Black Femicide: Perpetrator Relationship Data

People who perpetrate Black femicide are most often someone the victims love, trust, or share a home with.¹ Nine out of ten victims knew their killer, and in more than half of these cases, femicides are committed by someone who is an intimate partner.^{2 3} The perpetrator relationship data presented in this article directly challenges the myth that strangers pose the primary threat to Black women and girls.

Table of Contents

• Home is the Most Dangerous Place for Black Women
• The Perpetrators of Black Femicide
• Breaking Down Relationship Types
• Coercive Control: The Tell-Tale Pattern Before Femicide
• The Unique Barriers Black Women Face
• What Perpetrator Relationship Reveals
• Data Methodology Note
• Further Reading
• Resources

Home is the Most Dangerous Place for Black Women

Femicide research consistently reveals one finding above all others.^{4 5} The household is the most dangerous place to be a Black woman or girl in America. Men who kill women are rarely strangers. Indeed, perpetrators of femicide are husbands, boyfriends, former intimate partners, or family members. The chilling reality is that femicide victims almost always die at the hands of someone they knew. In most cases, he is someone she once loved and trusted.

Furthermore, these killings almost never happen without warning. Researchers document a well-established pattern. Femicide is the last lethal expression of coercive control, a pattern of dominance behaviors that invariably precedes femicide. For Black women especially, access to a firearm multiplies the risk. Nevertheless, systems designed to intervene consistently fail Black women before the final fatal act of coercive control occurs.

The Perpetrators of Black Femicide

The Violence Policy Center analyzed every single-offender, single-victim femicide in 2023.⁶ The data leaves no ambiguity. Nearly nine out of ten female victims knew their killer.⁷ Of those, more than half were intimate partners or spouses. Less than 1 in 10 victims died at the hands of a stranger.

Moreover, the relationship data reveals a critical prevention window.⁸ These are not random acts. They follow documented patterns of abuse. Researchers identify coercive control as the common thread. In light of this reality, every femicide represents a prior failure of intervention.

The betrayal of Black femicide victims extends beyond the violence occurring within intimate partner- and family relationships. At a broader, structural level, the conditions that enable these killings are reinforced by cuts to programs that support vulnerable women–resources that are critical for exercising agency and safely exiting contexts of misogynoir.^{9 10}

Breaking Down Relationship Types

The relationship data separates into distinct categories.¹¹ Each tells a different story.¹²

• 57.1% Intimate partners and spouses
• 16% Friends and acquaintances
• 14% Family members
• 10.1% Strangers

Together, they map the full geography of danger that many Black women navigate in intimate and family life.

Coercive Control: The Tell-Tale Pattern Before Femicide

Femicide is almost never a single isolated event. Instead, it is the final point on a continuum of coercive and controlling behavior.^{13 14}  This pattern has been documented in countless studies.^{15 16} The abuser isolates the victim. He monitors her movements. He controls her finances. He threatens her life. Then he makes good on that threat.

Additionally, separation from an abusive partner multiplies danger rather than ending it. Research identifies the post-separation period as the highest-risk window for femicide. Furthermore, the presence of a firearm in a coercive control relationship raises the femicide risk by 500%.¹⁷ Black women face all of these risk factors simultaneously–and at higher rates than any other group in the United States.

The Unique Barriers Black Women Face

Black women experience intimate partner violence at the highest rates of any group.¹⁸ Nevertheless, they access formal help at lower rates. Researchers document multiple compounding barriers.¹⁹ Therefore, understanding those barriers is essential to understanding the data.²⁰

First, distrust of law enforcement shapes help-seeking.²¹ Black women consistently report fear that police will harm their partners, their families, or themselves. Second, economic dependence traps survivors. Black women face persistent wage gaps and employment discrimination. As a result, leaving an abuser often means choosing between safety and financial survival. Third, community pressure discourages disclosure. Some survivors describe fear of reinforcing harmful stereotypes about Black men. Consequently, they absorb danger in silence.

Finally, when Black women do reach out, systems frequently fail them. Shelters turn them away. Courts move slowly. Orders of protection go unenforced. These failures are not incidental. They reflect the same structural racism that drives the femicide rate itself.

“African American women survivors of intimate partner violence are disproportionately murdered, and help-seeking is a critical variable. There is an urgent need to develop culturally salient interventions that center African American women’s ways of knowing.”

Dr. Bernadine Y. Waller, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Journal of Interpersonal Violence (2023)

What Perpetrator Relationship Data Reveals

The perpetrator relationship data carries a clear implication. In most cases, Black femicides are preventable. They follow established warning signs. They unfold within systems that had prior contact with both victim and perpetrator. They are enabled by policies that willful deny the reality of Black women and girls by preventing access to protection and support.

Prevention is possible. Firstly, the legal system must recognize and give status to crimes of coercive control and femicide.^{22 23} Secondly, prevention must target intimate relationships directly. Coercive control legislation gives prosecutors tools to act before the femicide occurs. Firearm restriction laws for domestic abusers reduce the lethality of abuse. Funded shelter networks give survivors a viable exit. Furthermore, culturally competent advocacy removes the barriers that keep Black women from seeking help in the first place. Each of these interventions targets the specific dynamics this data reveals. Without them, the pattern continues unchanged.

