Battered gay men: An exploration of abuse, help seeking, and why they stay

In comparison to a large body of literature about battered heterosexual wom en and a growing body about battered lesbians, this is one of the first pub lished studies that investigates the experiences of battered gay and bisexu al men. Results indicated that these men suffered patterns, forms, and freq uencies of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse similar to what has been d ocumented by research on battered heterosexual and lesbian women. Likewise, the most commonly reported reasons for staying-namely, hope for change and love for partner-appear to be universal to the experience of being battere d. Unlike battered heterosexual women, respondents in this study were not like ly to report that being financially trapped was a major reason why they had remained. HIV-status, however, appears to significantly influence their de cision to remain. Moreover, lack of knowledge about domestic violence rind the lack of availability of appropriate resources play a significant role i n same-gender domestic violence victims' decisions to remain. Like battered lesbians, battered gay men infrequently sought assistance from battered wo men's services and perceived these services as not helpful. By contrast, in dividual counselors and agencies who provided individual counselors were ra ted as quite helpful.