Domestic Violence Should Not Need a Body Count to Command Our Attention
Intimate partner and family violence are preventable public health crises. Our response must begin before another woman, child, or family becomes a headline.
Within a matter of days, families in New York, Oklahoma, and Michigan were devastated by violence inside the places where they should have been safest.
In Queens, NY, Mary Kate Golding was killed in what police described as a suspected domestic violence incident. Her 11-month-old son was found in the apartment beside his mother. In Oklahoma, Sara Gilson was shot and killed by her estranged husband, weeks after she sought an emergency protective order. A child inside the home called 911. In Michigan, authorities say a husband and father killed his wife and their six children, ages 5 to 15, before taking his own life and setting fires throughout their home.
The circumstances surrounding these cases are not identical, and we should not speculate beyond what investigators have established. But we must confront what they share: women and children were killed by someone within their intimate or family circle, and the person believed responsible then died by suicide.
Even the phrase “murder-suicide” can obscure this reality. It can make the deaths sound mutual, as though two people participated in the same act. They did not. One person made the decision to murder a partner, children, or other family members before ending his own life.
We must name that clearly. Language shapes whether we understand these incidents as isolated personal tragedies or as part of a larger, recognizable pattern of intimate partner and family violence.
These cases are not rare exceptions
A recent Violence Policy Center analysis identified 237 murder-suicide incidents reported during the first six months of 2025—approximately nine each week. Sixty-five percent involved an intimate partner. Forty-five of the people murdered were children or teenagers, and another 27 young people survived after witnessing some aspect of the violence. Because the United States has no comprehensive national system for tracking murder-suicides, the analysis relied on news reports and likely does not capture every incident.
Behind those deaths is a much larger crisis that rarely receives the same sustained attention.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2023–2024 national survey, more than one in three women in the United States—nearly 43.5 million—has experienced sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner during her lifetime. The CDC also reports that more than half of female homicide victims are killed by a current or former male intimate partner.
In New York City, the Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence reported 66 domestic violence homicides in 2024: 33 involving intimate partners and 33 involving other family members. During the same year, the NYPD responded to 249,077 domestic incident reports. Those reports included more than 116,000 intimate partner-related incidents and nearly 93,000 family-related incidents.
Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that approximately 840 million women and girls—nearly one in three—have experienced physical or sexual violence by a partner or sexual violence by someone else during their lifetime. WHO describes violence against women as a major public health and gender equality problem. Yet the global rate of intimate partner violence has declined by an average of only 0.2% annually over the past two decades.
This is not a private matter happening in a handful of troubled homes. It is a persistent public health crisis unfolding in every kind of community.
We cannot allow fatalities—or only the cases graphic or prominent enough to attract national attention—to be the only alarm loud enough to move us.
Black and Latina women are carrying a disproportionate burden
Domestic violence can affect anyone. But it does not affect every community equally. A CDC analysis of nearly 4,000 female intimate partner homicides found that Black women represented approximately 13.4% of the population studied but nearly 30% of the victims. The CDC concluded that Black women were disproportionately affected throughout the study period and that the disparity widened during 2020 and 2021.
The disparity is just as alarming in New York City. According to the city’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Committee, Black women accounted for 33.2% of intimate partner homicide victims from 2014 through 2023 while representing approximately 13% of the city’s population. Black women were 3.6 times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than residents of other racial and ethnic groups. Hispanic women represented 27.8% of intimate partner homicide victims while comprising approximately 14.6% of the city’s population.
These disparities do not exist because Black and Brown women are less capable of protecting themselves or less willing to seek help. New York City’s Fatality Review Committee points to structural racism, sexism, poverty, and other overlapping inequities that can increase vulnerability while creating barriers to services.
A survivor cannot simply “leave” when leaving may mean homelessness, losing access to income, disrupting a child’s education, abandoning a beloved pet, facing immigration consequences, or entering systems in which she has little reason to place her trust.
Safety must be more than advice. It must be supported by housing, legal advocacy, financial resources, health care, child care, transportation, language access, culturally responsive services, and a realistic path toward long-term stability.
Children are not witnesses on the sidelines
Mary Golding’s infant son was found beside his mother. A child inside Sara Gilson’s home made the call for help. Six children were killed alongside their mother in Michigan.
Children are often called the “invisible victims” of domestic violence. But there is nothing indirect about what happens to them.
