, more risk-averse than men, they would be more likely to avoid situations it which bodily harm is likely. Then, too, violence occurs mostly among near equals – if you know you will lose a fight, there is not much point in fighting it before you give up.

Some people spend their whole lives studying and debating the “niceties of statistics”, and for very good reasons. Florence Nightingale was a statistician. Her careful, detailed investigations in army hospitals formed the basis of a campaign which revolutionised battlefield medicine, saving countless lives. She didn’t tell MPs things like “2 in 3 wounded soldiers die from gunshots or other causes”.

Statistical accuracy isn’t some hair-splitting game for pedants. For Amnesty to treat it with contempt because their campaign is above such details, is just arrogant. On the contrary, since this issue is so important, it’s all the more necessary that we get a clear picture of the truth. Muddying the waters with sensationalist and misleading stats is counterproductive.

Here’s another important project I’d encourage everyone to support: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/islp/

and I am not.

Lying about a problem, (and lets split no hairs here, that is what they are doing), is not helpful. Domestic violence is not part of their remit and trying to get a message across is not a good reason for making stuff up.

I suggest the author of the following quotes look for his fellows in the eighth circle:

“Our first point on statistics is that we would urge people to show support for victims of violence against women rather than get into a debate about the niceties of statistics”

So they admit that they lied.

“Interestingly though, once the men began to accept the statistics they were very horrified and had massively underestimated the scale and extent of violence against women.”

Astonishing, people didn’t initially believe the stats you made up.

“Do we have to dispute the niceties of the stats or can we have a more humane starting point that we reject violence against women and wish it to end.”

Despite what you may believe, those arguing over the stats also think violence against women, (or indeed anybody), is a Very Bad Thing. Those disputers believe it is important enough not to lie about it.

“of course stats should not be misused”

Then stop doing so. LIES DO NOT HELP.

- Vic Reeves.

…tumbleweed…tumbleweed…tumbleweed::……

ONS

“The British Crime Survey in 2007/08 showed that the risk of being a victim of violent crime was 3.2 per cent, although there were differences between men and women. Young men, aged 16 to 24, were most at risk, with 13.4 per cent experiencing a violent crime of some sort in the year preceding the interview, compared with 6.4 per cent of women of the same age. For both sexes, the risk of being a victim of violent crime decreased with age. For those aged 25 to 34, 5.7 per cent of men and 3.3 per cent of women were victims of violent crime in the previous year. For those aged 75 and over, the proportions fell to 0.3 per cent and 0.2 per cent respectively. ”

It could hardly be clearer then , women are marvellously safe as a group .When you consider that women are inherently feeble physically this bears great testament to the residual chivalry of the larger and more powerful male . In that women have no ability to assault anyone whether their absence in the ranks of assailants is due to an innate moral superiority or lack of opportunity we can only guess .
My theory is that they posses an innate moral sensitivity which makes the call for men to be guilty until proven guilty in case of rape accusations ,an urgent necessity .As women always tell the truth there can be no possible objection

Thank you for telling us never to trust you.

However…I have tracked down the statistics in the mapofgaps report so here it is:

Map of Gaps quotes the British Crime Survey (2004/2005), in fact this sub-report (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/rdsolr1206.pdf)
as saying over the past 12 months adult women in England & Wales have suffered:

Stalking – 8.9%
Domestic violence – 5.9%
Sexual Assual – 2.8%

As there were 16.3m females between 16 and 59, they extrapolate to get 1.45m, 0.96m, and 0.46m in each of the three categories. Add these up and you get 2.9m, which then if you add on for Scotland and Northern Ireland you get 3.0m. To get 1/10 you then take 30m women, which is a bit odd as it must include pensioners and children but in fact the ratio would be higher.

This is not that bad. The mapofgaps report acknowledges there could be double-counting (but says for the pupose of ascertainly service provision it is not that important); a quick look at the BCS suggests this might be as high as 30% (table A7, p.18) but I might have read that wrong.

The figures above tally with the BCS data, but I’m not sure why they don’t include [non-sexual] ‘family violence’ (as distinct to ‘partner violence’,) which would mean an underestimate. On the other hand p.12, table 5, of the BCS report says 5.9% of women suffered ‘partner violence’ and ’3.1% ‘family violence’ (for men it is 4.7% and 2%) so I think 5.9% is the minimum (if all those suffering family violence were also counted in partner violence).

Clearly stalking is the largest category by far, of which about 40% was sending obsene or threatening letters or phone calls.

So I think it is wrong to say it is not sourced at all, and given certain assumptions 10% is about right (for example see A5 on p.16 which presents the data in a different way), although it should perhaps be noted that this includes a whole range of violence from ‘repeated belittling’ to rape, and there is an element of double-counting.

Unity and others – this isn’t an abuse of stats, to me, because the campaign is about violence against women. That doesn’t necessarily just mean violent attacks, and includes instances such as stalking and other types. I think that’s justified.
What that has to be with being liberal I don’t know – I and others supporting the campaign are merely taking a broader view on the issue. If you don’t want to support the campaign that’s your prerogative.

Congratulations, that’s an even more ignorant abuse of statistics than Amnesty’s – the suggestion that ‘proved in a court of law against a specific attacker beyond reasonable doubt’ is a sane reporting measure for rape incidence, given the nature of the crime and the way in which it is reported and prosecuted, is just fucking revolting.

Unity is right in general terms, though. There is no source at all for the one in ten; it is made up; and by making it up Amnesty have detracted from the point of their campaign.

And this is poisonous:
“Top among the hurdles was that they spent more time haggling over and disbelieving statistics than actually considering the injustices of violence against women.”

Or “damn those bastard men for caring about whether or not what we’re saying is true, rather than just agreeing that it’s awful”.

Are you “satisfied with that response” because it dovetails neatly with your social and political prejudices or because you have any evidence that there is a grain of truth in the statement?

I have trawled through the documents you linked to but can find no statistical data indicating the scale of the problem. If it is there please point me to it.

According to the statistics quoted above on rape, there are around 3,000 cases proven each year- that’s one in ten thousand women, not one in ten. I am not promoting this as an accurate statistic but at least it comes from somewhere.

.

The 1 in 10 statistic is a figure we pulled out of our collective arses because it looks good on the campaign literature but we have no actual means of backing it up with evidence.