| To help a broad array of practitioners identify women at greatest risk, the Chicago Women's Health Risk Study (CWHRS) explored factors indicating significant danger of death or life-threatening injury in intimate violence situations. A collaboration of Chicago medical, public health and criminal justice agencies, and domestic violence advocates, the CWHRS compared longitudinal interviews with physically abused women sampled at hospital and health centers with similar interviews of people who knew intimate partner homicide victims. Some strong and consistent differences point to different risk factors for a woman becoming the offender versus a woman becoming the victim in an intimate partner homicide. Compared to women victims or to sampled abused women, women who killed their intimate partner had experienced more severe violence in the past year, and the violence was more likely to have been increasing in frequency. In addition, the women offenders were more likely to be in long-term, legally sanctioned relationships with children, had strikingly fewer material resources, and were much more likely to be older than were the other women. The circumstances of the fatal incidents were similar for the women victims and women offenders in many ways, except for the person who died. However, women offenders were less likely to use a firearm, less likely to commit suicide, and less likely to have pursued the victim. |
Updated 05/20/2006