In the framework of our project "Integration of a Gender Approach into Social Policy of a Region" we have formed a work team which was involved in the study of problems of domestic violence and comprised the crisis specialists from various cities of the Volga Federal Region. The main goal of such studies was to explore the perception of the scope, causes and consequences of domestic violence as they are viewed by men and women at the age of 18 to 65, being either currently or formerly married, of various education level and occupation.
The poll was conducted in February 2004.

We interviewed 898 people (33% men and 67% women) in five Volga regions: Republic of Tatarstan, Republic of Udmurtia, as well as regions of Nizhni Novgorod, Perm and Saratov.

Among key social and demographic features of our respondents it is worth mentioning the following:
- Age of respondents: 41% were 18-35 year old, 50% were 36-55 year old and 9% were over 55.
- Education: College-bred or incomplete college - 51%; post-secondary - 35%; senior secondary - 13%. In the female group 55% of respondents had higher or incomplete higher education, in the male group this indicator accounted for 45%.

Majority of polled people represented the state-financed organizations (managers or specialists) - 33,5%, workers of industrial companies - 21%; production managers or specialists - 15%; managers or specialists of private companies and businessmen - 12%.

Moreover such male and female groups differed by their characteristics. 50% women worked in the public sector and every fifth of them (20,5%) was a worker. Workers were dominating in the male respondent‘s group - 36%, while other occupations were represented by men and women almost in equal proportions.

20% of respondents were economically enactive people (jobless, elderly or disabled pensioners, students, housewives and women in the maternity leave). The total number of unemployed women was 2,5 times more versus men, although the distribution of responding men and women within the prevailing categories of "old-age pensioners" and "students" was nearly the same. Among non-working women the housewives accounted for 20,2% and welfare mothers accounted for 11,4%.

73,5% of total sampled respondents were married with 50% of them married over 15 years. 68% respondents were living with their spouses and 66% - with their minor kids. 30,5% were living jointly with their parents or relatives. 3,5% of respondents were single at the time of poll.

1. Description of domestic violence in the respondents‘ families. Aimed at determining the features of violent relationships in families our questionnaire comprised a set of specific questions. For instance, from the list of aggressive actions of psycological, economic, physical or sexual nature the respondents were suggested to select those which might have been ever committed in their families either against themselves or by themselves against their partners/spouses. In total we obtained data about relationships in 660 currently existing families and 232 split families where spouses were separated for one reason or another.

9% of questionnaires did not mention any violent actions in the families. Some questionnaires (11%) contained only the ticks in sections "criticism of shortcomings" and "control of actions" which might not be necessarily qualified as domestic violence depending on the form of its manifestation and attitude to them on the part of addressees. Then we selected from those questionnaires only such where partner‘s actions had been assessed as impermissible and having negative impacts.

In general the results of our study showed that 84% of responding people had experienced a certain degree of violence in their families being either an object of the partner‘s aggressive actions or a subject, who himself committed such violence. Therefore we can insist that the violence problem is widespread in the families domiciled in the area of Volga federal region.

We can mention that 19,5% of respondents where women account for 80%, gave affirmative replies to a question "have you had any problems in relationships with your spouse?

Practically in every other family people criticized each other‘s shortcomings, in every fifth family they practiced control of other spouse‘s actions, deeds and thoughts. Insults and shouts as mistreatment between spouses were mentioned least of all by respondents.

Respondents mentioned in equal proportions that they exerted themselves and were subject to relatively mild forms of psychological pressures. Although in cases of conditionally moderate and severe types of violence they mentioned 2,5 times more frequently that they had suffered from their partners‘ actions. This could be explained by the fact that respondents were not inclined to acknowledge themselves guilty of socially disapproved actions against their partners.

Let‘s review the distribution of replies given by men and women about various kinds of psychological violence they had been subject to in their families. (Fig.1)

Out of all types of psychological violence criticism of shortcomings in the family was 6% more frequently indicated by men than by women. Women would experience 1,5 times more frequently disregard and ignorance from their husbands and also humiliation in front of their children and other people. The biggest difference between male and female replies was noted in the area of serious types of psychological violence. Men were threatened of the assault or murder in their families 3,3 times less frequently compared to women. Every ninth responding woman was subject to such threats on the part of her husband.

