Understanding the nature and prevalence of family and domestic violence can inform the development and evaluation of policies, programs and services to prevent and better respond to the issue. While every experience is very personal and different, it is most common for this type of violence to be perpetrated against women, by men. Data on the prevalence of physical and/or sexual family and domestic violence in Australia is available from the ABS Personal Safety Survey (PSS) which collects information on the experiences of violence for women and men in Australia.
The visualisation below allows users to explore the estimate and proportion of Australians aged 18 and over who have experienced physical and/or sexual family and/or domestic violence at least once since the age of 15 (lifetime prevalence), and at least once in the last 12 months (12 month prevalence), by sex of victim, and relationship with perpetrator. Across all family and domestic relationship types in 2016, a higher proportion of women than men experienced physical and/or sexual violence at least once in their lifetime. Almost 1 in 4 (23% or 2.2 million) women and 1 in 13 (7.8% or 704,000) men experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner at least once since the age of 15. An estimated 2.3% (or 212,000) of women and 1.3% (or 114,000) of men experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence at least once in the last 12 months.