Femicide

Intimate Partner Femicide

U.S. women are murdered by an intimate partner (IP) (husband, boyfriend) or former partner approximately nine times more often than by strangers. According to recent research, between 40% and 50% of women killed by a known perpetrator are killed by an IP, compared to 5.5% of men killed by an intimate partner. African American women die at the hands of men almost three times as often as do White women, with Native American and Hispanic women also having higher rates of IP femicide. In New York City, immigrant women were found to be more at risk for IP femicide than those born in the United States. Also important are IP attempted femicides, with approximately eight such near fatal incidents occurring for every actual femicide.

The vast majority (67% to 80%) of IP homicides involve physical abuse of the female by the male partner or ex-partner before the murder, no matter which partner is killed. Thus, prior domestic violence against the female partner is the number one risk factor for IP homicide. During the last 20 years of the 20th century, IP homicides decreased by almost 50% in the United States, with rates decreasing far more for male victims (67.8%) than female victims (30.1%). The rates have since stabilized. The decreases in IP homicides occurred during the same time period as national social programs and legal interventions to reduce intimate partner violence, and in states where the laws and resources (shelters and crisis hotlines) were the most available, there were the greatest decreases in women killing male intimate partners. Increases in women's resources, decreases in marriage rates, domestic violence policies such as pro-arrest mandates, as well as decreases in gun accessibility are all associated with the decreases in IP homicides.

A recent national case control study found the following factors most strongly associated with increased IP femicide risks over and above prior domestic violence: perpetrator access to a gun, estrangement, perpetrator unemployment, perpetrator highly controlling, perpetrator threatens to kill partners, prior threats or use of weapons against their partners, biological child of female partner not the perpetrator's, and forced sex.

Protective factors were the victim and perpetrator never living together and prior arrest for domestic violence.

Femicide-Suicide

Recent research has found that in about a third of the cases of IP femicide, or about 400 cases per year, the male partner kills himself (and sometimes his children) after killing his partner. Only about 1 case of IP homicide-suicide per year involves a female killing a male partner. The major risk factors, including prior domestic violence, are the same as for IP femicide cases without suicide, with an additional factor of prior threats or attempted suicide by the perpetrator. Suicidal perpetrators are more likely to be married and employed and less likely to use illicit drugs than those perpetrators who do not kill themselves. These differences suggest that men who kill their partners and then kill themselves may appear to be somewhat less dangerous than other batterers seen in domestic violence systems. Even so, the femicide-suicide perpetrators and the perpetrators who do not commit suicide engendered a similar amount of fear in their partners (with 53% and 49%, respectively, thinking their partner was capable of killing them).

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