Inside the Disturbing Rise in Family Killings

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Now, homicide rates in the U.S. are at an all-time low, and yet domestic violence killings have stayed persistently high. Our next guest says these crimes are predictable and preventable. Following the painful murder of her sister-in-law and nieces, psychologist, Doreen Dodgen-Magee has spent the last three decades advocating for more protections against domestic violence. And she speaks to Michel Martin about what policymakers can do to intervene. A warning, this conversation contains topics such as rape and familicide that may be disturbing for some viewers.

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks Bianna. Dr. Doreen Dodgen-Magee, thank you so much for talking with us.

DOREEN DODGEN-MAGEE: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really honored.

MARTIN: And it’s such a difficult subject to talk about, but I think we have to talk about it because there have been a number of very difficult stories in the news and recent weeks and months of individuals killing a spouse in some cases, killing their entire family. And just to start our conversation off one of the reasons that you as a scholar and a researcher and a practitioner are interested in this subject is that this, you’ve had this experience in your own family. Do you mind telling us what happened?

DODGEN-MAGEE: I have had this experience in my family, and I think the way that you mentioned that we need to talk about this is something I always want to highlight because when this did happen in my family, one of my first thoughts was, oh my gosh, we are that family now. There is such stigma to this reality of familicide and it is really difficult to talk about and really difficult to hear about. In my family’s situation, my sister-in-law, Laura had been married to her husband for a while, and they had two children together. We could tell that there was a lot of coercive control, some emotionally and verbally violent language and definitely behaviors that were troublesome.

Laura was finally able to kind of see those things and understand them. And what we know now from her journals is that she was already dealing with a great fear of being killed. We helped her move out of her home in Seattle, and she and her two daughters moved to Oregon right near us to live with my mother-in-law. And things were going pretty well until he broke into the house and raped her one day when the girls and my mother-in-law were with me. And that is what resulted in the pregnancy that brought us my youngest niece, April.

But before they were killed, I hosted a backpack packing party because it was my oldest niece’s, Sarah’s, first day of kindergarten the next day. And she was so excited to have this new start. And by this time, because of the violence that had occurred, we had helped Laura get a restraining order, which was a hard fought legal process. She had gotten that. But that morning, angry over missing this big monumental event of Sarah’s first day of kindergarten, Dave was able to purchase a gun, drove across state lines, came to the home as soon as Sarah was home from school, shot his way into the home at the back door, forcing my mother-in-law, Laura and all three girls out into the front yard where he proceeded to shoot them and kill them all.

My mother-in-law was, had one of the girls kind of standing with her and was shot. He did not shoot her, I think, to kill her, partially to punish her for her role in Laura leaving.

At the time, I had a three month old baby. We were, we came and got my mother-in-law and we were her caregivers until the end of her life, having experienced this trauma. And I will tell you that at that point I thought, if this doesn’t change everything, what will? And now in America this was, this was in ‘95 and now in America we know that 70 women on average are killed in a month in America by intimate partners. And we also know that guns are the number one killer of children.

MARTIN: One of the reasons we’re talking about this is that we are in a moment when homicide rates have declined again. Overall homicide rates have declined, but family and intimate partner killings now account for 21% of all homicides. That’s up from 15% in 2020. And the attacks in which someone kills four or more relatives, which is something that happened in your family, have already surpassed all of last year’s total. And this year is just halfway through. So it just seems as though we are in some kind of strange moment. And I wanted to ask you – as briefly as you can – you have to have noticed these numbers yourself. What do you think is going on here?

DODGEN-MAGEE: I think as a person who has worked within the gun violence prevention movement, I can tell you that we have taken seriously the issue of community violence. And there has been a lot of work around the country to address that. And we are seeing the impact, which means that when we pass common sense gun laws and legislators have the will to, and the fortitude to enforce them violence goes down. The issue with domestic violence killings is that the issues related to those kinds of violence are things that are deeply private and in the home. They’re things like substance misuse, prior abuse, financial and economic concerns. And I think it’s very hard for people to stay focused on the issue of the fact that this could be their family. You know, one of the biggest things we hear with gun violence is, well, people were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. My nieces and sister-in-law were in their mother and grandmother’s yard. This can happen to any woman and child. And I think it’s very hard for most people to stay focused there and realize that these are preventable deaths if we work hard to make them so.

