Domestic Abusers and Men Who Murdered their Partners: Differences from Personal, Personality, and Situational Perspectives

Violence in an intimate relationship is a multifaceted problem that crosses cultures, religions, socio-economic stat s and education level (WHO, 2013). This is a social phenomenon which has widened within time. Its high rate of heinous incidents how they have been depicted have all led to be closely examined by researchers. They were in hope to evaluate the contributing factors that have led to a woman being eventually murdered. The effort to better understand this extreme form of violence and the factors associated with its risk factors are directly related to the male perpetrators. They focused mainly on background variables such as unemployment and poverty, drug and alcohol use, the nature of the couple's relationship, and psychopathology alongside with his mental health. At the same time, there seems to be a lack of knowledge regarding the contribution of variables such as traumatic events and crises experienced by the spouse in the past and present.Furthermore, the existence of post-traumatic distress and / or depression.Thus, the purpose of this study is to fill in the gaps and to compare between men who used nonlethal violence against an intimate partner with those who murdered or attempt to murder of an intimate partner. Our purpose is to examine and to consider the differences alongside the background characteristics of the attacker.

This study was based on Dobash and his colleague's (Dobash et al., 2009) models, which clarifies that whenever we examine domestic violence between spouses it worth noting that there are four deciding factors. These factors were related to the personal characteristics of the inmate as well as his personality traits. In addition, the modal also takes into consideration the situational and circumstantial levels starting at childhood and leading on to adulthood.

The study was conducted at the Prison Service. The study is a cross-sectional study, quantitative data was collected in accordance with the data output of the prison service regarding inmates who committed a felony of violence towards their spouse. Questionnaires were passed by the social workers at the prison to inmates who were interested to participate.The study group contains 120 inmates at the ages of 18+ whom are in prison for committing a murder / attempting to murder their spouse. 60 questionnaires were passed to inmates who have been serving a jail time for violence towards their spouse and 60 questionnaires to inmates that committed a murder / attempted to commit a murder towards their spouse. The questionnaires were passed anonymously to the researcher.

The research hypotheses sought to examine whether differences will be found between the two groups of, in variables such as: country of birth, income level, the use of psychoactive substances, severity and frequency of the violence, the use of dominance force, exposure to traumatic events, PTSD, and the severity of depressive symptoms. Finally, we examined whether there is a connection between the number of traumatic events and the probability of murder is mediated by post-traumatic distress and the severity of the depressive symptoms that the man experiences.