CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The family is often equated with sanctuary-a place where individuals seek love, safety security, and shelter. However, this false idea is slowly fading. Evidence shows that it is also a place that imperils and breeds some of the most drastic forms of violence perpetrated against women and girls.
Domestic violence against women and girls continues to be global epidemic that kills, tortures and maims-physically, psychologically, sexually and economically. It is one of the most pervasive of human rights violence, denying women and girl’s equality, security, dignity self-worth, and the right to enjoy fundamental freedoms. Although violence against women is ubiquitous, cutting across boundaries of culture, class, education, income, ethnicity, and age, domestic violence is the most prevalent, yet relatively hidden and ignored form of violence against women and girls.
While reliable statistics are hard to come by, studies estimate that, from country to country, between 20 and 50 percent of women have experienced physical violence such as slapping, beating, arm twisting, stabbing, strangling, burning, kicking, and the like, at the hands of intimate partners of family members.