Witnessing violence: Survivors of the femicide

Femicide cases which happen almost every single day due to men's violence not only disrupt women's right to live, but also leave tens of thousands of families and children behind affected by the murder. Thus, it is extremely important in Turkish case to determine the risk factors before the femicide and the lives of the children and those who assume the caring responsibility of these children after it with reference to their subjective experiences. This study examines the risk factors on femicide caused by men's violence. Moreover, it puts forth the needs and problems of the children and their caregivers after the femicide in the context of the profession of social work, and produces knowledge on how to work with these people in a social work context. For this, the researcher has chosen ten femicide cases – which happened after the Law 6284 was enacted in 2012 – and conducted qualitative in-depth interviews with the children and their caregivers after the femicide due to men's violence from various parts of Turkey. It appears within the scope of the study that women experience serious risk factors and hard violence before the murder quite often, however, just a few of the violent men are given only a restraining order among others that may empower women, and there are either legal or systemic problems and a lack of coordination between agencies in the implementation of the orders. In addition, the study focuses on the risk assessment tools and threat assessment scales which are very important in the assessment of violence against women, and ends up with suggestions on how to work with those women who decide to divorce the violent spouse and those who cannot. Children, on the other hand, experience a crisis of care due to the lack of a parent after the murder, find themselves in the middle of a post-murder turmoil, and may be forced to make false statement and state that they commit the murder under oath. There are secondary traumas in addition to the children's post-murder trauma; thus, the researcher concluded with various suggestions from the perspectives of crisis intervention and ecological approach.