Domestic Violence Related Homicides

Proceedings from the National Summit on Domestic Violence in API Communities

1. 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 Asian and Pacific Islander families, they could be killed by other family members with or without the consent of their partner. Fathers-in-law, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law and mothers-in-law may participate in the killings; or the family hires 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.
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2. HOMICIDE, GENDER AND CULTURE

   By Shamita Das Dasgupta
   When violence occurs within the family in our API communities, it is immediately thought to have occurred because of the implicit or explicit dictates of our cultures. Lately, I have started to think about culture as learned behavior as opposed to biologically determined behaviors. So if culture represents behaviors that are learned and nature represents those that are biologically determined, then domestic violence becomes cultural. However, most people and institutions here do not view culture in terms of learned behavior when they talk about India, Japan, Guam, Bangladesh or any of our API cultures. When discussing “minority” cultures, they refer to the symbols, nuances, guidelines and teachings of our cultures that condone and even encourage men to abuse the women related to them. Having stated that, I will try to decouple these issues a little later.
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3. LESSONS FROM ASIAN & PACIFIC ISLANDER DOMESTIC VIOLENCE-RELATED HOMICIDES AND SUICIDES

   By Judy Chen
   Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence
   The findings presented below are from the Washington State Coalition’s Fatality Review Project, which is staffed by Kelly Starr, Fatality Review Project Coordinator, Joanne Gallagher, Fatality Review Project Specialist, and Margaret Hobart, Fatality Review Project Advisor.
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4. ONE WOMAN'S DEATH: ONE COMMUNITY'S RESPONSE

   By Leni Marin
   Claire Joyce Tempongko was a Filipina immigrant woman who was stabbed by her ex-boyfriend in front of her two very young children, in October 2000. Claire had called the police repeatedly before the incident. In fact, even a year before the incident Tari Ramirez, her batterer, had served at least six or seven months in jail for domestic violence. He was released on probation, and he began to harass her. Claire obtained a temporary restraining order. She expressed her fear of her ex-boyfriend to her family and her family was helping her. He continued harassing her. At one point, when she called the police they had come and picked him up. He was only charged with disorderly drunken conduct. He came before a judge on the arrest charges. However, missing from the packet that was presented to the judge was the fact that he was on probation and had earlier been charged and convicted for domestic violence—a huge missing piece. The ex-boyfriend was released and ordered to perform community service. Two weeks later Claire Joyce was dead. He had come back and killed her. Her children were witness to their mother’s murder. There was shock, outrage, and fear.
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5. HOLDING OUR COMMUNITIES ACCOUNTABLE

   By Debbie Lee
   Adding our Asian Voices
   Repeatedly, we see studies done in which Asians are left out. When homicide studies are conducted, data on Asians is excluded because of the view that “the numbers were not that big and so we just didn’t do any analysis in that category.” We cannot continue to accept this. We must collect the data within our urban centers and other places where there are Asian populations so that we can better understand the nature of these homicides. We must do this in addition to collecting newspapers articles and clippings, as was suggested earlier.
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6. CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR ADVOCACY & INTERVENTION

   • What kinds of domestic violence related homicides are occurring in different ethnic &/or geographic communities? What are the trends?
   • What do we do in our interactions with the criminal legal system, especially about “cultural defense” claims?
   • When the perpetrator[s] are batterers/abusive family members?
   • When the perpetrator is a battered woman?
   • How do agencies handle requests for “cultural defense” “expert“ witnesses?
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