Sharp Force Homicide in Denmark 1992–2016

Sharp force trauma is a common homicide method. The weapon is typically a knife, which is easily accessible and does not require special skills. We have analyzed all 471 sharp force homicides in Denmark during 1992–2016 with special focus on aspects that are relevant to forensic pathologists, including the distribution of wounds and organ injuries. Most homicides were committed inside with a kitchen knife. The front left thorax was the most common area to be affected by sharp force trauma. In 18.9% of the victims, there was only one sharp injury, the majority on the thorax. The most common trajectory for stab wounds was directly posterior with no deviation to the sides or up/down followed by directly anterior. The heart (including pericardium) and lungs (including hemo- and pneumothorax) had injuries in more than 75% of the victims. 67% of victims were males. Female victims had more sharp force injuries and defense wounds than male victims. Most females were killed in domestic homicides (73.7%), most commonly in partner killings (56.4%). In contrast, many male victims were killed in a setting of nightlife/intoxication (34.0%) most by a friend/acquaintance delivering a few stab wounds. The results clearly show strong sex differences in both victims and offenders. This could be useful for shaping policies and public opinion, and as a route for understanding the developments in interpersonal violence. In the narrow setting of death investigation, our results will provide an evidence-based approach to understanding the injury patterns in sharp force homicide.     

“Violence is everywhere!” An analysis of children's narratives on violence

Exposure to violence is a threat to the health and well-being of society, especially for children. Previous research on youth exposure to violence has focused primarily on the implications for victims or the treatment of the offenders. While some research has concentrated on the lived experience of the children subjected to violence, it has generally been defined within a specific domain such as domestic violence or bullying. Using student essays available from the “Do the Write Thing” (DtWT) Challenge, this research explored significant issues of violence as experienced by middle school children in southeast Texas. This research used a thematic approach for a qualitative analysis of 132 essays submitted during the 2015 school year. Essays were coded and categorized to identify major themes of how children describe their experience of violence and assign meaning to violence in their lives. Several themes within three domains (cognitive, social and moral) arose including the pervasiveness of violence, feelings of helplessness, and violence as “wrong.” Results indicate that students wrote most about personal experiences and how violence permeates their daily lives. Implications for practice and services to children are discussed.     

‘Feel what I feel’: making da(r)ta with teen girls for creative activisms on how sexual violence matters

Abstract

Inspired by feminist new materialist and posthuman activist philosophy, this paper speculates on what happens when data entangles with arts-based methodologies in a school-based participatory activist project with six teen girls (age 15) on gender-based and sexual violence. Mapping the journey of how data become da(r)ta and how da(r)ta become d/artaphacts, the paper follows how the Runway of Disrespect, the Shame Chain, the Ruler-Skirt and the Tagged Heart ripple through peer cultures, school assemblies and national policy landscapes. Each journey provides a small glimpse into how bodies, space, objects, affects and discourse ‘intra-act’ in dynamic assemblages to produce d/artaphacts crafted from and carrying experience. The paper concludes to consider the ethical-political affordances of how participatory arts-based methodologies and the im/personal vitality of objects might support young people to safely and creatively communicate and potentially transform oppressive sexual cultures and practices.     

“Excuse Me,But Are You Raping Me Now?” Discourse and Experience in (the Grey Areas of) Sexual Violence

In feminist research on sexual violence and victimization, the relationship between discourse and experience has often been at the forefront of intense debates. Poststructuralist scholars have emphasized that the discourses used to name sexual violence may in fact perpetuate the very problem they set out to describe, by freezing women into powerless positions of rapability. Others have likened this sort of argument to anti-feminist trivialization of the pervasively gendered experiential reality to which such discourses refer, highlighting that women’s victimization is not a discursive problem. In this article, I seek to carve out a path that cuts through such polarization by exploring the multifaceted dialectical relationship between, on one hand, gendered discourses on sex and sexual violence and, on the other, people’s reported experiences of these phenomena and, in particular, of the “grey area” between sex and sexual violence. I do this by analysing autobiographical stories from the influential Swedish campaign #prataomdet (#talkaboutit), which emphasized the need for a new language that can do justice to people’s experiences of sexual violence and the grey area between sex and sexual violence.     

(Re)centering street harassment – an appraisal of safe cities global initiative in Delhi,India

Abstract

In 2012, New Delhi (India) was catapulted into the global limelight for the brutal gang rape of a 23-year old woman travelling in a bus. This wasn’t the first time that sexual violence had been perpetrated on the streets of Delhi and nor would it be the last. Yet this universal fact of everyday violence in public spaces particularly streets, though acknowledged by activists and feminists, has been examined minimally in academic scholarship. Further, even though the United Nations has been instrumental in foregrounding gender-based violence as a critical human rights issue, it has only recently turned its attention to street harassment through its ‘Safe Cities Global Initiative’. Therefore, in this paper, we trace how a routine but understudied form of violence becomes central to United Nations’ agenda to eliminate violence against women. By specifically, analysing the Delhi Safe Cities programme as a case study, our second contribution lies in examining the adequacy of the contemporary Safe Cities framework as a model for addressing sexual violence in public space. We conclude the paper by offering critical conceptual and methodological recommendations to further strengthen the framework.     

Cross-gender Violence Perpetration and Victimization Among Early Adolescents and Associations with Attitudes Toward Dating Conflict

This study examined gender differences in cross-gender violence perpetration and victimization (ranging from mild, e.g., push, to severe, e.g., assault with a knife or gun) and attitudes toward dating conflict, among an urban sample of 601 early adolescents (78% African-American). Comparisons across gender groups for cross-gender (e.g., female-to-male) violence perpetration and victimization indicated higher levels of perpetration for girls and higher levels of victimization for boys. Girls also reported higher levels of verbal and physical violence toward partners with regard to attitudes toward dating conflict. A path model was specified and indicated that cross-gender violence perpetration, harsh parenting, peer deviance, low family income, and neighborhood hazards accounted for significant variation in attitudes toward dating conflict. Findings were discussed regarding the need to identify developmental precursors of dating violence in early adolescence and to focus prevention efforts on components (e.g., social skills, coping strategies) necessary to prevent the onset and escalation of adolescent dating violence.