2.3.3 Lethality Assessments

Lawyers representing victims of abuse should always try to ascertain the level of risk or danger to each client. If the case has been referred by a shelter or another battered women’s organization, ask for their assessment of lethality. A simple rule of thumb for assessing risk is to determine whether your client is afraid she will be killed or hurt. A victim’s perception that she is in danger is a reliable indicator that she is.1

Attorneys will often be assisting a victim during a time when she faces heightened risks and must take special precautions for her safety. Separation from the abuser is the most dangerous time for victims.2  Also keep in mind that abusive partners who violate protective orders, strangle their victims, commit violence in public, and stalk or escalate the violence at separation are particularly dangerous.

The following factors may be used to help assess whether the abuser has the potential to kill his partner:

• Threats of homicide or suicide
• Fantasies of homicide or suicide
• Stalking
• History of victim strangulation
• Depression or other mental health issues
• Access to or use of weapons
• Obsession about the partner or her family
• Centrality of the victim to the abuser’s life
• Substance abuse
• Rage or separation violence
• Frequency of violence
• Escalation of violence
• Violation of protective order
• Prior criminal history or protective orders
• Hostage taking
• Abuse of pets          

The more of these factors present, the greater the risk of severe harm to your client.3

• 1Jacquelyn C. Campbell, et al., The Danger Assessment: Validation of a Lethality Risk Assessment Instrument for Intimate Partner Femicide, 24 J. Interpersonal Violence 653, 657, 669–70 (2008). In this study, the authors conclude that a victim’s perceived risk of being killed or harmed was a strong indicator of actual risk. At the same time, the victim’s perception cannot be the only measure of risk because many victims also minimize their risk as a coping mechanism. Id.
• 2Evan Stark, The Battered Mother’s Dilemma, in 2 Violence Against Women in Families and Relationships 95, 104 (Evan Stark & Eve Buzawa. eds., 2009) (pointing out that the majority of abuse victims are not living with their perpetrator and that physical separation is rarely an “antidote” for abuse).
• 3Am. Bar Ass’n Comm’n on Domestic & Sexual Violence, Standards of Practice for Lawyers Representing Victims of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Stalking in Civil Protection Order Cases 44 (2007). Most of these factors may also be found in Campbell, et al., supra.