I remember there was a similar survey of this kind a few years back that caused a similar stir.

The trouble is that even the phrase "partly responsible" is open to a whole raft of interpretations. To start with an analogy with a different crime, if you walk through dark alleys waving around wads of cash, there's a pretty high chance that sooner or later you'll get mugged. Most people would agree that the victim was at least asking for trouble doing that. Few people would argue that this would make the mugger any less guilty. Whether you'd describe the victim as "partly responsible" is mainly a matter of what words you'd use.

So, in the far more sensitive issue of what people would mean by "partly responsible" if raped or sexually assaulted whilst drunk. On one end of the scale it could mean (especially if it was the second lowest option on a scale of, say, "Not the slightest bit responsible", "Partly responsible", "Equally responsible", "Mainly responsible" or "Totally responsible" - can't find the breakdown so I don't what the options were) that a woman who gets herself paralytic, on her own, in the company of people she doesn't know is asking for trouble - which not everyone may agree with (and I wouldn't describe that as making her "partly responsible" myself), but it's a valid opinion. On the other hand, people answering "partly responsible" might mean that if she was drunk, that reduces the blame on the rapist (which is, of course, utterly indefensible).

This is an issue which probably needs a lot more detailed research. I'm not sure how you'd do this, because if you start asking more probing questions you risk people giving the answer they think they're expected to say, but this needs doing somehow.

When it's rape and domestic violence, though, society seems to believe that it's generally happening far less than it is, and for some reason believe that the false accusation rate is hugely higher than for other crimes.

That probably is true. The problem is that some people argue (I know this because I have come across this argument before), that the worse the figures are reported to be, the more attention attention will be drawn to the issue. I'm not convinced this is the case. At work, I frequently find myself trying to diffuse complaints of over-zealous political correctness (often a dangerous forerunner to legitimised discrimination) due to poorly-thought out assertions made by certain individuals the the Equality and Diversity unit. I'm strongly of the opinion that, whatever point you want to prove, statistics need to be fair, accurate, as informative as possible, and understood as much as possible.

Besides, changing public perceptions in only one of many ways that rape and domestic violence need to be tackled. We need to know many things. What kinds of domestic violence occur? How often? Who does it? Why do they do it? How much goes reported? Why do people choose not to report it? Do other people know? If so, do they know the full extent of it? Who chooses to report it? Who doesn't? Out of those who don't, what would make them report it? I don't know how much is known about this, but sadly it will take more than a survey to find this out.

Well, okay, let's use British Crime Survey figures, which ask only whether an individual has been a victim. According to those (slightly older) figures, they estimate 12.9 million incidents of domestic violence (*excluding* sexual threats or force, which get counted as a separate crime) against women in England and Wales (and 2.5 million against men).

Quite. That's the sort of figures that should be used first of all (although, to be fair to NUS, unlike the survey, this gives no information on who else knows about it and whether they report it).

If I were to hit someone in a heated argument, then yes, I would instantly regret it. I would also not be at all surprised if the person I hit didn't want to have anything to do with me again and reported me to the police to be arrested for assault.

First of all, to get one thing straight. It doesn't matter what your excuse is. Hitting someone is wrong. However, like all violent crime, the circumstance in which it happens can make a lot of difference. The law applies this for all kinds of violent crime, and most would agree that, say, a battered wife who killed her husband after years of abuse (or the other way round) should be treated more leniently than a cold-blooded killer.

To take an analogy, if I witnessed one friend of mine hit another friend in the pub following an argument, that would be wrong, no question about it, and should the other person press charges, he would be perfectly within his rights to do so. But if person apologised immediately, and the apology was genuine, and the other person accepted the apology, and didn't want the matter to go any further, I would not go demanding that charges were pressed, or even that the person on an anger management course. (And that is the same approach the Police normally use.) Unless the person had done it before (which is usually a warning sign that they're not really sorry), or the argument was over a petty matter, or it was something you wouldn't normally do in moment of anger (like a headbutt), in which case I'd be a lot less likely to give the benefit of the doubt.

As you pointed out, domestic violence can be a lot more complicated. Did the person who slapped the partner who apologised immediately genuinely mean it, or is that just an excuse for further acts later? There may not be any way to tell. But assuming maximum guilt until there is evidence to the contrary is not the answer.

It's also probably sufficiently rare that it's not worth worrying about in the figures.

Any assumptions like this are dangerous. Other people will be assuming that rape and wife-battering are too rare to be worth bothering with if they can get away with it. Don't give them any more excuses than they have already,

I'm sorry, this feels like an attempt to say that a particular level of violence isn't actually violent or isn't actually illegal, or (similarly) a particular level of sexual coercion/force isn't actually rape.

Any making serious allegations like that against people who have a disagreement with really does undermine the case.

Have you got any figures to back that up? Cases like these two make me think it's the other way round because much more tolerance would mean that it would be legal!

That court judgement was completely wrong (although I suspect it had more to do with the accused earning a six-figure salary than being a man), but one miscarriage of justice isn't the same as a pattern of attitudes.

The thing that worries me (15 years old now, but I don't think attitudes have changed since then) was the case of the American man who had his penis cut off by his wife. It was presented as one of the funniest news stories of the year. But should we really have been having a laugh over a real incident of cutting off a part of someone's body? The world seems to think so. And if so, what's to stop the world having a similar laugh about something less serious, say, a man getting knocked about by his wife?

It might not be a pattern, but that's an incident that always worried me.