Badpuppy Gay Today

Tuesday, 1 April, 1997

Robberies, rapes, drugs and muggings don't account for nearly as many women murdered as do domestic disputes in which enraged boyfriends and husbands are the culprits. This is the finding of a 9-month statistical study, one of the first of its kind, an examination of women murdered between 1990-1994, in New York City. The study was carried out by researchers from the New York City Department of Health.

Their research shows that nearly half of all the women killed owed their deaths to boyfriends or to former husbands. Nationally, the number is somewhat closer to 40 percent. In contrast, only six percent of men are believed killed by wives or girlfriends.

In approximately a third of the women's' homicides studied, wives or girlfriends were trying to end their relationships with their murderers and the murders, therefore, have usually taken place in their own homes. A fourth of the cases studied indicated that if there were children present, a boyfriend or husband was also likely to kill them as well. Or, said the researchers, the children may either have seen the murders happen or they were the discoverers of their mothers' bodies.

New York City's Health Commissioner, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, says that new protective strategies are needed to stem the tide of this epidemic. Boosting mere shows of on-the-street police, she explains, isn't enough if the majority of women are being killed in private quarters. Dr. Hamburg suggests that social workers and police should coordinate information and try to identify women at risk for domestic violence before it occurs. She also believes that a re-examination of old-fashioned domestic violence laws is needed.

In approximately a third of the cases, boyfriends or husbands also try to kill themselves. Dr. Susan A. Wilt, director of epidemiology and surveillance for the Health Department's injury and prevention program, suggests that suicidal males seeking clinical assistance be screened. It should be determined if he has a family, and how his relationship with that family is proceeding. If battered women are treated in emergency rooms, says Dr. Wilt, they should be told that their children are in danger.

While men--whose murders outnumber women by seven to one--are killed mostly by guns, women, according to the Health Department's study, are more likely to be beaten and burned or even thrown from windows. Dr. Wilt said that researchers were "surprised" at the ferocity of the murders, indications of "enormous rage."

Poor New York areas in the Bronx and Brooklyn, account for two-thirds of the female dead. Three-fourths are black or Hispanic. This finding runs against public myths about there being no color or class boundaries around such murders. Whatever protections do exist have been more effective for white women, says Dr. Jeff Fagan, director of Violence, Research and Prevention at Columbia University's School of Public Health.