Press Release

San Diego, California, May 9, 2013

Contact: Marc Angelucci, Esq., NCFM Vice President, marcangelucci@hotmail.com   626-319-3081

SUMMARY: Travis Alexander’s murder by Jodi Aris was horrific by any measure. It may not have happened if more attention were paid to female perpetrators and their male victims. 

In light of the tragic murder of Travis Alexander by his ex-girlfriend Jodi Arias, the National Coalition For Men (NCFM) calls for more attention to the neglected side of domestic violence where the perpetrator is female and the victim is male.  The neglect of male victims is so prevalent that most people do not know Alexander’s name and the public rarely calls this a case of domestic violence.

Female-on-male domestic violence is not rare.  In 2011 the Centers for Disease Control announced that “More than 1 in 3 women (35.6%) and more than 1 in 4 men (28.5%) in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.”  (See executive summary at www.cdc.gov/ ViolencePrevention/pdf/ NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf)

The CDC’s data says 25% of domestic violence deaths happen to men.   www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/ipv_factsheet.pdf   And a study funded by the CDC examined heterosexual relationships throughout the U.S. and found: “Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence,and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocallyviolent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases.” www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/5/941

Hundreds of empirical studies have found “women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, as men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners (and that men account for 1/3 of physical DV injuries). See www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

Male victims frequently find themselves trapped in a living situation with a violent partner whose violence arises from impulse problems, alcohol, drugs, or even mental illness such as borderline personality disorder, as Arias was diagnosed with.  Weapons and the element of surprise are used to compensate for strength difference, as Arias did.  Male victims often do not want to hit back for fear of being arrested.  Children are often present, and the male victims need a place to escape with their children for safety and to get help so they and their children are no long subjected to the violence.

Some countries, like Switzerland and The Netherlands, government-run battered men’s shelters where male victims and their children can go to escape the violence and avoid any escalation.  But most have no shelters for males.  In Calgary, Canada, a man named Earl Silverman who established Canada’s first battered men’s shelter had to fund it out of his own pocket because the government refused to help, and he recently commmitted a widely publicized suicide after having to close the shelter for lack of funds.

In 2008, NCFM won a landmark appellate case on behalf of battered men in California called Woods v. Horton (2008) 167 Cal.App.4th 648 that held it is unconstitutional to exclude male victims from state-funded services and that found domestic violence is a “serious problem for both women and men.”  More recently, NCFM helped establish an official Task Force on Male Victims of Domestic Violence within the Los Angeles County Domestic Violence Council.  Yet male victims and their children still must travel to the remote desert community of Lancaster because no other state-funded services in Los Angeles County will provide them shelter or even a hotel voucher.

“Victims are victims,” said NCFM Vice President Marc Angelucci, an attorney who represent the plaintiffs in Woods v. Horton.  “We cannot stop the cycle of domestic violence without addressing this problen honestly and in its entirety.  NCFM calls on the public and media to recognize this reality and take action to stop all forms of domestic violence regardless of gender.”   

Jodi Aris is not the only violent woman who murdered a man. And, her defense team still tried to blame Travis’s corpse.

Tags: abuse woman excuse, abused women defense, discrimination against men], domestic violence, female perpetrators, jodi aris, marc angelucci, national coalition for men, ncfm, travis alexander, violent women