MARTIN: One of the other insights that you have shared is that a lot of people talk about these terrible crimes, incidents, things that happen as if it’s like, so it’s just out of the blue, just totally unpredictable who could have imagined. And I think that one of your insights that comes from your work is that actually it’s not. What are some of the things that people could be looking to that people who perhaps aren’t thinking about that they could be aware of?

DODGEN-MAGEE: Yes. I think the first thing I would say is that we need to listen more to women. This is just a huge issue. Typically, there are indicators that you can notice, things like coercive control. You can also often if you listen well, you can hear women’s fear. And I think, think sometimes people don’t know what to do with that. Once there has been kind of either a disclosure that a woman feels afraid or if a woman continues to talk about the fact that their partner has firearms and that concerns them, if people around them are willing to dig in and find some resources, it can be helpful. The other big thing to know is that when there is a marriage difficulty, a separation, a divorce, or again, those coercive control signs, typically if there is a large moment happening in that couple, or like for instance, their wedding anniversary or in our story, Sarah’s first day of kindergarten – a graduation – any of these large moments can really peak an abuser’s feeling of missing out. And if they have, especially if they have access to a firearm, that is an incredibly impulsive and effective method for carrying out their frustration and violence.

MARTIN: You used the term coercive control. Can you tell us what you mean by that for people who may not have heard that term before?

DODGEN-MAGEE: Yeah. In the domestic violence world there’s a lot of shifting toward talking about coercive control as these small microaggressions that happen within relationships where a partner begins to understand that they are at risk if they diverge from what their partner wants them to do or who they want them to be, or who they want them to be around. This can often lead to a lot of isolating of the partner, that happened in our situation. Dave really did not want Laura having contact with us. It could be, you know, choices about no longer going to church or family groups or school socials anything that kind of makes one person in the relationship in a one down position and the other in a one up.

MARTIN: I What are some of the other ways that coercive control could be exercised if it’s not physical violence or if it’s not just physical violence?

DODGEN-MAGEE: There can also be a kind of what is called a weaponization of support people of the spouse. So the abusive spouse can kind of make the spouse who is being controlled believe that, for instance, their family is against them a therapist – is against them. So they really do isolate. This could also look like verbal put downs. It could look like reputation collapse where an abuser really works to kind of put the person at risk’s reputation in question and people around them so that they then in fact, need the abuser more.

MARTIN: Like, what? Like, oh, you’re crazy or you’re screwing up. You can’t –

DODGEN-MAGEE: Or my wife is so dumb. My wife has no idea. You know, posts maybe in social media that put them down, unflattering posts, things like that.

MARTIN: You indicated that you had the family, you got hints that your sister-in-law was, that there was something not right in the relationship. What about the kids? Did the kids show signs of being ill at ease with their dad?

DODGEN-MAGEE: They did. They did. They were very hesitant to be with others. They were afraid. They talked about being fearful of their safety when they had visits with dad. Visits were supposed to be supervised, but they talked a lot about fear. They were always quite distressed after visits with their dad. And of course, one of them was only five months old.

MARTIN: Did the dad show signs of violent behavior before? Because the reason I ask that is why was he allowed to see the kids at all?

DODGEN-MAGEE: This is one of the frustrations. This is – a restraining order is a very hard fought, hard won legal requirement that women have to work hard to receive. And even with that restraining order in place after a very violent act, he was still awarded, very short and with another person present, visitations that made absolutely no sense to us. I personally believe that this issue is what it is because women are still not valued and protected in the same way.

MARTIN: Well, why wasn’t he prosecuted? He broke into the house. There’s evidence that he committed violence. Breaking into the house is itself a violent act in order to commit another act of violence, which is raping his separated spouse. So why wasn’t he prosecuted for that?

DODGEN-MAGEE: And that is something that we will never know other than the fact that Laura, again, had been, you know, over time very much taught to believe that her voice should be questioned. It took us a long time to convince her to even seek a restraining order. And so a lot of that also happens where women are fearful of bringing forward what is going on because of the ongoing abuse that has occurred and coercive control that just leads them to believe that they are worth nothing and that they have no power in protecting their children.

MARTIN: I wanna talk a little bit more about access to guns, because the research shows that access to a gun does make an abusive partner five times more likely to kill a woman. 85% of intimate partner homicide-suicides involve a firearm. And I just wonder what that tells us about the relationship between domestic violence and gun access.

