ASSESSMENT TOOLS - FEATURED PRE-INCIDENT INDICATORS

THE CASE FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE REGISTRY

Domestic violence homicide is said to be excedingly difficult to predict.  If we could predict its occurence then perhaps a greater number of "intimate partners" could be better protected from the monsters with whom they live. When victims are able to escape their abusers often move on to repeat the pattern elsewhere and find new partners.

Police departments are largely responsible for responding to calls for help when domestic assault and battery occurs.  They need tools to effectively measure the risks faced by their citizenry including a measure of containment to reduce the likelihood of harm. The June 2011 massacre of Amy Lake and her children in Maine started and ended within 6-8 minutes of onset. The heroic officers at the scene could do nothing to stop the shooting already in progress when they arrived. Abusers are often slowly marginalized from supports and grow alienated and rageful. These cases need to be assessed for the potential for DVH long before the murderer looses control.

There are a number of assessment tools used throughout the country.  Jacqueline Campbell, Ph.D., R.N. developed the Danger Assessment while at Johns Hopkins University as a tool to measure risk factors.  Author Gavin deBecker has a lengthy list of risk indicators in his text The Gift of Fear published in 1997.  Most clinicians and researchers identify several key factors that are red flags for possible violence.  These include such things as the use of weapons, forced sexual contact, pathological jealousy, previous choking incidents, and increasing use of threats to control behavior. Any aggression during pregnancy is also a high risk indicator of a pattern of sadistic behavior.  In future essays I will feature what arguably may be an essential next step in abuse containment - a domestic violence registry.