The number of men who report experiencing domestic violence from their current partner has almost doubled since 2005, according to a new survey released last week by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

The ABS Personal Safety Survey 2012 collected information from men and women aged 18 years and over about their experience of violence since the age of 15.

Between 2005 and 2012 there was a 20 per cent decrease in the proportion of men who had experienced all forms of violence in the 12 months prior to interview.

Going against this general trend however, the rate of men reporting current partner violence since the age of 15 rose alarmingly by 175% in the same period (an estimated 119,600 men reported such violence in 2012). The rate of men reporting dating violence since the age of 15 also rose by 140% since the 2005 survey. The vast majority of perpetrators of dating and partner violence against men were female – only 6 or 7 per cent of incidents involved same-sex violence.

The rate of men reporting current partner violence in the 12 months prior to interview quadrupled (a rise of 394%), however these estimates are considered too unreliable for general use because of the small number of men interviewed for the 2005 survey. The ABS surveyed 11,800 females but only 4,500 males in 2005 – a sampling gender bias that worsened in the 2012 survey, where only 22 per cent of respondents were male.

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