New York City’s fatality review found that nearly 20% of domestic violence homicide victims from 2014 through 2023 were children age 10 or younger. More than one-third of homicides involving family members included a victim in that age group.
Children do not have to be physically attacked to be harmed. The CDC recognizes witnessing intimate partner violence as an adverse childhood experience. Exposure to violence can disrupt a child’s sense of safety and is associated with mental health challenges, problems at school, substance use, increased suicide risk, and other effects that may continue into adulthood.
When intimate partner violence becomes homicide, a child may lose one parent to murder and the other to suicide or incarceration in a single moment. The child may also lose a home, school, community, pets, financial stability, and every routine that once made life feel predictable.
Children are not simply witnesses to domestic violence. They are survivors of it.
They must be included in safety planning, counseling, housing decisions, school support, legal advocacy, and long-term recovery. Prevention must also begin with young people, before unhealthy ideas about control, jealousy, entitlement, and violence become normalized as components of a relationship.
These deaths are not inevitable
Saying intimate partner homicide is preventable does not mean every killing can be predicted with certainty. It means we know enough about patterns of escalating violence, high-risk behavior, and effective interventions to reduce danger and save lives.
The CDC states unequivocally that intimate partner violence can be prevented. Research has identified serious indicators associated with intimate partner homicide, including previous violence, direct access to a firearm, prior strangulation, stalking, threats to kill, coercive control, and separation from an abusive partner. A major systematic review of intimate partner homicide risk factors found that firearm access, previous nonfatal strangulation, threats with a weapon, and threats to kill were among the strongest risk factors.
As I recently told Patch following Mary Golding’s death, separation can be one of the most dangerous periods for a survivor. That is why safety planning must be individualized, confidential, and supported by trained professionals. Family members and friends should listen without judgment, take expressions of fear seriously, and help connect survivors to resources rather than pressuring them to make decisions that could increase their danger.
Recognizing warning signs does not make survivors responsible for preventing their own murders. The responsibility for violence belongs entirely to the person causing harm.
The responsibility for building an effective response belongs to all of us.
Shelter saves lives—but shelter alone will not end domestic violence
At Urban Resource Institute, the nation’s largest provider of domestic violence shelter and support services, we see every day that domestic violence is not a single-issue crisis. It is connected to housing, poverty, health, education, child development, immigration, employment, legal systems, and community safety. URI operates 27 emergency and transitional housing sites and reaches approximately 40,000 people annually through residential and community-based programs.
Emergency shelter is essential. But a bed alone cannot address everything a survivor needs to remain safe.
That is why URI’s work extends to legal education and advocacy, economic empowerment, trauma-informed counseling, and pet-inclusive shelter through People and Animals Living Safely. We invest in prevention through the Relationship Abuse Prevention Program and Early RAPP, which help young people recognize abuse and build healthy relationships. And through our Trauma-Informed Abusive Partner Intervention Program, we work with people who have caused harm to strengthen accountability, change behavior, and reduce future violence.
A serious public health response must operate across that entire continuum: preventing violence before it begins, recognizing escalating danger, supporting survivors, protecting children, providing safe housing, and intervening with people who cause harm.
It also requires sustained investment—not an infusion of attention and funding after another family has been killed.
Government contracts must fully fund domestic violence services and the professionals who deliver them. Survivors need access to safe and affordable housing before homelessness forces them back into danger. Courts, law enforcement, health care providers, schools, employers, child welfare agencies, and community organizations must be prepared to recognize risk and coordinate a response. Firearm restrictions and legally required weapon surrender must be taken seriously when domestic violence and credible threats are present.
Above all, we must believe people when they say they are afraid.
Mary Kate Golding, Sara Gilson, Amanda Karolkiewicz, and the children whose lives were taken should not be remembered only for how they died. They were mothers, children, friends, colleagues, students, neighbors, and people with futures that violence stole from them.
We owe them more than grief. We owe the next survivor support before the threats escalate. We owe the next child protection before violence defines their childhood. We owe the next family intervention before their names become a headline.
Hope is at the cornerstone of everything we do at URI. But hope cannot remain an idea. It must be funded, accessible, culturally responsive, and put into action while people are still alive.
The measure of our response cannot be how loudly we mourn after a murder. It must be how urgently—and how effectively—we act before the next one.
