Family and Children's Trust Fund of Virginia


Violence at Home: The FACT Report

The Family and Children's Trust Fund (FACT) has released a groundbreaking report that measures the prevalence and interrelatedness of violence in families, ranging from infants to the elderly, and how often the incidences occur by locality in Virginia.

Click here for the Violence at Home: The FACT Report

Click here for the Violence at Appendix

Using eighteen social indicators, Violence At Home: The FACT Report is the first of its kind to provide cities and counties with a holistic- and unflinching - statistical assessment of the extent and impact of violence within the family structures of their residents.

"We know that every person, regardless of age and circumstance, has a right to be safe in their own home; however, prior to the FACT Report, we were only able to guess at how well we were doing as a Commonwealth to protect people," said FACT Board Chair David Boehm.

Family violence encompasses the abuse terms with which the public is generally familiar: child abuse and neglect, elder abuse, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. "We tend to think of these as very separate categories, but a violent household can be fraught with more than one type of abuse or neglect," explained Fran Inge, FACT executive director. "For instance, we know that 30 to 60 percent of perpetrators of intimate partner violence also abuse children in the household."

This interrelatedness underscores one of the elements that make the Violence At Home report especially valuable for policymakers and service providers. "For the first time ever, all of the information is in one place. From what we can tell, this is the only report of its kind in the nation," said Inge.

Drawing on data collected over five years, the report's findings are based on 18 social indicators, broken down by eight regions. Some indicators are familiar, such as the percentage of people living below the poverty line. Other indicators are less widely-known, but no less impactful; for instance, statistics on arrests of juveniles for violent sexual offences committed against a family member.

The George Mason Study

The Virginia Commonwealth University Study

The FACT Report also includes hypotheses to questions such as: What leads to some communities having higher rates of family violence and others having lower rates? Why are arrest rates for family violence different among the regions? What might be reasons for apparent increases in child and elder abuse in some regions compared to others?

While the underlying issues related to family violence may be complex, the format of the FACT Report is easy to understand and use. There is a page for each indicator, along with a map and graph. This inaugural edition analyzes18 indicators, but future installations could have more. Compiling the research revealed the need for even more uniform and consistent data collection; for instance, statewide, there is a lack of reliable data on dating violence among teenagers.

The report gives localities an unprecedented opportunity to determine whether their current services and organizations are meeting the needs of the community. (Link to a community tools resource link that is still under construction) According to David Boehm, Violence At Home: The FACT Report is intended to inform, and, despite the disheartening nature of the subject matter, to encourage. "We need to strengthen existing efforts, and there are many. Lawmakers and organizations support the idea of collaboration, but there hasn't been a single source of information that distinguishes where efforts are most needed. These are folks who are expected to make tough decisions about allocating resources. Better informed decisions begin with better information."