With regard to the question "What is deemed permitted in the family from the list below and what is "domestic violence" the respondent opinions were split as follows: (Table 2)

Based on these data we can assume that there are certain types of violence which are deemed permitted by majority of respondents. For example, 86,4% find permitted the criticism of their spouse‘s weaknesses. A little less than half of respondents (43,4%) deem permitted the control of actions, thoughts and deeds. Nearly every fifth respondent (18,4%) finds adequate the disregard and ignorance, although in certain cases they may be a counter reaction to the partner‘s behavior in conflict situations.

Let‘s review distribution of opinions within the male and female groups with regard to certain types of pressures which may be perceived as domestic violence (Fig.2)

In general all respondents assess the criticism of shortcomings and control as permitted forms of behavior in the family, although men are qualifying such behavior as domestic violence twice as often compared to women.

Moderate and severe forms of treatment are qualified by majority of men and women as domestic violence, but both groups comprised respondents who allowed in their relationships with partners a threat of assault or murder.

Analysis of the respondents‘ replies as well as assessment by them of their partners‘ behavior allows to conclude that psychological violence is widespread in modern families. Keeping in mind that certain percentage of respondents finds certain forms of violence quite acceptable we may speak about regular ill-treatment in such families.

1.2. Economic pressures. In our studies we reviewed two main types of economic pressures: forbidding of employment and restrictions in spending money. 23,6% of the filled polls contained information about such problems.

Analysis of in the Table 3 shows that women more often that men in the families are subject to economic pressures rather than initiate such pressures. For example, women accounted for 77% of all respondents who mentioned that they were subject to at least one type of such economic pressures.

With regard to a question whether such spousal actions could be permissible 84,9 % of respondents believed that ban of employment was a kind of domestic violence, the other found it quite acceptable. 31,3% of polled people found acceptable the restricted spending of money. Let‘s review men‘s and women‘s attitude to this subject separately (Fig.3).

Women tend to qualify twice as often the financial restrictions as domestic violence and find them unacceptable for family relationships. It is worth mentioning that the question "Have you had any serious problems of money shortage over the last year?" was positively responded by 47,4% people and women accounted here for 70%.

These data stress once again that women belong to the "group of risk" with regard to economic pressures, because 2/3 of questioned men believe that forbidden employment and restricted right to spend money are quite acceptable in families.

Let‘s review the key motivations mentioned by respondents who were either subject to or exerted themselves psychological or economic pressures to their partners in the family. We can see significant difference between assessments of one‘s own behavior and the partner‘s behavior. Due to the existing firm myth about "provocative behavior" of victims and difficulty for "offenders" to acknowledge their own violent actions, our respondents qualified their own behavior like necessitated by "teaching purposes", while the partner‘s behavior they would "justify" by their own undue behavior (see Table 4).

Based on assessments given by our respondents to their own motives we may conclude that in one third of such cases they exert psychological or economic pressures due to their hot temper or difficulties to control themselves. This cause was indicated by 28,1% of respondents. Second came "my wrong behavior" which accounted for 20,2%. This is indicative of the fact that every fifth respondent deems himself guilty of actions committed by the other person. Respondents also mentioned "offence" as one of the main reasons of their ill-behavior.

Let‘s see how women and men responded to the question "If you did this then…" (See Fig. 4.1 and 4.2).

Majority of respondents in both groups noted an option "hot temper, difficult to control oneself" - 27% women and 29% men. An "offence" option as a reason was indicated by women 1,6 times more often. 18% of women committed violent actions in return as a means of self-defense, when partners would attack first. The same type of behavior demonstrated every man out of ten. Two groups responded differently to an option of "alcohol or drugs effect". Men would mention it as a cause of violent behavior in the family 4 times more frequently. Men and women responded almost identically to the "stress‘ option. It should be noted that in many cases men would explain this or that form of violence purely by their "teaching" purposes.

"Domestic violence" may be defined as a form of behavior of one person in relation to the other against will of the latter and with the purpose of establishing control and power over such other person. Options of reply, such as stress, alcohol, hot temper or offense may not necessarily mean that people realized they were committing violence. At the same time "teaching" of the partner is a conscious form of establishing control over the other adult individual. In the framework of our general sampling the number of respondents exerting this or that form of psychological or/and financial pressure accounted for 19%.