Data Methodology Note

• Single offender/single victim only. The VPC data covers incidents with one male offender and one female victim. Multi-offender cases are excluded. This produces conservative estimates of intimate partner femicide.
• Race identification gaps. Of 2,412 female victims in 2023, race was identified for 2,331. Forty-five cases remain unclassified by race. Therefore, the 733 Black victims figure may slightly undercount the true total.
• Relationship category limitations. The FBI categorizes relationships using broad groupings. Consequently, the “acquaintance” category captures a wide range of relationship types. Researchers recommend treating these as minimum estimates of intimate-sphere violence.

A note on undercounting: Femicides misclassified as accidents, suicides, or undetermined causes of death are not captured in this data. The true proportion of intimate partner femicides is almost certainly higher than official statistics reflect.

Further Reading

• National Femicide Rates in the United States
• Black Femicide Trends 2020-2025: The Impact of COVID-19
• Black Femicide: State-by-State Disparities
• Global Femicide Crisis: A Woman Is Killed Every 10 Minutes
• The Coercive Control Legislation Index
• The Global Femicide Legislation Index

Resources

1. Wakefield, M. (2026). National Femicide Rates. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. ↩︎
2. Ibid. ↩︎
3. U.N. Women.(2025) Five essential facts to know about femicide. United Nations Women. ↩︎
4. UNODC and UN Women. (2024). Femicides in 2023: Global Estimates of Intimate Partner/Family Member. Femicides. U.N. Publicartion.  ↩︎
5. Dawson, M. (2021). ‘Home is the most dangerous place for women,’ but private and public violence are connected. The Conversation. ↩︎
6. Wiens, T. (2023). When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2023 Homicide Data. Violence Policy Center. ↩︎
7. Waller BY, Bent-Goodley TB. “I Have to Fight to Get Out”: African American Women Intimate Partner Violence Survivors’ Construction of Agency. J Interpers Violence. 2023 Feb;38(3-4):4166-4188. doi: 10.1177/08862605221113008. Epub 2022 Jul 25. PMID: 35876177; PMCID: PMC9852021. ↩︎
8. West, C.M., O’Neal, D. (2024). Serving Black Women Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence. NRCDV Technical Assistance Series. National Resource Center on Domestic Violence. ↩︎
9. Wakefield, M. (2024). The Alarming Rate of Black Femicide in the U.S. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. ↩︎
10. Wakefield, M. (2026). Black Femicide Trends 2020-2025: The Impact of COVID-19. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. ↩︎
11. Green, S. (2017). Violence Against Black Women: Many Types, Far-Reaching Effects. Institute of Women’s Policy Research. ↩︎
12. Mithani, J. (2025). Shooting his partner, then himself: How firearms access fuels domestic violence tragedies. The 19th. ↩︎
13. Klein, M. (2025). Marieke Liem: ‘Hidden warning signs preceding femicide deserve visibility.’ Universitet Leiden. ↩︎
14. Campbell JC, Webster D, Koziol-McLain J, Block C, Campbell D, Curry MA, Gary F, Glass N, McFarlane J, Sachs C, Sharps P, Ulrich Y, Wilt SA, Manganello J, Xu X, Schollenberger J, Frye V, Laughon K. Risk factors for femicide in abusive relationships: results from a multisite case control study. Am J Public Health. 2003 Jul;93(7):1089-97. doi: 10.2105/ajph.93.7.1089. PMID: 12835191; PMCID: PMC1447915. ↩︎
15. Di Marco, M. H., and Evans, D.P. (2025). Flying under and through the radar: Tactics used by intimate partner femicide perpetrators to evade interventions. international Journal of Law, Crime, and Justice. Volume 82. ↩︎
16. Zara G, Gino S. Intimate Partner Violence and its Escalation Into Femicide. Frailty thy Name Is “Violence Against Women”. Front Psychol. 2018 Sep 26;9:1777. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01777. PMID: 30319489; PMCID: PMC6168672. ↩︎
17. Mithani. ↩︎
18. UNODC and UN Women. 2024.  ↩︎
19. Posey, B.M. (2024). Black Femicides Matter: Conceptualizing the Killings of Black Girls and Women as Structural and Cultural Violence. Homicide Studies: An Interdisciplinary & International Journal. Special Issue: Critical Perspectives on Homicide, Volume 28, Issue 3. ↩︎
20. Sharpless L, Kershaw T, Knight D, Campbell JK, Phillips K, Katague M, Willie TC. Moving towards transformative justice for black women survivors of intimate partner violence: an intersectional qualitative study. BMC Public Health. 2024 Oct 8;24(1):2730. doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-20244-y. PMID: 39379927; PMCID: PMC11459893. ↩︎
21. Sharpless et al. 2024. ↩︎
22. Wakefield, M. (2020). The Coercive Control Legislation Global Index. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. ↩︎
23. Wakefield, M. (2026). The Global Femicide Legislation Global Index. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. ↩︎