West Virginia

Fatalities

Recent, publicly available data regarding intimate partner related or domestic violence related fatality counts in West Virginia is limited.

Between 2003 and 2005, there were 103 domestic violence related deaths* that were identified and reviewed by the West Virginia Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team. These domestic violence related deaths include both homicides (n=72) and suicides (n=31). The majority of the suicides (87.1%, n=27) were murder-suicides.3

Intimate Partner Violence* Victimization and Related Impacts*

The lifetime prevalence* of any contact sexual violence*, physical violence,* and/or stalking victimization* by an intimate partner* in West Virginia is:

Note:

State participation in the National Crime Information Center protection order file is voluntary, thus the extent to which states enter the orders into the system varies. Regardless of how each state refers to such orders, these records are uniformly referred to as “protection orders” in the National Crime Information Center database.

Definitions

• Contact sexual violence: Combined measure that includes rape, being made to penetrate someone else, sexual coercion, and/or unwanted sexual contact.
• Domestic violence related deaths: In West Virginia, domestic violence related deaths includes intimate partner related fatalities (involving a spouse, ex-spouse, current or former dating partner, or someone else who is involved as victim or perpetrator as the result of an intimate partner relationship) and family violence fatalities (involving a family member who is not an intimate partner).
• Intimate partner: Romantic or sexual partner and includes spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, people with whom they dated, were seeing, or “hooked up.”
• Intimate partner violence: The five types of intimate partner violence measured in the NISVS include sexual violence, stalking, physical violence, psychological aggression, and control of reproductive/sexual health. Sexual violence includes rape, being made to penetrate someone else, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences.
• Intimate partner violence related impacts: For each perpetrator of domestic violence, the NISVS survey asks victims about specific direct impacts related to intimate partner violence to better understand the consequences of contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner.
• Lifetime prevalence:Proportion of a population who, at some point in life, have ever experienced the characteristic or condition.
• Protection orders with a disqualifying Brady Indicator: Protection orders related to domestic violence that have been identified as those that prohibit the individual from receiving or possessing firearms under federal law.
• Physical violence: A range of behaviors from slapping, pushing, or shoving to severe acts that include being hit with a fist or something hard, kicked, hurt by pulling hair, slammed against something, tried to hurt by choking or suffocating, beaten, burned on purpose, or used a knife or gun.
• Stalking victimization: Pattern of harassing or threatening tactics used by a perpetrator that is both unwanted and causes fear or safety concerns in the victim.