Millions more affected by domestic abuse

Millions more adults in England and Wales are believed to have experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, after the Office for National Statistics (ONS) overhauled its crime survey.

They added new questions covering topics like controlling and coercive behaviour and the harm it causes.

This means that more than 12m people are thought to have suffered abusive behaviour from family members or partners, up from 10m in older figures.

The new data, for the year ending March 2024, gives the most detailed picture yet of how common different types of abusive behaviour are, suggesting 18% of adults have suffered emotional abuse and 12% economic abuse.

Not all abusive behaviours cross the line into criminal levels of domestic abuse, researchers warned.

Data on the severity of abuse was not published on Friday, but is expected in November.

The figures were published on the same day as a report from MPs calling for better data on violence against women and girls (VAWG).

The Public Accounts Committee highlighted the need for improved information on how much violence women and girls face, on the needs of support services, evidence on the interventions that reduce violence and co-ordination across government departments to halve VAWG.

The Home Office said the new data is “essential to help us better understand the scale of domestic abuse and how we halve violence against women and girls”.

Domestic abuse charity Women’s Aid, which helped the ONS and University of Bristol develop the new questions has welcomed the change.

“Women’s Aid has for many years been concerned that the questions in the survey have failed to adequately capture the lived experience of victim-survivors of domestic abuse” said Sarika Seshadri, their Head of Research and Evaluation.

The definition of domestic abuse in law has changed a lot over the past decade. Coercive control was first made a crime in 2015, years before the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act explicitly defined some of its major forms, including economic abuse.

The ONS adapted its gold-standard crime survey to reflect the shift in understanding of abuse and better reflect the experiences of survivors.

Some of the new questions ask about manipulative behaviour, including whether a partner or family member had tried to convince the respondent’s friends they were “crazy”; acted in an “overly jealous way”; or had threatened to hurt or kill themselves if the respondent did not do what they wanted.

The new survey also asks if a family member or partner had threatened to discredit the respondent using sensitive personal information, such as their sexuality or immigration status.

Answers were collected privately using tablets, unlike the spoken interviews used for other crimes.

According to the new data, about 12.6 million people in England and Wales – 26% of the population – had experienced abusive behaviours by family or partners since age of 16, including 30% of women and 22% of men.

These figures did not account for the number of incidents or harm suffered. Women are more often the target of repeated or more severe abuse.

More than three-quarters of the 108 domestic homicide victims in the year to March 2024 were women.