Isn't family violence mostly a low-income or minority issue?

Family violence occurs among all sectors of society. It happens to people of all racial, economic, and religious groups.

For example, police in the mostly white, upper-class Washington, DC suburb of Montgomery County, Maryland, received as many domestic disturbance calls as were received in the same period in Harlem, New York City.

However, low-income battered women are more likely to seek assistance from public agencies, such as shelters and hospital emergency rooms, because they have fewer private resources than middle- and upper-middle income women. They are therefore more likely to be counted in official reporting statistics.