Emerging Online Harm Perspectives: Overspill of Abuse to Co-Victims of Intimate Partner Homicide

• In Event: Domestic violence

Abstract

Literature on co-victims has existed for over 30 years focusing on the psychological challenges of reconciling homicide, the concept of forgiveness, clinical observations of families that have experienced homicide, the impact of homicide on and responses to homicide survivors, and, accounts from co-victims themselves. However, most of this research involves offline harm perspectives considering direct physical impacts from perpetrators including verbal abuse, threatening behaviour, physical harm and an increased risk of fatal abuse (Goodkind et al., 2003; Gregory, 2017; Gregory et al., 2017; Hobart, 2002; Latta, 2008; Riger et al., 2002). The aforementioned research specifically considers intimate partner or domestic abuse, with my contribution being the first of its kind to provide an empirical foundation relating to intimate partner homicide (Kennedy, in press). While one study has considered online harm in the context of intimate partner homicide more broadly (McLachlan & Harris, 2022), this has not been linked or considered in terms of the spillage of abuse to co-victims. As such, this presentation will illuminate these narratives showing that online harm can and has been perpetrated towards co-victims as part of the broader “web of abuse”. This will be highlighted by drawing on the underlying principles of coercive control, digital coercive control, and the continuum of online-offline harm (Munk & Kennedy, 2024) as a framework for documenting and acknowledging the harms perpetrated. Unstructured interviews with victims’ families, referred to as co-victims, will form the basis of this discussion. Case studies will underscore the ways in which online harm overspilled into the lives of co-victims of intimate partner homicide.

Author

• Morag Kennedy, Nottingham Trent University