Review of replies to the question "If your partner did this, do you know why?" and their comparison to the data at Figures 4.1 and 4.2 will allow us to analyze to what extent men and women are capable of giving a fair assessment to their own and their partners‘ actions. Difference in the male and female replies over 5% will be assumed as significant.

Biggest difference between the women‘s assessment of their own violent behavior and men‘s opinion about motivations of their female partner‘s violent behavior lies in the following: 30% of men believe that their own wrong behavior is the cause of their spouse‘s psychological and/or financial pressures. On the other hand only 17% of women can apply this or that form of pressure with the "teaching" purposes. Another significant discrepancy is noted with regard to the item "self-defense". 18% of women were saying that their partners had been the first to begin and only 7% of men responded that women were forced to defend themselves from the aggression of male partners. Moreover the analysis of data at Fig. 4.1 and 5.1 shows that in 25% of cases women mention offense as a motive for their violent behavior and 20% of men indicated this option as a reason for their spouse‘s aggressive behavior.

Significant difference between groups in their assessment of the violent men‘s behavior is noted in two items. Thus 8% of men admitted that they can exert psychological and/or financial pressure in the state of alcohol or drug intoxication and this same reason of their partners‘ violent behavior was mentioned by 20% of women. 16% of women believed their own wrong behavior to be the cause of their partners‘ aggression while 23% of men acted in such cases with the "teaching" purposes to correct such wrong behavior.

Having compared data at these two Figures 4.2 and 5.2 we may say that more often than not men tend to justify their violence by the "teaching" purposes thus confirming the stereotype about existence of provocative behavior. Women are less inclined to blame themselves in the partner‘s aggressive behavior, because they find such aggression unfair.

1.3. Sexual violence. It‘s worth mentioning that sexual compulsion in marriage is the most closed subject for discussions and assessments. For instance, our respondents can be absolutely open about psychological pressures and financial manipulations of their relatives in the attempt to describe their relationships and prevent any further conflicts. Physical violence is difficult to conceal, especially when it has vivid consequences for somatic health and in most cases it can be also discussed as indisputable violence. Sexual violence of a husband or a wife is especially difficult to discuss. 6,4% of our questionnaires contained affirmative replies to the question about existence of sexual violence in their families. (Table 5).

Data in the Table are demonstrating that 4,7% of the respondents were subject by their partners to sexual compulsion and 1,7 of respondents committed themselves such things during their wed life.

Women mentioned 3,5 times more often in the course of the poll that their spousal sexual contacts had not been always desirable, although 1,6% of respondents believed that sexual compulsion was quite acceptable in the family.

Over 4 times less frequently (6,6%) men were inclined to acknowledge sexual compulsion as a violence in the family. Keeping in mind the gender specifics of perception of violence we may insist that women are forced to sexual compulsion in families much more frequently than men.

1.4. Physical violence. Physical violence in a family means an intentional harm to the health inflicted by one member of the family to another or physical pain.

In spite of the fact that Criminal Code of the RF does not contain any definitions of domestic violence, the physical form thereof is referred to the group of crimes which should be subject to the punishment under criminal law.

For the purposes of our study the physical violence was broken down into the mild, moderate and severe injures depending on the severity level and harm to the health.

40% of the questionnaires contained information about physical violence to which one of the spouses was either subject to or inflicted himself such violence to his/her spouse. See Table 6.

Every fifth respondent (19,8%) was subject to conditionally mild form of physical violence in his family, another 16,5% of respondents admitted that they happened to push their partners or throw things at them.

We referred blows, kicks and slaps to the physical violence of conditionally moderate degree of severity. 11,7% of our respondents are in a situation where they can quite as well expect such behavior towards themselves. 6,8% behave themselves aggressively with their partners.

Beating is the most severe type of physical violence which implies not so much the individual cases but a certain system of relationship. 4,2% of respondents mentioned that the had been subject to battery by their partners, less than 1% admitted that they had committed this themselves. The Table shows that more often than men our women mention that they are subject to all kinds of aggressive actions by their husbands. We can make a statement that physical violence of conditionally mild, moderate nd severe degree is mainly referred to the male type of behavior.

Replies of our respondents to a question "Have you had any physical trauma resulting from beating by your husband/wife?" are confirming the fact of regular physical violence and experienced brutality. 9,6% gave affirmative replies with 86,5% of them being women. See the frequency of physical injures in Table 7.

