I have been teaching a course on rural criminology since 2014, and most of my students are surprised by the information on violence against women presented to them.

Due to the lack of media attention to rural areas, my students come to class with the impression that all countrysides and small towns are safer than urban and suburban locales. In reality, rates of violent crime are often higher in many rural communities, and at times there’s even more silence around it.

Nearly 50 years of research shows that male violence against women knows no geographical or demographic boundaries. It occurs among all socioeconomic groups and in almost all communities, regardless of their size and location. Yet, crime in rural and remote places is reported to the police at lower rates than in urban areas.

Most criminology scholars do not study violence of any type in rural communities, which partly contributes to the widespread belief that rural women are safer than their urban and suburban counterparts. Media reporting also overlooks brutal forms of violence perpetrated by men in intimate relationships with women.

Janet, from rural southeast Ohio, whom I interviewed along with sociologist Martin Schwartz in 2003, like some other women in this region we talked to, was beaten by her husband after going through brutal degradation:

“He wanted sex … or with his buddies or made me have sex with a friend of his. … He tied me up so I could watch him have sex with a 13-year-old girl. And then he ended up going to prison for it.”

Janet is by no means an outlier. I analyzed aggregate 1992 to 2005 National Crime Victimization Survey data along with criminologists Callie M. Rennison and

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