Many Women at Risk of Being Murdered Don't Know It

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Nearly one half of women who are about to experience an attempt on their lives at the hands of a boyfriend or husband may not realize they are in danger, new research reports.

A look back at warning signs for 30 women who survived an attempted homicide by an intimate partner revealed that 14 did not know their lives were at risk, and said they were "completely surprised" by the attack.

Most attacks occurred around the time that women tried to end the relationship. And while nearly all women had experienced previous episodes of abuse and violence from their partners, not all instances had been severe.

These findings suggest that, in some cases, the warning signs that a woman's life is in danger may be hard to read, lead author Dr. Christina Nicolaidis of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland said.

"If I had talked to some of these women before the attack, I would have counseled them about the domestic violence, but I would not have necessarily felt that their lives were in danger," Nicolaidis said.

"Now I am more careful to warn any woman who has experienced intimate partner violence about the risk to her life, especially around the time that the relationship is ending," she added.

In the report, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Nicolaidis and her colleagues note that homicide is the leading cause of death among African-American women between the ages of 15 and 34, and up to half of all women who are murdered are killed by an intimate partner.

Nicolaidis and her colleagues interviewed 30 women between the ages of 17 and 54 who had survived an attempted homicide by their current or former boyfriends or husbands.

All but two of the women had experienced episodes of violence or controlling behavior, such as stalking or preventing them from going anywhere alone, from the man who tried to kill them.

And while 22 of the homicide attempts occurred when women were trying to end their relationships, most women said they were breaking up for reasons other than violence.

There are many possible reasons for why women often do not recognize the danger they are in at the hands of an intimate partner, Nicolaidis said. Many women may have "normalized" former episodes of violence as part of a bad relationship, or focused on the reasons why their lovers were being violent, such as mental health or substance abuse problems, she said.

Classic risk factors for an attempted homicide by an intimate partner include escalating episodes or severity of violence, threats with or use of weapons, alcohol or drug use, and violence toward children, Nicolaidis noted. While every woman included in the report experienced at least one of these standard signs, they were clearly not all "classic" cases, she added.

"The problem is that we often expect women to come to us describing a life filled with many or all of these risk factors, when in fact there may only be a few (risk factors) buried beneath the surface," Nicolaidis said.

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Lorrie Elliott of the University of Chicago Medical Center writes that these findings demonstrate that counselors need to recognize that "any level" of physical violence or controlling behavior from a partner can signal a woman's life is at risk.

"Curricula on domestic violence should be revised to reflect these findings," she notes.

Is the toilet seat up or down? Up or down?

"There I was, minding my own business," she said, "when 'out of the blue,' he ..."

If there are truly solid, not Ph.D.-guesstimated, indications of trouble, and the woman in unaware, why is she so unaware?

I have a friend who has for many years flirted on the edge of it. She's completely aware of the danger, but two things are in her way --- and neither is the husband.

First, she likes the money, the income.

Second, she ignores the danger.

I cannot generalize on that basis, alone, but I have seen other women hanging around dangerous men.

Those women do it because of their need for security in the "home life of their youth;" whether or not they really had love in the home in which they grew up, they want to return to the security --- no matter how threatening --- and thus they marry somebody who drinks, "like daddy did."

Those women also are dreamers in the sense that they position the man in their life, within the realm of the dreams they have, the hopes they have, instead of facing him and learning and admitting to themselves, who he is.

Who is this person? How many people, man or woman, ask that and seek to know ... before they get hitched?

Then comes the phone call from the security detail at some shopping mall, the high-class store, and "Do you know that your husband shops here and for the umpteenth time, he has bounced two credit cards before writing a check that has, again, bounced?"

"No, I did not know that," she said; but she went on with him.

I'm not talking about the kind of men that the Ph.D. wants all women to get into a panic about --- namely every guy out there who drops his tool bag with a loud "CRASH!" ... and then the woman streaks off to said Ph.D., hysterically shrieking about "THE SIGNS!"

Nope.

I'm talking about the male shark, such as Bill Clinton, and his kind; the real cold-hearted ego-centric black holes that suck up all the love around them.

Bill married Hillary because she is a bigger tyrant than he is --- he knew that he was safe with her, that when his temper went awry, he would be no threat to her greater ego. Therein, two deadly people who know each other well enough to be left alone in the same room, while all apearances are that they are "a couple."

I'm talkin' about the couples where only one of the two, has that monstrous ego. When the other half either ignores it, misunderstands it, or thinks that he/she can somehow control it ... because he/she is smart enough, or crazy (tragically unaware) enough to try and live that way.

Well, sorry for the explanation taking up so much space, but I do not think that the professors in the above study, are really interested in discovering the truly dangerous man. Because the story has various signs of only trying to cause women to be afraid of the unknown.

While on the other hand, I'm claiming that a woman not only does not have to live in fear, but she can dare to study the men around her, and instead of being coy or trying to manage who does, and who does not, come near her (and "in her space"), she wisely studies men, and the men around her, and the man in her life.

To get to know, men in some dimensions other than the fantasy twirling in the woman's head.

Because foremost, women should learn to understand a man's strengths and the discipline pertaining thereto, lest women ignorantly assign all the categories of a man's behavior, into the lump sum of "Oh! That's violent and 'meanspirited'" and then she calls her shrink on the cell phone while negotiating a left turn away from the curb in rush hour traffic, a cigarette pinched between the fingers of the hand that has the palm that is pressing on the steering wheel but cannot negotiate getting by the rear bumper of the car just ahead of her's, while her left front corner is jutting out into traffic ... and this is taking ten minutes for her because she will not put down the cell phone, because she's in a big hurry to get home by 4:00 P.M. and watch Oprah and all the ladies in the audience who will surely nod their heads up and down several times through the show.

By all means, women are indeed a risk --- because they do not focus on what is really going on around them, most of which, is in which, they are are participating, but they should not like to accept the personal accountability and responsibility.

So they go to bed goo-goo eyed and wake up wondering who is in bed with them, and did she want to "sleep with this guy" or not, in which case, should she place another cell phone call, but to Gloria Allred?

I sure do long for women of uncommon valor, the kind that American women seemed to once have, quite in common, but that, has been skewered by our societal-engineering managers in Ph.D. clothing, the "liberal media," and the Democrat Party ... not to mention that State wherein its Supreme Court just decided that Abigail Adams was in complete disagreement with here husband's views regarding "same sex marriage."

Beam me up, Mr. Trafficant.

The "Battered Women's Movement" has become a cottage industry that can only thrive by convincing more and more women that they are abused, and showing unhappily married women the strategic advantage of accusing their husband of domestic violence in order to gain the assets of the marriage.

My ex actually hit herself in the head with a rock and tried to claim I did it. The fact that I showed the investigating officer the rock, I'm a paraplegic, and her story cracked under questioning resulted in her being charged instead.

When I saw her hitting herself in the heads with the rock, I joked that there must be a more efficient method of committing suicide. Then I called 911.

She spent the night in the Hoosegow in an orange suit and pled guilty, but later had her plea rescinded and got a plea.

I sent her a Mylar orange jumpsuit with the county jail logo stenciled on it last year on the anniversary of the divorce.

Her attempt to frame me came after she became "friends" with the local witch who runs the battered women’s shelter. I have since been observing this nonprofit group and found that they have added 6 fulltime employees - this in a small Montana town of 7,000 and a county of 16,000.

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