More than half of our respondents were very positive in their replies that they had never been in a situation of assault and battery resulting in their health harm and would never be in future. In every fifth case our respondents were so much positive - "I think it won‘t come to that". 6,8 % of respondents were assuming such situation quite probable. Perhaps those were our respondents who had been threatened of assault and/or murder. We need to remind that such type of psychological violence was indicated by 6,8%. We need to pay a very close attention to replies about already caused injuries: in 13% of instances the respondents mentioned that this had happened to them already once or more often.

Let‘s see the difference in the male and female replies about physical injuries:

Analysis of men‘s and women‘s answers showed that women‘s physical injuries were resulting from assault and battery three times more frequently (16,9compared to men (5,3%).

An option "No, but scared it may happen" chose 8% of women and 5% of men which is correlated with data of Section 1.1. about psychological pressures where husbands threatened to beat up or kill more often than wives.

"This never happened before and will never happen in the future" was mentioned with certainty by 51% of women and 71% of men. Men seemed to be less defenseless against physical violence in the family than women.

It is obvious that the problem of physical violence does exist in families domiciled in the reviewed cities. Women are subject to threats, direct assault and as a result get injured three times more often than men.

Results of aforementioned study were correlated with the question of the poll: "What of abovementioned may be deemed acceptable in a family and what is deemed domestic violence?" See Table 8.

In general the physical violence of any kind and degree is acknowledged as domestic violence by our respondents. Especially moderate and severe degrees thereof: absolute majority of respondents qualified beating, blows, kicks and slaps as impermissible for the family relationships. Pushing and throwing things is deemed permissible by 7,95% of respondents where women account for 70%.

Among those who find beating quite permissible, men account for 75% (3 persons). It should be noted that one or other kind of aggression may be deemed permissible by respondents who either commit violence or who suffers from violence, thus justifying their partner‘s behavior.

Let‘s review the motives of physical and sexual violence in families, mentioned by respondents (See Table 9).

Assessment by respondents of their motives shows that physical and/or sexual violence was committed by them in one third of cases due to their hot temper or when they could hardly control themselves. The respondents also mentioned "offence" as one of the major reasons for such behavior. Partners‘ behavior was also explained by their hot temper (26,4%), second came "the state of alcohol or drug intoxication" - 25,4%.

Let‘s review how men and women answered separately to a question "If it was committed by you" (Fig. 7.1 and 7.2).

Majority of respondents in both groups mentioned an option of "hot temper and difficulty to control oneself": 31% of women и 33% of men. Women were 1,5 times more frequent to indicate "offense" as a reason. Every fifth women would commit violence in response as a means of self-defense when a partner attacked first; same type of behavior demonstrated one man out of ten. Biggest difference of replies between groups lies in the option of "alcohol or drug intoxication". Men were three times more frequent to mention this as a cause of their violent behavior in the family. "Stress" shows only minor difference in answers of men and women: 9% and 7% accordingly. It should be noted that almost every fifth man indicated that committed this or that kind of violence for "correctional" purposes, same type of response gave 13% of women.

Let‘s get back to a definition of "domestic violence" as a kind of behavior to be committed against somebody‘s wish with the aim of establishing the power and control over him. "Teaching" of partners by means of physical assault is a conscious imposing of not only control but one‘s power over the latter. In total sampling the number of respondents who used this type of behavior accounted for 14,5%.

Let‘s look at the answers to the question: "If your partner did this, do you know why?" and compare them with the data at Fig.7.1 and 7.2.

Comparing data shown at Fig. 7.1-8.1 and 7.2-8.2 we should note that assessment of motives for physical abuse and/or sexual violence shows much more difference in men‘s and women‘s replies than assessment of motives for psychological and/or economic pressures. Thus 22% of men believed their own wrong behavior to be the reason for their wife‘s physical abuse. At the same time only 13% of women would apply this or that form of violence for "correctional" purposes. 20% of women gave a "self-defense" reply while 11% of men believed that their wives were forced to defend themselves from their aggression. Women were talking about their offense as a motive for physical abuse in 25% cases and 15% of men similarly assessed their spouses‘ motives of aggression. Another difference of assessments is noted in replies to the item "stress at work and out in the street". In 7% of cases women mentioned that they used physical aggression against their partners for exactly same reason, although men indicated this option as cause for their wife‘s aggression more than twice as often (16%).

