LONDON, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Nearly two million adults experienced domestic abuse in England and Wales, a major new report Thursday from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed.
The report brings together data on domestic abuse and its consequences from across police forces, the government and victim support organisations.
Figures for the year ending March 2017 revealed that 1.2 million women and 713,000 men reported being the victims of some form of domestic abuse in the previous year. A large proportion of the victims would not have reported their abuse to the police, said ONS.
There were 1.1 million reports of domestic abuse that were recorded by the police over the same period, with 488,000 of the reports recorded as crimes.
Of the domestic abuse cases referred to the Crown Prosecution Service by police, just under three quarters resulted in a decision to charge the abuser with a crime offence, with 76 percent convicted by the courts.
Women were the victims in around three-quarters of domestic abuse-related crimes recorded by the police, and were overwhelmingly the majority of victims in cases of murder or manslaughter related to domestic abuse, accounting for 70 percent of cases between April 2013 and March 2016.
The highest level of domestic abuse of 10.5 percent over the three years between 2014 and 2017 was among teenage females aged 16 to 19, and the lowest female rate of 5.9 percent was among women aged 55 to 59. The highest level of males, 6.9 percent, was among teenagers aged 16 to 19.
Almost a third of all abuse reports involved acts of violence, while 13 percent were reports of sexual violence.
The number of revenge pornography cases, in which private sexual images are disclosed without consent with intention to cause anxiety or distress, reached 389 this year, compared to 184 cases a year earlier.
The ONS report showed an average domestic abuse rate across England in 2017 as 19.41 per 1,000 people. The police force area with the highest rate was Durham with a rate of 36.55, while Cheshire with 8.74 per 1,000 was the lowest. The rate in London was 25.37 per 1,000 people.
Alexa Bradley, from ONS, said: "Domestic abuse is a particularly difficult problem to tackle, not least because victims may be reluctant to report abuse or to support action against their abusers.
"This report aims to assist local services by giving a clearer picture of the scale of domestic abuse, how the police and justice system deals with cases of abuse, and to shine a light on this important area of public policy."
Currently there are 305 refuge services, often called "battered wives centers" operating in England and Wales in 2017.
