Abused Heiress - Anne Scripps Douglas

Violence is an equal-opportunity evil; it visits the rich and famous as well as the poor and humble. People tend to think violence is an inner-city or working-class problem, but it is not exclusively. While they may not make up the majority, wealthy killers aren't hard to find in prison. In the graveyard, wealthy victims are even easier to find.

In July 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice released a report based on a nationwide survey of Americans that demonstrated how pervasive domestic violence was in U.S. society.

"Nearly 25 percent of surveyed women and 7.6 percent of surveyed men said they were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or date at some time in their lifetime; 1.5 percent of surveyed women and 0.9 percent of surveyed men said they were raped and/or physically assaulted by a partner in the previous 12 months," reported Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes in Extent, Nature and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence. "According to these estimates, approximately 1.5 million women and 834,732 men are raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States."

The rate of fatal violence among intimate partners continues to drop from the high of 3,000 in 1976 to about 1,300 in 2000, where it has hovered for the past few years.