06/01/2026
A Necessary National Conversation About A Woman’s Risk Of Being Killed By An Intimate Partner Is Highest In The Weeks And Months Around A Separation
https://www.spiriolaw.com/The-Latest-News-Blog/2026/6/A-Necessary-National-Conversation-About-A-Woman%E2%80%99s-Risk-Of-Being-Killed-By-An-Intimate-Partner-Is-Highest-In-The-Weeks-And-Months-Around-A-Separation
A judge had ordered Justin Fairfax, the former lieutenant governor of Virginia, to move out of the house where on April 16 he killed his wife and then himself. On April 19, in Shreveport, La., Shamar Elkins shot his wife, a second woman, and eight children the day before he was due in divorce court. These are not anomalies. They are data points in a crisis that has persisted for generations.
The two cases have catalyzed a necessary national conversation about the fact that a woman’s risk of being killed by an intimate partner is highest in the weeks and months around a separation. But that conversation must not flatten the racial dimensions of this crisis. All three adult victims were Black women. Both men were Black. And while domestic violence crosses every racial and economic line, the data are unambiguous: Black women bear a disproportionate share of its consequences.
According to a 2025 study by the Violence Policy Center, Black women are killed by men at twice the rate of their white counterparts. Domesticviolence homicide is a leading cause of homicide of women, accounting for 30% to 40% of femicides; the majority were killed with fi****ms. A separate Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis found that more than 4 in 10 Black women experience physical violence from an intimate partner during their lifetimes—a rate exceeding that for any other demographic.
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Entire article courtesy of Earl Smith & Angela J. Hattery
Smith is a senior research fellow at, and Hattery co-founder of, the University of Delaware’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Gender-Based Violence”
Royalty-free photo courtesy of Google’s Gemini
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