Roscop

The Australian government and police forces have commissioned a lot of research on false accusations of sexual assault. You can access the results of some of research easily on the Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault website. I highly recommend the recent report by Wall and Tarczon. Their research provides a summary of recent literature, prevalence rates and the motivations for falsifying reports.

Sarah, I think the issue of perceived risk and associated fear of walking alone at night is a bigger one for women than men but it's not an either or situation. Rather one of degree.

There are other aspects to that as well, there are some fairly strong ingrained social conventions against assaulting women that don't apply to the same extent to assaults on men. The upbringing that many males have had that places an obligation on us to step in and put our own safety on the line to protect women in a dangerous situation.

There are places I simply choose not to be alone at night, my gender is no protection against a tougher person or a group of thugs or someone carrying a weapon. I'd like for that not to be the case but it's not the reality of city living.

In regard to Killarney's comments she did more than make an observation about gender representation on OLO, I quote again "ALL of whom are strongly vocal in their disdain for women in general". That's not an observation of gender representation, rather a very nasty lie.

Killarney has a very long history of extremely unpleasant behaviour towards those who don't accept her views on gender, also a substantial history of reprimanding female posters who step out of line. She has not in my recollection ever actually debated the facts, rather relied on unfounded and unsubstantiated claims about research that does not back their view of gender. Generalised claims of that research being discredited but unwilling to back up those claims or discuss even greater flaws in the research that feminist narrative on gender violence relies on.

R0bert

Sarah, further to my previous post some material on victimisation by strangers. It's difficult to get the exact context from the kind of reports readily available to the public and these kind of reports are heavily influenced by reporting patterns. And I do agree that most of these assaults by strangers are committed by men but I don't own the types of men who assault strangers and have no control over their freedom to commit those offences.

Some Australian figures http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime/assault.html

"Fifty-eight percent of recorded assault victims in 2007 were male.
Males had higher victimisation rates than females in all age groups."

"Most male victims (70%) were assaulted in non-residential locations, whereas the majority of female victims (58%) were assaulted in residential premises. "

and some more at http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/facts/2011/facts_and_figures_2011.pdf

A US report showing a surprising reduction in victimisation http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vvcs9310.pdf

"Simple assault made up the majority (60%) of victimizations committed by strangers during the year, followed by aggravated
assault (20%), robbery (17%), and rape or sexual assault (2%)."

"In 2010, males experienced violent victimizations by strangers at nearly twice the rate of females" - note also a greater decline in the rate of victimisation of men by strangers.

In terms of likely hood of assault by a stranger it's fairly clear that males are actually at a significantly higher risk than females and that sexual assault in public settings is a relatively small proportion of violent crime committed by strangers (that does not take away from the horror of it BTW). No idea how much of that assault involved a brawl at or outside a pub or club.

I'm not aware of any argument to suggest that the stranger assault rates are significantly impacted by social factors to make it look like males are represented in the statistics more often than they actually are assaulted.

R0bert

RObert
Thanks for the stats.
I am not an expert in assault (domestic or otherwise), but these statistics seem to confirm what I have heard - that the prevalence of men assaulting other men is higher than men assaulting women.
These stats also confirms that violence towards men occurs more often outside the home while violence towards women occurs more often inside the home.
I was interested in your comments about men who step up to protect women when a woman is being assaulted. These men who step up are often then the victim of assault. I have an anecdote to support this:
Recently, a male relative bombarded me with verbal abuse. Another male relative stepped up to defend me, and as a result himself became the victim of verbal abuse. Fortunately no physical violence occurred..

Sarah "that the prevalence of men assaulting other men is higher than men assaulting women. "I don't think you will get any dispute on that one. Perhaps the real wrong in the mayors message is that he is not telling the more likely victims of an assault by a stranger to not walk alone at night.

I do though think that it's a relatively small proportion of the population involved in perpetrating these assaults and often the same group of thugs committing multiple offences. I'd also like to see some breakdown by location, what proportion of the assaults by strangers occur at drinking venues?

There are also significant demographic factors at play that don't get the same airplay, disadvantage, mental illness, substance abuse being three of the major factors that I'm aware of. Those factors can translate into racial groupings, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are far more likely to end up on either side of the violent assault equation than most of us, not a comprehensive report but a start http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/1370.0~2010~Chapter~Aboriginal%20and%20Torres%20Strait%20Islander%20peoples%20%284.4.6.2%29 . No references handy by my recollection is that those patterns don't follow for urbanised indigenous people.

This Ask article touches on the Indigenous community aspect http://www.ask.com/wiki/Indigenous_Australians_and_crime but is not really covering the topic.

In regard to violence in the home, there are some different dynamics at play that in my view alter both the perpetration of violence and the reporting of that violence. I'd typed some of that up and well exceeded the word limit for the post, I will see if I can do a second post with that material.

R0bert

Sarah the follow up comments on violence in the home.

There is a long part of human history where the role of the male was to both provide for and protect family. That brings with it rewards for aggressiveness and competitive behaviour outside the home and a whole different role within the home.

There is also still a significant social stigma and risk of significant legal consequences facing males who report violence by a female partner. There are no public messages that I'm aware of specifically speaking against violence against men in the home by women.

Men I've spoken to who have had violent spouses have lived with the fear that they won't be believed if they report the violence, that if someone is removed from the home and children it will be the male because that's easier for the police to deal with. There is a lack of shelters able to accommodate men and children. Many of the professionals you need to deal with have been heavily indoctrinated with the beliefs in men as aggressor and women as victim and appear to have a very limited understanding of the actual dynamics that can be at play.

There are a whole bunch of reasons for men to under report violent female spouses.

Have you had a look at the material I referenced in one of my earlier posts http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17286#305183, specifically http://web.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm ?

I do think that it's worth a look at.

R0bert