DODGEN-MAGEE: Yeah. Well, we live in a country that has the most guns. We now have more guns than we have people per capita. And we have very permissive firearm laws. And so it’s not surprising, again, that the presence of this particularly intimidating and effective method of causing death increases the chance of that occurring in a situation that is already potentially volatile and where a person can be angry and impulsive.

So while that statistic of 70 women on average in America are killed a month by a firearm, hundreds more are threatened and injured, but not killed. And this is why common sense gun laws work. They are lowering community violence. If we could pass specific common sense gun laws that would lower the chance of family homicides, that would be incredible. And there are at least four ways we know could do that.

MARTIN: What are those ways? Yeah, tell me about them.

DODGEN-MAGEE: One of them would be extreme risk protection orders, which this is when when an abused individual knows that their partner has a firearm and feels concerned, they can go to a judge and petition for this extreme risk protection order, which then allows someone to help that abuser rid themselves of their guns and helps them be stored until safety can be reestablished. This is a very effective law. We also – universal background checks, or background checks for all gun purchases would help. Making sure that every state has laws where individuals who have been, as you referred to, convicted of either misdemeanor or felony domestic violence charges are not allowed to have firearms. And then that any firearms they already have are actually taken and held. And then the final legislation that would be very effective is safe storage or child access protection laws, which make sure that a firearm is kept in something like a biometric safe. Even just that small action of having to put your hand on a safe to open it could give people time to flee or could give the person contemplating – which this is usually a very, I mean, it is planned, but at the end of the time, it is adrenaline fueled and, you know, somewhat impulsive when you pull that trigger. And so those laws could also be a huge help in this situation.

MARTIN: How would having to get a gun out of a safe keep somebody who was in a rage, who was in a kind of a rage tantrum, like your relative was stop them? And you’re saying just because you’re saying maybe that rage tantrum could pass, or that rage tantrum could give the other party time to figure out an exit strategy?

DODGEN-MAGEE: I think – it’s very emotional – I think all the time about the fact that, you know, if he would’ve had to have a safe in his car, that he had to get that gun out of, and if he, or if he would’ve been, you know, if he would’ve paid attention to the fact that he was looking into the eyes of his five month old baby, maybe he couldn’t have changed his mind. But again, when we just have easy access and nothing that interrupts that process, we are going to have increasing amounts of deaths. And when we also aren’t protecting women in the ways that I believe they deserve to be protected.

MARTIN: I know this isn’t, again, the easiest thing to talk about, but do you think about the perpetrators? Like why do they do this?

DODGEN-MAGEE: This is a tricky issue even within my family. For me, I had to come to a place where I could say Dave did not understand what was going on. And I can’t live hating him. And it was eating at me, and it’s a very hard place to be that he was a hurt person who hurt people.

But now what I find myself thinking about more than even the perpetrator of the violence is the people like their parents and their family I think a lot about the ripples of trauma that in America, probably now every city is living with that no one is really talking about. And I don’t know if Dave’s parents or family ever got any support or if they just had to live in shame and fear. And this is another issue that until we really start addressing all of the cultural and family trauma, we are raising a whole new generation that’s at risk of doing the same exact thing.

MARTIN: Before I let you go, is there, if someone were listening to our conversation and was worried about someone in their family and thought, gee, I think that something’s not quite right, and I wanna be helpful here. What are some of the ways you could open up that conversation?

DODGEN-MAGEE: Thank you for asking that. The first thing to do is to look within your state to see if you have an extreme risk protection law, or they are also sometimes called red flag laws. There are people within each state who can help a person move through that legal process. And it is a quick legal process, but it is a fully vetted and safe legal process.

I would also encourage people to seek out sources like Brady, Every Town for Gun Safety, Newtown Action Alliance. They oftentimes have resources that can help people tap into you know, how do we begin to talk about the reality of fear of potential death at the hands of your partner in such a way with therapists, because a lot of therapists aren’t also aware. So you can gather resources there that can help empower that person. And I think finally the thing that I would just say over and over and over again is believe women. If you have a niggling feeling that something isn’t right, ask questions. Come with a few resources, listen well, listen over time until a woman feels safe to tell you, and then find the resources in your community that can be of help.

MARTIN: Well, Dr. Doreen Dodgen-Magee, thank you so much for talking with me.

DODGEN-MAGEE: Thank you.