Intimate Partner Violence: An Essential Link to Partner Homicide?

• In Event: Conceptualizing Intimate Partner Homicide

Abstract

Developing effective interventions to prevent intimate partner homicide is a priority for governments and non-government organizations worldwide. Severe and escalating violence is cited as one of the most important precursors to partner homicide and figures prominently in risk assessments. Drawing on interviews with a sample of men convicted of killing intimate partners for the Australian Homicide Project, this presentation examines the backgrounds of perpetrators and contexts in which men killed intimate female partners and finds fully half claim not to have physically or sexually assaulted their partners prior to the homicide event. A Life Event Calendar is used to examine the changing nature of events and risks over time. These results contribute to recent critiques of the typification of the ‘battered woman’ on which many policy responses are based.

Author

• Holly Johnson, University of Ottawa