Man whose partner had previously been to prison for stabbing him in the hand, is recorded as an “Abuser killed by his victim” in the official statistics.

The most recent NSW domestic Violence death review records that 2 female dv-killers from the last 13 years were dv-abusers, (one that killed a woman and one that killed a man). In the 2019 report, they had not recorded a single female abuser since they started keeping track.

In the most recent report, they did not publish case studies, but in some earlier reports they did.

Some of the case studies look exactly as their stats imply, with men killing their partners (or ex’s) after years of horrific abuse, or a woman stabbing her abuser in self defence.

Others are less clear, with people on both sides claiming to have been abused.

And in the case study labelled: "Case Review 3544", from the 2015-2017 report.pdf) where Henry* was killed by Lucy* (not their real names):

The event, as quoted from the case study in their report, went as:

The day of the homicide, Lucy and Henry had been drinking together. That evening, Lucy called police and told the operator that she wanted to see police before she ‘killed someone’. She cried and told the operator that she couldn’t go back to gaol. She requested police attend, but due to her intoxication the police were not dispatched. Lucy called the Aboriginal Community Liaison Officer, who thought that she did not sound right or normal when speaking to him on the phone. An hour later, she told a neighbour that she had stabbed Henry. The neighbour called the police, and police arrested Lucy at the scene while an ambulance conveyed Henry to hospital. Lucy initially told police that Henry had self-harmed, but she later admitted to having stabbed Henry once in the chest. 

Other information included in their report that might have indicated who they should label as the abuser and who they should label as the victim include them both:

- both used violence against one another

- police were regularly involved in relation to arguments and violence between Lucy and Henry.

- Lucy would regularly call police and request their assistance in relation to domestic violence she was using, or experiencing, from Henry. 

- Lucy and Henry married and continued to engage with Police regularly in relation to Lucy’s violence against Henry, and Henry’s violence against Lucy

And Lucy:

- on an occasion in the mid 2000s she stabbed him in the hand during the course of an argument.  

- police charged Lucy with assault offences and applied for an ADVO protecting Henry

- On one occasion, Lucy was also convicted of assaulting Henry with a knife and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 2 months

(I’ll post the full case study in the comments)

This was of course a cherrypicked example. It’s not indicative of the average case study but it is indicative of what is included when we take a closer look at the numbers they provide.

Numbers that are quotes by the Australia wide stats, and then again by many studies overseas that reference numbers, or victims who killed their abusers.

So when you see stats about female abusers killing in self defence, or only killing their abusers, or killing in the context of violence committed against them. (especially if they are from NSW, or Australia, or include that as part of their background information)…

THIS example was used to generate those numbers, THIS is what it can look like for a female victim to kill her abuser according to the people who categorise these things.