Heed call to end domestic violence

In mid-September, the Violence Policy Center issued its annual report titled “When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2008 Homicide Data.” Using the most recent national data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Report, the report details 2008 homicides involving one female victim and one male offender and ranks the states by rate of female homicides. Regrettably, Georgia ranked 10th in the nation in 2008 for females murdered by males in a single-victim/single-offender homicide. This ranking not only marks a change from Georgia’s ranking of 15th in 2007′s annual report, it gives Georgia the dubious honor of securing a place within the top 20 for all 11 years of the study.

Although the study itself does not focus strictly on intimate partner violence, it highlights important lessons. First, it determines that the vast majority of females were murdered by someone they knew-more often than not, an intimate partner. In Georgia, 82 females were murdered in 2008. In 76 of these homicides, the victim-to-offender relationship could be identified, with 95 percent involving a situation where the female victim knew the male offender. In 63 percent of those cases, the relationship was a current or former intimate partner relationship. Second, the study serves as a reminder of how lethal a combination intimate partner violence and guns are: In Georgia, where weapons could be identified, handguns were involved in more instances than any other type of weapon combined. The report concludes that “women face the greatest threat from someone they know, most often a spouse or intimate acquaintance, who is armed with a gun.”