Average of four women died per year due to family violence, study finds

An average of four women in Ireland died per year between 2014 and 2019 due to family violence, according to a study on the prevalence of familicide.

The Department of Justice has published an independent study on familicide and domestic and family violence death reviews. The authors consulted a wide range of stakeholders including family members of victims, non-governmental organisations and State agencies in preparing the study.

It found that over the first two decades of this century there was no year without a female death due to family violence.

According to data from the Office of the State Pathologist, nearly a quarter of victims of family violence between 2014 and 2019 were children (11), while adults were the victims 78 per cent of the time, resulting in the loss of 38 lives.

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Women represented a majority (55 per cent) of adult victims of family violence in the period examined. Among child victims, there were more males killed than women.

The average age of child victims was six years old, with a third of the children killed in such incidents having not reached schoolgoing age. A majority of child victims (73 per cent) were murdered by a parent over the period examined.

The study also highlighted the predominance of intimate partners being the victims in family violence cases.

According to the pathology data, there were 21 deaths – 15 women and six men – at the hands of a current or former intimate partner between 2014 and 2019, nearly half (43 per cent) of all the victims in that period.

For women victims who died during this period, 71 per cent were killed by a current or former partner, while 24 per cent – or five women – were killed by their children. Women victims ranged in age from 22 to 73 years of age, with the average age at death being 46.

Perpetrators of family violence identified in public-domain resources were predominantly male (87 per cent), with 19 female perpetrators (13 per cent). Perpetrators ranged in age from 18 to 75, with an average age of 37 years old.

The report’s authors make a number of recommendations to Government on foot of their research, including the establishment of a national database for reporting on domestic and family violence deaths and providing additional trauma services for people affected by familicide.

Speaking about the report, Minister for Justice Simon Harris said nobody could understand “the appalling impact of something like this unless you’ve lived through it”.

“I recognise what a truly difficult subject this is, and how the families deserved to be listened to. We really needed to hear that lived experience to understand where the system is working and, more importantly, where it is not working,” he said, adding that his department will convene a group to examine how to bring forward the report’s recommendations.

“Fundamentally, of course, we want to try to prevent such incidents from happening. But, where you can’t prevent, we want to ensure the whole system responds appropriately to ensure that individuals and communities are supported.”