Professor Murray Straus
Professor Murray StrausYoni Kempinski

Domestic violence is not one-sided, Professor Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire told Arutz Sheva on Monday.

Straus participated at the two-day conference entitled "Violence, Conflicts and Unity in Family Context: A Reappraisal of Therapeutic and Judicial Doctrines." The conference is being held at the Ariel University.

“The bottom line is that in domestic violence, about the same percentage of women assault their partners as men,” he said. “Women are more often injured, but that doesn’t change the fact that women attack as often as men.”

Prof. Straus admitted that he’s been censored in the past for saying that domestic violence is not one-sided, because “generally people refuse to believe it, despite a lot of scientific evidence showing that these are the facts. There are 230 studies, as of several months ago, and yet people refuse to believe it. Everyone is supposed to know that men do this - and they do it, but so do women.”

The solution to ending domestic violence, he said, is that “if we’re going to end violence against women, we have to take steps to end violence by women.”

The opposition to Prof. Straus, he said, “comes from people who believe that the main cause of domestic violence is male dominance. And that is an important cause, but it’s only one of many causes and not even the most important cause. This group of people are fanatics. They insist on a single cause, and that it’s men who are the problem. Well, men are the problem, but so are women.”