Women‘s assessment of their men‘s violence also significantly differs almost in all replies. The major difference of 20% lies with the item of "alcohol or drug intoxication": 12% of men acknowledged that they had committed physical abuse in the state of alcohol or drug intoxication and 32% of women indicated the same factor as a reason of their husband‘s violence. Probably those men who committed physical abuse to their wives in the state of alcohol intoxication either understood that it might not had been the actual reason or didn‘t want to admit themselves alcohol-intensive. Women assess the external component of physical abuse and to their opinion it is exactly the state of alcohol intoxication when their spouses "allow" to themselves more aggressive type of behavior than normally.

12% of women believe that their own wrong behavior might have caused aggression of their partners and 16% of men are acting with "correctional" purposes. In 10% of cases men would indicate the "self-defense" and 4% of women give the same assessment to the partner‘s aggressive behavior. It should be noted here that physical aggression may be viewed by respondents of both sex as a self-defense against less severe violence, such as psychological pressure or vice a versa. Therefore we can assume that in response to the insult a person may slap his/her partner across the face and in response to the assault he or she would prefer to defend himself by ignoring the offender.

In case of psychological and/or financial pressures the respondents may more clearly understand their partner‘s motives because these forms are suggesting more verbal communications which allow to understand the cause of aggression. It is more difficult in case of physical abuse. It appears that very often the offender cannot perceive the real cause of such behavior and the object of violence can do nothing but fix only the external side of a situation (for instance, alcohol intoxication of a spouse). The same happens in situations of control, when the offender would infix in the spouse‘s mind a feeling of guilt for the "wrong" behavior to justify his own aggression.

Thus we analyzed 898 questionnaires and found out that there were quite a lot of families where violence was somehow existent, be it psychological, financial, sexual and/or physical one. The abovementioned analysis allows us to claim that number of families where several types of violence are practiced at the same time is much more numerous than that with psychological pressure only. Moreover, the heavier is the violence the sooner woman would be the subject thereof.

The aim of this study was to explore the causes of violence which may arise in family relationships as well as effects of such phenomena both for individuals and for social security of our community in general.

2.1. Causes of violence in families. Replies which we offered to our respondents included a wide variety of options: beginning from the impact of the outside world and social changes to the personal specific features of offenders and sufferers. Their objective was to give an assessment to each specified cause either according to degree of its impact or indicate that some of them may be irrelevant to the problem of domestic violence at all.

Data in the Table 10 are reflecting only the respondents‘ opinions and to a certain extent demonstrating once more the degree of respondents‘ awareness about the problem of domestic violence. In general our respondents admit to a greater or lesser extent the impact of abovementioned factors on the uprise of violence in families.

To our respondents opinion the biggest impact gives an alcohol abuse or drunkenness of some family members. Over 50% would indicate as a possible cause an impunity and non-recognition by the law of domestic violence to be a crime. More than 50% of respondents (55,4%) believe that aggressive behavior may be cultivated by parents as well as cruel treatment which might had been either experienced or observed in the childhood.

Most of our respondents (29,8%) chose the reply of "no relevance to the problem" in the item "sex discrimination". Interesting thing about it was that men and women account were equally split in this group. But keeping in mind all analyzed data of the study we may say that domestic violence is mainly the "female" problem which means violation of human rights, i.e. sex discrimination. It may be difficult for our respondents to define such notion as "sex discrimination" because it is not spelled out in the law of the Russian Federation and therefore not so obvious for Russian mentality.

Considerable role of mass media in building up the human worldview has been proved by experts on environmental psychology. Nevertheless 23,9% of respondents believe that mass media do not have any impact on the uprise of violence in the families in spite of noticeably growing number of feature movies, documentary films and various TV programs which show violence and aggression as acceptable and even approved style of behavior.

2.2. Effects of domestic violence. This study allows to analyze not only our respondents‘ opinion about probable effects of violence and possible means to stand up to it but also review personal experience of either suffered or observed domestic violence and its impact on the cultivation of aggressive human behavior.

Probable effects of domestic violence in our study are reviewed in three aspects:

Social losses of community due to the growing number of negative phenomena. Respondents were suggested to choose three most vivid social consequences of domestic violence from the list of eight options.

