§ Lord Jenkins of Putneyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they believe that women should take courses in self-defence; whether assaults on women are increasing and in what proportion of such cases the assailant is previously known to the victim.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers)Whether women should take part in self-defence classes is a matter of individual choice, as the consequences of fighting back are too uncertain in practice to justify positively advising women to adopt such a course.
The British Crime Survey (BCS) covers offences whether or not they are reported to the police, or recorded by them. It shows that the risk of assaults (equivalent to notifiable woundings and common assaults) against women increased from 2.85 incidents per 100 women aged 16 or more in 1981 to 3.61 in 1987. This increase was influenced mainly by an increase in incidents classified in the survey as domestic violence, which rose by 60 per cent. between 1981 and 1987. This rise may be attributable to increased willingness among women to talk about domestic violence to interviewers. (This compares with the apparent greater willingness among women to report domestic assault to the police. In 1981 only a fifth of incidents were reported, compared with more than half in 1987).
According to BCS, the assailant was known to the victim in 76 per cent. of incidents of assault against women in 1987; this reflects the fact that over half of all such incidents were domestic in which assailant and victim were of course known to each other.