Intimate and Family murder

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After I read the chapter, all I could say is the world’s really strange—maybe gone mad. First-off, it’s pretty disturbing when you think that love could actually be a key to homicide—that “love” itself could be the very root of motives for murder. Whenever I see the news on TV about intimate or family-related homicides, it awes me and makes me wonder how could they do such a thing. But anyway, I’ve observed that some do it to hide an affair from the spouse, some are for money, others are for authority (certain family status), and some are just for attention. It usually happens between couples. Intimate partner homicide usually involves a man killing his female partner, often after a long and escalating pattern of woman battering. When women kill male partners, they typically do so in self-defense, although such defense may not qualify as such in a court of law. However, deaths attributable to domestic violence far transcend intimate partner killings. Non intimate partner family members also kill each other in so called "family homicides." Fathers kill children, mothers kill children, children kill their parents, and brothers kill sisters, and so on. Men sometimes kill other men over a woman they sexually compete for. These "sexual competitor killings" are much smaller in number than either intimate partner or family homicides.
In some cases, however, like in the Scott Peterson case, we can see that there’s this thing about getting away from responsibility (I.e., fatherhood) and running off with somebody else. Sometimes we can’t even expect that homicide would actually occur to such a “happy” marriage, because they appear to be quite normal. Regarding this, there was a time when I had this conversation with a friend about marriage and she just said, “Sometimes I pity those who get married, because I see most of them just stay in the marriage because of commitment but never with love.” It’s such an irony, but I admit it’s true for some cases, since we see them happen in real life now. I’m not saying all marriages or relationships would end up that way, but we never know what’s going to happen, because anything’s possible.
Some perpetrators, when realizing their actions, also commit suicide. Many more Americans die from suicide than homicide. Most of these suicides involve male victims, some of whom kill thei...

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...ed. The same could be said of homeless women dying on the streets since roughly half of homeless women report "fleeing abuse" as the reason for their homelessness. Likewise, prostitutes have experienced enormous amounts of interpersonal abuse at the hands of male intimates, family members, and their clients.
Sometimes people are downright unpredictable. And the society itself could just be the thorn on our sides. After I read the chapter, I don’t know what to feel or even say about it, because at one point it sounds impossible. If it wasn’t for the book, I wouldn’t even find out that there’s such a thing as “intimate” murder. But the more I read about it, the more I realize there are even deeper questions. I noticed that in murders, you can’t really idenitfy motives in general. Each has an individual motive and it’s very intricate. We can’t even tell if the suspect is crazy or has a psychological imbalance. I might have been watching a lot of CSI or Law & Order, Court TV and such, but to me I think through reading, it makes me more aware of how dangerous we people could be.

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