Majority of respondents (63,4%) answered that children living in the environment of domestic violence will certainly copy their parents‘ behavioral models to their adult families.

Table 13
Consequences of domestic violence for community

	Consequences	Number of respondents, %
1.	Children will copy the behavioral models to their future familie	63,4
2.	Growth of crime	55,9
3.	Vagrancy	51,7
4.	Growing number of alcoholics and drug-takers	44,3
5.	Increased number of suicides	41,6
6.	Declined health level of the nation	36,5
7.	Prostitutes	33,4
8.	Growing number of victims of exploitation and slave-trade	12,8

Over 50% of respondents believe that the growth of crimes including those committed by teenagers is directly resulting from violence they had suffered. 51,7% of respondents are convinced that vagrancy is directly related to the problem of domestic violence.

Least of all (12, 8%) our respondents are inclined to see the relationship between domestic violence and a problem of trafficking which has become widely spread particularly lately.

Human trafficking for the purposes of labor or sexual slavery is a multi-aspect and very complicated phenomenon connected with migrations, prostitution, employment, human rights, violence and many other aspects. Trafficking is a kind of human violence which social and psychological prerequisites have been very scarcely studied.

2.3. Trafficking problem - human trade. During last few years the problem of slave trade has become pretty sensitive. Illegal expatriation of people abroad for the purposes of either their involvement into the sex industry or slave labor has been growing in scale. Among our instruments we defined a list of questions aimed to identify the existence of such trafficking problem in our region.

Because nearly half of all respondents in their reply to the question "Did you or your family face the following problems during the last year?" mentioned a serious shortage of money and 14,7% - a loss of job or worse labor payment terms, we may conclude that there are certain prerequisites for the growing number of people to be illegally expatriated abroad and become victims of human slave trade.

Majority of respondents (82%) are aware of the trafficking problem. Let‘s analyze the sources of information on this problem (Table 14).

Table 14
Sources of Information about Trafficking Problem

№	Sources of Information	Total number of respondents(%)	Women (%)	Men(%)
1	TV shows, mass media	78	83,4	74,6
2	Personal experience	2	1,0	4,2
3	I’m unaware of this problem and it seems to me far-fetched	2	2,2	2,1
4	I’m unaware of this problem, but I believe that this is a real situation	7	5,8	8,8
5	Never thought about it	11	7,5	10,2

Thus our mass media are the main sources of information about this problem. The question "Have you or any of your acquaintances ever been suggested to work abroad?" was positively replied by more than 30% of our respondents, where men knew about this problem from their own experience four times more often compared to women.

22% of women and 31% of men have been already abroad one or more times. As a purpose of visit 16% indicated " a tourism", 5% -"employment", 4,5% - "visiting friends", 2% - "training", 1,5% -"business", 0,2% -"marriage". Job abroad is particularly interesting for young people at the age 18 - 35 (37,5%) and more mature at the age from 26 to 35 (28 %). It should be noted that young people at the age 18-25 accounted for more than 50% of those who answered "Never thought about it".

If it comes out about any person who is involved into the sex trafficking 50% of respondents answered that they would notify the law-enforcement authorities, 27% would tell about it to their relatives and acquaintances, 3% would attract the public attention to this problem through mass media, 19% would ignore the problem. This number includes those people who said that they were either unaware of the trafficking problem or thought it was far-fetched.

16% believe that people must be responsible for their own lives and kept informed about this problem in order to take every conceivable precaution if they intend to go abroad. More that half of our respondents believe that the government and Ministry for Internal Affairs should assume main responsibility in the war against trafficking problem

3. Domestic violence as infringement of human rights

Law-enforcement authorities play the key role in protection of humans from violence, i.e. attack on the freedom, health and life of a person. One of objectives in our study is to analyze the experience and attitude of the public to involvement of law-enforcement authorities into the situations of domestic violence.

The question "Has any of your acquaintances or yourself applied for help to the law authorities in a situation of domestic violence?" was responded in the following manner (See Fig.9).

It should be noted that an answer to this question was given by all respondents involved into our study, where 63% of them mentioned that neither themselves nor their acquaintances had ever been in a situation of domestic violence. Thus 37% of all respondents are well aware when either themselves or their near and dear ones may be subject to the violence. A little less that half of them (16%) made an attempt to use their right for protection by the law-enforcement authorities. In 7% of cases police or prosecutor‘s office would help to resolve the situation, another 9% asked for help but didn‘t receive it.

