by Tony Rucinski, TCW
THE Office for National Statistics has just released its latest domestic abuse figures. The Crime Survey estimates that 3.8million people aged 16 and over, 7.8 per cent of the adult population, experienced domestic abuse in the year to March 2025. That is around one in 13 adults; 2.2million (9.1 per cent) of all women, and 1.5million (6.5 per cent) of all men. The overview can be found here, and the companion victim characteristics bulletin here.
Women are more likely to be recorded as victims. But men are not a rounding error. Around four in ten victims are male. The definition of ‘domestic abuse’ used by ONS is very broad. As well as violence it records emotional and economic abuse; it covers relatives, adult children and former partners as well as husbands and wives. Once you count all of that, the totals are huge for both sexes.
But within those figures sits a story that almost no one in public life seems willing to tell. Marriage is the lowest risk setting we have for both women and men. You see it most clearly when you look at how the Crime Survey breaks down domestic abuse by marital status. The Department for Work and Pensions recently drew this together in an equality analysis for its ‘Connect to Work’ programme. Using the 2024 Crime Survey, it reports that while 2.5 per cent of adults who were married or in a civil partnership had experienced domestic abuse in the last year, the percentage of those cohabiting was 5.1 percent, 7.6 per cent of those single, 11.8 per cent of the divorced and 15.0 per cent of the separated; 2.4 per cent of the widowed are affected and 4.8 per cent of adults overall. You can read that analysis here, see paragraph 85.