Intimate partner homicide usually involves a man killing his female partner, often after a long and escalating pattern of woman battering. When women kill male partners, they typically do so in self-defense, although such defense may not qualify as such in a court of law. However, deaths attributable to domestic violence far transcend intimate partner killings. Non intimate partner family members also kill each other in so called “family homicides.” Fathers kill children, mothers kill children, children kill their parents, brothers kill sisters, and so on. Men sometimes kill other men over a woman they sexually compete for. These “sexual competitor killings” are much smaller in number than either intimate partner or family homicides.

Many more Americans die from suicide than homicide. Most of these suicides involve male victims, some of whom kill their female intimate partners before taking their own lives. Research suggests that a significant number of the 6,000 or so women who commit suicide each year do so because of their violent victimization at the hands of an intimate male partner. Stark and Flitcraft note specifically, “in most cases we believe battered women are provoked to attempt suicide by the extent of control exercised over their lives.” According to these authors the proximity between woman battering and women’s suicide attempts in general, strongly suggests that battering may be one of the principal causes of the suicide attempts. Stark and Flitcraft point out that a number of studies identify abuse as a factor in as many as 44 percent of female suicide attempts. For these researchers it is very telling that over a third of the battered women in their sample, “visited the hospital with an abuse-related injury or complaint on the same day as their suicide attempt.”

As the proportion of the elderly in the U.S. in the population increases, researchers have become increasingly aware of domestic violence among their ranks. Old stereotypes die hard, and social service providers and law enforcement agencies sometimes assume that because people are elderly they are not capable of committing or being victimized by domestic violence. This attitude sometimes translates into an assumption that homicide-suicides among the elderly usually take the form of “mercy killings.” Police officers or others who investigate the homicide-suicide and find a note telling authorities that the couple could not live on with ailing health might hastily label the death a “mercy killing.” Upon further investigation we find it is nearly always men who commit these killings and that in a significant number of cases their female victims had expressed to other family members a desire to live not die. Indeed, Donna Cohen found that homicide-suicides involving elderly women in West Central Florida accounted for 20 percent of the total homicides of people aged over fifty-five. Cohen also notes that while 50 percent of the women’s health had deteriorated, two-thirds had expressed “no desire to die.” Evidence that women killed in so-called mercy killings or suicide pacts had previously expressed “no desire to die” may suggest they were being battered before their demise.

Deaths traceable to domestic violence and therefore subject to fatality review, increase considerably if we include women who die as prostitutes, HIV victims, or from causes related to homelessness. For example, one might argue that because battered women appear more vulnerable to HIV infections than non-battered women, some deaths of women attributed to HIV or some complication thereof, might be traceable to the women’s compromised status as battered. The same could be said of homeless women dying on the streets since roughly half of homeless women report “fleeing abuse” as the reason for their homelessness. Likewise, prostitutes have experienced enormous amounts of interpersonal abuse at the hands of male intimates, family members, and their clients.

* Stark, Evan and Anne Flitcraft. 1995. Killing the Beast Within: Woman Battering and Female Suicidality. International Journal of Health Services, 25, 1: 43-64.