More than half of those who responded that they either suffered the violence themselves or observed violent situations, mentioned that they didn‘t apply to the law-enforcement authorities for this or that reason. Reasons could be most different: reluctance to make public the "internal" problems of the family, hope that things will straighten out, refusal to interfere, distrust to the police staff or fear to be subject to a much severe partner‘s aggression.

Aimed at determining the level of public awareness of the problem of domestic violence our study was supposed to identify if our respondents were able to assess the domestic violence as infringement of human rights and offence against person.

In 7 cities of the Volga region where the study was conducted we asked a question: "How much, do you think, is the problem of domestic violence wide-spread in your city?"

Majority of the respondents (32%) believe that the problem of domestic violence does exist in 40-60% of families. A little less (29%) responded that in 20-40% of families one of the members may be subject to one or other kind of aggression. 19% claimed that minimum 60-80% of families have problems of domestic violence, while 4% believe that 80-100% of families are based on violence.

The notion of domestic violence includes a few possible types of violence-based relationships between family members and dear ones. In spite of the fact that our study was aimed at exploring the problem of abuse in relationships between partners, we asked our respondents about family members most vulnerable to the psychological, financial, sexual or physical manifestations of aggression. The question proposed several response versions, therefore all of them were totaling over 100%.

We distributed the replies in line with the growing number of choices. Much more than half of respondents mentioned "women" - 68%. The biggest number of questionnaires contained an answer "children"- 75%.

Men and women gave almost similar replies to this question. Although the key difference between groups showed that men admitted to be vulnerable to domestic violence more often (7%) than women could expect, because only 2% of women‘s questionnaires contained the answer "men". In 40% of cases women would indicate themselves to be most exposed to domestic violence. Men answered "women" in 36% of their questionnaires.

The main question on this list was "Do you think that domestic violence is a crime and violation of human rights?" Positive reply was given by majority of respondents - 84,5%, negative reply - 1,8% of the total poll and 13,7% of respondents had no answer. So the majority of respondents are reasonably well informed or they instinctively give a fair judgment to the explored problem.

Results of the Study

1. Domestic violence in the Volga region has a considerably broad scale and minimum 80% of families were faced with one or another form of its manifestation.
2. Majority of our respondents deem domestic violence to be a crime and violation of human rights with children and women being most vulnerable to it in 40-60% of families.
3. Gender analysis has revealed that relatively mild forms of psychological control were of dual nature in the families while other types of violence, particularly those of moderate or severe degree were in most cases committed by men. Every twelfth female respondent would get injures resulting from severe beating by her spouse or partner.
4. In majority of our respondents‘ families they were practicing psychological pressures where physical abuse was more frequent than in every third family, financial control - in every fifth family and every twentieth respondent was subject to the sexual violence in marriage. Majority of respondents find conditionally mild types of psychological control quite reasonable in the family: criticism of the spouse‘s drawbacks and "scold" or "corner" children.
5. Every third man and every sixth woman in their childhood were punished by parents by blows and beating.
6. Emotional reasons (hot temper or offence) as a justification are indicated by every second respondent commiting violence of psychological nature and by every third respondent committing physical aggression irrespective of their sex. Men tend to blame a victim for provoking the offender‘s actions more often than women irrespective whether they are objects or subjects of violence.
7. To the opinion of our respondents the main reasons of domestic violence are connected with alcoholism or heavy drinking of the family members, cruel treatment in childhood, impunity and domestic violence not liable to punishment as a criminal offence.
8. Over one third of respondents mentioned that either themselves or their near and dear had been in a situation of domestic violence which required involvement of the law authorities. More than half of them would not apply for such help due to some reason, but those who did apply and didn‘t get any protection also accounted for more than a half.
9. Respondents believe that after-effects of domestic violence for community may develop into growth of crime and vagrancy, health deterioration and children transferring the aggressive behavioral models to their own adult families, which can be prevented only through ban of the violence on TV, struggle against alcoholism and drugs as well as own non-violent behavior.
10. The study has not demonstrated any relevance of the trafficking problem, labor or sex exploitation as after-effects of domestic violence in the Volga region.