Katharina Wiesner looks at the “hidden epidemic” in Berlin and beyond…
A woman in Germany is killed due to domestic violence once every three days; in fact, the domestic violence rate is two percent higher in Germany than the rest of the EU. In the worst-case scenarios, domestic violence results in death, which are classed as either feminicide (or femicide)—women being killed for the simple fact of being women—or forced suicide, when the psychological weight of the man’s control over his wife or partner directly causes the woman to kill herself.
In an investigation led by the Feminicide Observation Center of Germany, it is stated that between the beginning of 2019 and the end of 2020, fourteen women were killed in Berlin, plus another nine in Brandenburg. The perpetrators were either the fathers, sons or partners of the victims, but also their exes; in a vast majority of the cases, the feminicides are caused by the husbands of the victims.
This quantitative study is based on press releases and excludes rape or beatings resulting in death. Investigation parameters include narcissism, misogyny and lack of impulse control. The most popular modus operandi is most frequently stabbing, and the second is attacks on air supply (i.e. suffocation). The settings of these heinous crimes are in a vast majority of cases, private: the household of the victim or the common households shared with the perpetrator. It is important to add that this investigation is independent.
Domestic violence results from omnipresent domination processes that, like most things, work in vicious cycles. The term vicious cycle is key here; there are often many causes, which enhance each other and create intertwined mechanisms that are difficult to change but affect every aspect of society, including its private sphere such as is the case for domestic violence.
Violent behaviour from a man towards a woman close to him is normalised, and in some environments even encouraged. Further analysis leads us to believe that domestic violence, particularly that of a sexual nature, can be linked to the idea that a woman’s body is something that can be owned by her partner, which in turn implies that it is his right to inflict pain on her as a form of control, and that it is her duty to satisfy his sexual needs (Jaspard, 2012).
The problem with domestic violence is that it is a hidden plague: the police do not know much about it because it happens beyond the realms of the public sphere, victims are scared or ashamed to report it and neighbours are unlikely to contact the police. Police admit they know least about domestic abuse compared to other crimes.
Cornelia Möhring, a Left Party member of the German parliament, asked what the number of women killed in Germany this year was and what proportion of these had fallen victim to feminicide, to which the government of Germany replied that they “had no findings in the sense of the question at the present time, however that in the police crime statistics (PKS), women were recorded as victims of homicides.” This illustrates how on a governmental scale, feminicides (and domestic violence as well, since feminicides are only the most extreme version of these) are not even being addressed as such.