WHO IS KILLED, AND BY WHOM?
WHO IS HARMED, AND BY WHOM?
By Firoza Chic Dabby

Who is getting killed and who is doing the killing?

• Women killed by their abusers are the largest group of victims of intimate homicides. They include elderly women; lesbians; rural women; disabled women; pregnant women; sex-workers; women in the armed forces; married, divorced or separated women; professional women; immigrant, refugee or native-born women, etc. In addition to intimate partners, fathers-in-law, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law and mothers-in-law may participate in killings; or hire someone to do the killing. Some API women have expressed their fears of being killed here in the U.S. or being sent back to their home countries and killed there.
• Women and men in same-sex relationships are victims of domestic violence related homicides, although such cases may be overlooked as intimate homicides.
• Suicide Pacts of Elderly Couples — Violent deaths in elderly couples that appear to be suicide pacts or mercy killings should be carefully considered to see if they are domestic violence related homicides. In the majority of these deaths, it is the man who does the killing. If it is a botched suicide where the man does not die, then we should be particularly alert to the possibility of an intimate homicide. Elderly women in long-standing abusive marriages may be coerced into a suicide pact. The adult children of a couple dead in a suicide pact may also offer resistance to investigating the possibility of, or ruling out, homicide.
• Homicide-Suicide —These can involve single or multiple homicides -of an intimate partner and/or children- followed by the abuser’s suicide. (Sometimes a “police assisted suicide” occurs where the killer forces a showdown with the police and is killed in the ensuing shootout.)
• Abetted Suicides — Abused women who are tortured, depressed and severely isolated by batterers and by the community are ending their own lives. Although this does not amount to homicide, they are being driven to suicidal desperation. E.g., Central Asian Tajik brides are being tormented into committing suicide early in the marriage by self-immolation. In India, because ‘dowry deaths’ are often disguised as suicides, husbands and in-laws can be arrested for the felony offense of abetting a suicide.
• Mother-Child Suicides —These cases involve mothers with long histories of severe domestic violence who attempt a joint suicide of themselves and their children. These cases differ from those where fathers kill their children and commit suicide: men typically use guns, kill their children whilst they were asleep, or in front of their mother, kill the partner they had been abusing, and kill themselves. Mothers in most of the cases we know about, are holding their children close to them and then jumping, mostly into water, or off a building, or using poison. What has happened in many of the cases we know about is that none, or one, or more of the children die, and the mother may or may not die in the suicide attempt. The mother is then charged with first degree murder or attempted murder. These mothers talk about feeling safer in jail than they did in their homes; about horrible prolonged abuse; about their deep despair; and the fear that no one would have cared for their children. One husband commented to the effect that his wife “was sitting in air-conditioned comfort in the jail and I’m left with this terrible child.” Deep as a battered women’s desperation may be, we do not condone mother-child suicides and we must work to prevent them from happening.
• Honor Killings —In some cultures, women are considered to bring dishonor to their and/or their husband’s families by disobeying their wishes and asserting her own (e.g., trying to divorce or escape from her batterer). A family member kills her (or orders her killing) to restore honor to her and/or her husband’s family. Brothers, fathers and contract killers mostly carry out honor killings, often with the complicity of the mother.
• Contract Killings – A batterer or a family member hires someone to kill his partner or one of her family members.
• Killing her family members - API women describe threats against and/or murders of their family members in their home country; typically carried out or ordered by the batterer’s family.
• Children and Teens — Children and teens are killed in domestic violence related deaths.
• New intimates of a battered women get killed by her ex-partner.
• Batterers — Batterers are killed by their abused female partners and sometimes by their teenage children who are trying to stop them from abusing their mothers.

Harm done to surviving children
The children of a murdered battered woman can become invisible. Our advocacy and interventions need to focus on the issues that affect them, such as:

• Dealing with the grief and trauma of their mother’s death
• In a multiple homicide or a homicide-suicide, they will be dealing with grief and the traumatic loss of siblings, both parents or other family members
• Witnessing the homicide(s) and or suicide inflicts double trauma: that of witnessing the murder of a mother and the homicidal attack of a father
• Discovering their mother’s body and/or the bodies of other victims
• Dealing with their own physical injuries if they had been targeted
• Fears about being in further danger, especially if the killer has not been apprehended.
• Fears about their future, who they will live with; and if there are teen or young adult children, they worry about how they will provide for the family and keep it together. If it is a large family, the siblings can be split up and placed in different homes.
• If they have been living in a household of multiple batterers who had victimized their mother, their fear and lack of trust in caregivers is heightened.
• If there is a wide age range among siblings, they will have different reactions to loss, trauma and even victim-blaming. Older siblings may be expected to look after younger ones, and their own emotional needs may get overlooked.
• Children and teens may be overcome by feelings of helplessness or failure because they feel they could not stop the homicide.
• Testifying in court if they witnessed the killing can of course re-ignite the original trauma. To say nothing of the fears and anxieties of testifying against their own father or stepfather.
• Custody battles: Children can become the focus of custody battles between the two families. If the case was a homicide-suicide, then the battle can be fiercer. The battered woman’s family can lose custody of their grandchildren because they might be residing in the home country, and/or because they are uninformed of the legal process in the U.S., or because they have less power and financial resources than the husband’s family.

Our advocacy has therefore to focus on

• Collecting more data on what is happening in our communities.
• Preventing domestic violence related homicides, including mother-child suicides.
• Addressing the effects on surviving family members and children.

Chic Dabby is the Director of the Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence.