Text Mining Domestic Violence Police Narratives Among Adult Male Victims In Non-Intimate Relationships
Tracks
Room 3: In-Person Only
| Wednesday, November 26, 2025 |
| 8:55 AM - 9:15 AM |
Overview
Georgios Karystianis, UNSW
Details
1. Perpetrators of domestic violence against male victims in a non-intimate relationships were primarily male and family members.
2.A variety of abuse was recorded during these disputes with 42 different behaviors ranging from physical to emotional.
3. Half of police attended events reported a variety of injuries.
Speaker
Dr Georgios Karystianis
Research Fellow
UNSW
Text mining domestic violence police narratives among adult male victims in non-intimate relationships
Presentation Overview
Background
Domestic violence (DV) is a major public health problem and a violation of human rights. To date, research on DV has predominantly focused on women as victims and men as perpetrators. Male DV victims particularly in non-intimate relationships have received little attention in the literature. This study represents the first attempt to report on DV among male victims in non-intimate relationships using population-level data.
Methods
This is a population-level retrospective observational study using data extracted from a large sample of police-attended narratives in New South Wales (NSW) from 2005 to 2016 using rule-based text mining.
Results
From 18,611 DV events involving non-intimate relationships, most of the Persons of Interest (POIs)—individuals suspected or charged with a DV offence—were male (78%) and members of the victims’ family (26.8%, cousins, uncles and aunts). A total of 42 different types of abuse were identified in 74.3% (n = 13,832) events, the most prevalent being physical abuse with assault (unspecified) accounting for half of the cases (53.9%, n = 7462) and punching for more than one third of cases (35.4%). Almost half of DV events (46.3%, n = 8616) recorded injury type to the victim, the most common being cut(s) (43.6%, n = 3754), followed by swelling (19.9%, n = 1716), and bruising (19.5%, n = 1679). A total of 2,903 (15.6%) events had a mental illness mentions for the POIs and 857 (4.6%) for the victims, with 23 different mental illnesses recorded. Schizophrenia and dementia were the most common mental illnesses among POIs (13.6%) and victims (13.0%), respectively.
Conclusions
This study provides new insights and empirical evidence on abuse types, perpetrator-victim relationships, victim injuries and mental illness on DV events involving adult male victims in non-intimate relationships. The findings form an important evidence base to trigger further research in the future.
Domestic violence (DV) is a major public health problem and a violation of human rights. To date, research on DV has predominantly focused on women as victims and men as perpetrators. Male DV victims particularly in non-intimate relationships have received little attention in the literature. This study represents the first attempt to report on DV among male victims in non-intimate relationships using population-level data.
Methods
This is a population-level retrospective observational study using data extracted from a large sample of police-attended narratives in New South Wales (NSW) from 2005 to 2016 using rule-based text mining.
Results
From 18,611 DV events involving non-intimate relationships, most of the Persons of Interest (POIs)—individuals suspected or charged with a DV offence—were male (78%) and members of the victims’ family (26.8%, cousins, uncles and aunts). A total of 42 different types of abuse were identified in 74.3% (n = 13,832) events, the most prevalent being physical abuse with assault (unspecified) accounting for half of the cases (53.9%, n = 7462) and punching for more than one third of cases (35.4%). Almost half of DV events (46.3%, n = 8616) recorded injury type to the victim, the most common being cut(s) (43.6%, n = 3754), followed by swelling (19.9%, n = 1716), and bruising (19.5%, n = 1679). A total of 2,903 (15.6%) events had a mental illness mentions for the POIs and 857 (4.6%) for the victims, with 23 different mental illnesses recorded. Schizophrenia and dementia were the most common mental illnesses among POIs (13.6%) and victims (13.0%), respectively.
Conclusions
This study provides new insights and empirical evidence on abuse types, perpetrator-victim relationships, victim injuries and mental illness on DV events involving adult male victims in non-intimate relationships. The findings form an important evidence base to trigger further research in the future.
Biography
With a PhD in Text Mining and Epidemiology from the University of Manchester, for the last 15 years, Dr George Karystianis has been designing and implementing informatics pipelines to unlock unavailable information from large scale medical data. His findings reshaped how domestic violence is being examined. He was the first to successfully develop a system to extract from millions of police domestic violence records information on mental illness, victim injuries and abuse types. His research on 2.5 million narratives focuses on key sub-groups (people with autism, elderly) affected by domestic violence while advocating against the criminalization of the mentally ill.
