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The Femicide Census has produced its fifth, and most comprehensive, report to date of women killed by men in the UK.
The disturbing, UK-wide, ten-year report [2009-2018], which includes expert contributions from families whose loved ones have been taken violently from them and from professionals working on violence against women and girls, examines 1,425 cases of women killed by 1,419 men in all forms of violence against women. The Femicide Census is unique in the UK in that it covers all women killed by men and not only domestic homicide. Worryingly, it finds the number of women killed every year by men has stayed distressingly consistent at between 124 and 168 women killed each year raising serious questions about the State’s response to men’s violence against women in the last decade.
“By any measure, we had hoped to see the number of killings gradually decreasing given the State has had our data for a number of years, as well as its own initiatives to tackle men’s violent crime against women. We show that there are so many patterns to the killings which would enable the State to target certain factors which could lead to a reduction in the number of women killed. The fact that a similar number of women are still being killed over a decade is a serious failing and indicates a lack of will to tackle root causes.”
In 46% of all cases (658) the perpetrator had a history of violence, whether against this victim or against other people. Indeed, in 29 cases the perpetrator had killed before; in 20 cases, women and in nine cases, men and, in one case, the perpetrator was a serial killer. In at least 59% of femicides committed by intimate partners or male relatives, there was a history of prior abuse by the perpetrator against the victim. In 67% of cases of intimate partner violence, the victim had told someone about the abuse she was experiencing and in 55% of cases, the violence and brutality used in the killing amounted to “overkilling”.
The most common method of killing was with a sharp instrument (47%) followed by strangulation/asphyxiation(27%) and then by blunt instrument(16%) and then by use of hitting, kicking or stamping (15%).
In 62% of cases, the primary context of the violence was intimate partner abuse that is to say abuse committed by a current or ex-spouse/intimate partner and in 43% of those cases the victim had separated or taken steps to separate from the perpetrator and in 89% of such cases, she was killed within one year of separating/taking steps to separate. In a further 10% of cases, it was violence committed by another male relative, including 111 cases of sons, step-sons and grandsons killing mother figures. In 13% of cases where the victim was aged over 66 years, the killer was a robber or burglar.
Discussing the report, the founders of the Femicide Census said,
“In creating the census, we were clear from the outset that it was essential to include all the different circumstances in which men kill women, not just intimate partner and family femicides; because the revelations about the common causes, methods and misogyny – and state failings – are the same and they are critical.”
“The known histories of violence of these men and the fact that so many women had told someone or sought help is a shocking indictment of the failure of the systems that are meant to respect, protect and fulfil women’s human rights.
This report gives the lie to the standard press releases that these killings of women are “tragic, unpredictable, isolated incidents” which “give no cause for wider public concern” – they have common patterns, they have known risk factors, they demonstrate a massive public policy failing which should concern us all. That there has been little or no change across 10 years is devastating.”
But it is not just the police; the whole response to violence against women and the criminal justice system are heavily criticised. The report addresses:
“The consistency at which women are killed suggests failures, fragmentation and inadequacies at every level, and in every process, that is meant to work to prevent, investigate and prosecute men’s violence against women. So blanket and integrated are these failures, and so consistent across the ten years, that we can see that men are, in some cases, quite literally getting away with murder. We found a further 117 cases of deaths of women which were suspicious or violent but could not be included because ultimately no one was convicted and we fear there are many more. What more is needed before Government starts to deliver for women?”
