ABSTRACT
Broadly, the term battery, or battering, refers to some form of physical or sexual violence perpetrated by one or more individuals against one or several others. In most of the world, battering has the additional connotation of gender-related violence. Questionnaires on the prevalence of assaults, police records, court appearances, sentencing data, and prison censuses all confirm that most victims of battering are women and children, and that the majority of assailants are men. The term battering is often restricted to assaults that occur in private between individuals who know one another, rather than to violence in public or perpetrated by strangers. Most cases of battering involve the physical or sexual abuse of women by their husbands, partners, or other family members.
