Voices of Intimate Partner Homicide: An Exploration of Coercive Control and Lethality

In the United States and most parts of the world, law, policy, policing, and prevention work addressing domestic and intimate partner violence is created and enacted based on a violence model. Likewise, it is generally believed that all victims of intimate partner homicide are victims of intimate partner violence, through physical abuse, prior to the incident of homicide, and that this violence is reported beforehand.

Voices of Intimate Partner Homicide takes a critical look at these misconceived notions and sheds light on multiple non-violent forms of controlling behavior that precipitate intimate partner homicide. The book bases its critical examination on a content analysis of court-filed Petitions for Injunction for Protection Against Domestic Violence. Through these records, as well as corresponding police and homicide reports, the accounts of the victims, and their relationships with their offenders, come to life. Recurring coercive control tactics are coded and analyzed across multiple accounts, including intimidation, isolation, and humiliation, to illustrate the ways in which individuals are threatened prior to homicide and the true extent of harm that happens in the absence of physical violence. Considering the victim’s responses, as well as their interaction with law enforcement and the court system prior to their death, the author challenges current legal and policy initiatives made to address and protect victims from intimate partner violence and argues that non-violent controlling behaviors deserve more attention in lethality risk assessments that are utilized throughout the United States.

For practitioners, advocates, researchers, and students, this book provides an intimate and important account of the causes and consequences of intimate partner violence prior to homicide and a rare window into the victim’s overall experience.

Donna J. King, Ph.D., J.D., is an IPV survivor and President/Director for Victims’ Safe Harbor Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)3 social impact organization that provides legal, educational and policy services on domestic violence and child abuse. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Central Florida, where her areas of expertise focused on domestic violence, social inequalities, law and society, gender, and criminology. She also holds a juris doctorate from the Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University College of Law and is a Florida licensed attorney in good standing.