Why Do They Kill?: Men Who Murder Their Intimate Partners

2. Recognizing Abusive Men

23 2 | Recognizing Abusive Men Before proceeding with the analysis of killers, it is necessary to step back to review what is known about abusive men in general. In giving this overview , I draw upon my twenty-nine years of experience working with men who batter as well as the growing body of research findings about men who are violent to their intimate partners. One hypothesis about abusive men who kill is that they share many of the same characteristics as abusers who don’t kill. Some victim advocates have argued that serious and less serious abusers exist on the same continuum and that their primary differences are matters of degree more than of substance. Men who batter cover a wide spectrum in terms of the severity of their violence. Many have committed very little or no physical violence but have been primarily verbally and psychologically abusive. Other batterers exhibit similar levels of violence, and even more, to those who kill their partners. Judging from our interviews with victims of attempted homicide and serious abuse, it is clear that some abusive men have not killed solely due to poor planning, poor execution, or rapid medical responses to the victims they have attempted to kill. Myths About Men Who Batter Despite increased public attention to domestic violence, much continues to be misunderstood about perpetrators of abuse, and popular stereotypes about them persist. Perhaps one of the most enduring myths about men who batter is that they are easily identifiable. Related to this myth are the common stereotypes of batterers as alcoholics or as mentally ill. Other common myths about batterers are that they are predominantly unedu- 24 | Why Do They Kill? cated or unemployed, or that they are criminals or “tough guys.” Clearly, some batterers do fit these stereotypes, and perhaps in substantial enough numbers that these myths are reinforced. For instance, most research has indicated that batterers are more likely than nonbatterers to be substance abusers. Further, there is some evidence that substance abuse is most likely to be found among men who batter at the most severe levels . Even among this group of abusers, however, there are many batterers who do not abuse substances. Most studies have found rates of alcoholism among batterers that fall in the 40%–60% range.1 The intake data of over 1,600 abusive men attending batterer intervention programs in Massachusetts during 2005–2006 showed that two-fifths had a history of substance abuse.2 Edward Gondolf’s study of 840 men undergoing batterer treatment in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Colorado found that just over half could be characterized as problem drinkers. Thirty-one percent of the men had severe problems connected with drinking such as drunk driving, fighting and arrests.3 Are men who batter psychologically ill? Similar to alcoholism, the proportion of batterers with a diagnosable mental illness is less than what is popularly believed. The previously cited study by Gondolf found that batterers have less severe psychological problems than most other clinical populations that have been studied.4 Based on their test scores on a common measure of psychological disorders, less than half showed evidence of a personality disorder. However, about 40% of the men exhibited characteristics common to narcissistic or anti-social personality disorders. Despite this, less than a fifth of the abusive men were deemed to have severe personality dysfunctions and one-quarter were classified as moderate cases. Personality disorders did not even appear to be more common among the recidivist batterers in this study. Only 11% of the men who committed more than one re-assault during the fifteen-month follow-up period were deemed to have psychopathic disorders.5 Alcoholism was found to be a far better predictor of multiple re-assaults. Independently of this, about half of the men also showed signs of depression. It was unclear, however, to what extent their depression was a stable feature or situationally related to their arrests, marital separations, and other consequences of their violence.6 Another stereotype of men who batter is that most are criminals. In reality, the vast majority of abusive men do not have criminal records Recognizing Abusive Men | 25 other than their arrests for domestic violence. Even the majority of killers in our study had had no prior convictions. Twenty of the thirty-one killers had not previously been convicted of a crime of any kind. Again, there is a substantial minority that fits...