The Big Answer

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The Department of Justice, in a report, notes some problems in finding historical statistics on spouse abuse:

1. Police, and other law enforcement personnel, tend to screen out many incidents by "nonreportage";
   
2. Severe abuse may be recorded as a felony assault or homicide, without further specification;
   
3. Survey data (1976) (which suggests that up to 2 million persons receive beatings at the hands of a spouse, in a year) is suspect as being too low, as it relies on self-reporting.

Domestic violence can take many forms, including throwing objects

Nevertheless, domestic violence is a serious issue in the United States. "Domestic violence can take many forms, including physical aggression or assault (hitting, kicking, biting, shoving, restraining, slapping, throwing objects, battery), or threats thereof; sexual abuse; emotional abuse; controlling or domineering; intimidation; stalking; passive/covert abuse (e.g., neglect); and economic deprivation. It can also include inflicting physical injury onto other targets, such as children or pets, in order to cause psychological harm to the victim. . . . Emotional abuse (also called psychological abuse or mental abuse) can include humiliating the victim privately or publicly, controlling what the victim can and cannot do, withholding information from the victim, deliberately doing something to make the victim feel diminished or embarrassed, isolating the victim from friends and family, implicitly blackmailing the victim by harming others when the victim expresses independence or happiness, or denying the victim access to money or other basic resources and necessities."

In the United States, domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44. (Source: http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/domviol/facts.htm)

Prior to the mid-1800s, most legal systems accepted wife beating as a valid exercise of a husband's authority over his wife. . . By the end of the 1870s, most courts in the United States were uniformly opposed to the right of husbands to physically discipline their wives. (Source: Green, Nicholas St. John. 1879. Criminal Law Reports: Being Reports of Cases Determined in the Federal and State Courts of the United States, and in the Courts of England, Ireland, Canada, etc. with notes. Hurd and Houghton. "The cases in the American courts are uniform against the right of the husband to use any [physical] chastisement, moderate or otherwise, toward the wife, for any purpose.") By the early twentieth century, it was common for police to intervene in cases of domestic violence in the United States, but arrests remained rare. (Source: Feder, Lynette, 1999, Women and Domestic Violence: An Interdisciplinary Approach. New York: Haworth Press. p. 22)

Intimate Partner Violence in the U.S., 2005, The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics

One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. (Source: Tjaden, Patricia & Thoennes, Nancy. National Institute of Justice and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, “Extent, Nature and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey,” 2000)

An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year. (Source: Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United States. 2003. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Centers for Injury Prevention and Control. Atlanta, GA)

85% of domestic violence victims are women. (Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003)

Historically, females have been most often victimized by someone they knew. (Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Criminal Victimization, 2005,” September 2006)

Females who are 20-24 years of age are at the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence. (Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Intimate Partner Violence in the United States,” December 2006)

Most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police

Most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police. (Source: Frieze, I.H., Browne, A., 1989, Violence in Marriage. In L.E. Ohlin & M. H. Tonry, eds., Family Violence. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press)

Seeing violence between one’s parents or one's caretakers is the biggest risk factor for transmitting violent behavior from one generation to the next. Kids with such relationship models to emulate end up passing on the behavior when they get older, especially to their wives and kids.

Approximately 20% of the 1.5 million people who experience intimate partner violence annually obtain civil protection orders. (Source: Tjaden, Patricia & Thoennes, Nancy. National Institute of Justice and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, “Extent, Nature and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey,” 2000)

Domestic Violence Shelters are run, funded, and managed either by governments or by volunteer non-government organizations. According to a 1999 report published by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, there are well over 2000 groups involved in sheltering abused women and their off-spring. (Source: http://domesticviolencestatistics.org/domestic-violence-shelters/)

On average more than three women a day are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in the United States. In 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner. (Source: Catalano, Shannan. 2007. Intimate Partner Violence in the United States. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics)

On average more than three women a day are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in the United States

In 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published data collected in 2005 that finds that women experience two million injuries from intimate partner violence each year. (Source: Adverse Health Conditions and Health Risk Behaviors Associated with Intimate Partner Violence, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. February 2008. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

Nearly one in four women in the United States reports experiencing violence by a current or former spouse or boyfriend at some point in her life. (Source: Adverse Health Conditions and Health Risk Behaviors Associated with Intimate Partner Violence, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. February 2008. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)