The abuser may kill the victim.

Marital rape victim testified her husband told her "the only way to get out of our marriage…is through death and I would have to die."

— Jones v. State 74 S.W. 3d 663, 667 (Ark. 2002).

Estranged husband of marital rape victim taped a photograph of a gravesite on her door.

— State v. Morrison 426 A. 2nd. 47 (N.J. 1981).

While there can never be an absolute prediction of dangerousness, research documents that sexual assault in an intimate partner relationship is a leading indicator of lethality.

"Forced sex in intimate partner relationships increases the risk for intimate partner homicide over and above prior domestic violence, the use of a weapon against the female partner and repeat physical violence. In other words, the man who not only physically abuses his partner but also rapes her is particularly dangerous."

— Jacquelyn C. Campbell, PhD, RN, FAAN Anna D. Wolfe Chair & Professor Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing

Professor Jacquelyn C. Campbell of Johns Hopkins University is the country's leading researcher on intimate partner murder. In an 11-city study of actual and attempted domestic violence femicides she found that in 57% of these cases there was intimate partner sexual abuse. (Campbell, et al., Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results from a Multisite Case Control Study, 2003 at 1089-1097). Also see Dr. Campbell's Danger Assessment website.

Professor Campbell found that the factor labeled "Woman forced to have sex when not wanted" was the fifth most predictive item in her risk assessment table, ahead of such factors as escalating physical violence and partner's drug abuse. A physically-abused woman also subjected to forced sex was almost twice as likely than other abused women to be killed. (Campbell, et al., Research on Intimate Partner Violence and Femicide, Attempted Femicide, and Pregnancy-Associated Femicide, 2009).

Similarly, in a study of abused women in Houston in which 68% were being both physically and sexually abused, the sexually-abused women reported more of the risk factors for femicide, such as strangulation and threats to children, than did those experiencing physical abuse only (McFarlane & Malecha, Sexual Assault Among Intimates (PDF 991KB), 2005).

David Adams, a psychologist who in 1977 co-founded the nation's first counseling program for abusive men, conducted a ten year study of thirty-one incarcerated men who killed their wives and female partners. Each man participated in a semi-structured interview that lasted between three and six hours. Adams expected the men's self-reports to be highly self-serving, and since he could not obtain the perspectives of their deceased victims for comparison, he decided the next best thing was to interview women who survived attempted homicide at the hands of their partners. He interviewed twenty victims of attempted homicide and another nineteen women who survived potentially life-threatening assaults. In his book about this study Adams wrote:

"There was no greater divergence in what victims and perpetrators reported than in the area of sexual violence. If we are to believe the killers, none of them had ever been sexually violent or even coercive to the women they killed... The victims of serious abuse painted a very different picture. Nearly three-fourths of the women said their abusive partners had raped them.”

Adams uncovered several myths about batterers who kill, finding that only a small percentage are mentally ill. These femicidal batterers were also surprisingly well-educated, and did not kill as a result of “losing control” or “snapping”. Adams found a weaker, if any, correlation between the victim’s death and the batterer’s substance abuse than anticipated. He was unable to discover the difference between abusers who kill and abusers who beat their victims to the edge of death. (Adams, Why do they Kill? (2007) at 171-172.)

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, on average, each day in the United States more than three women are murdered by their current or former husbands or boyfriends. In 2007, 1,640 women were killed by an intimate partner. (Bureau of Justice Statistics Selected Findings: Female Victims of Violence, (2009) at 2.)

It is important to note that while the percentage of males killed by an intimate partner has decreased significantly, the percentage of women murdered by an intimate partner has gradually increased, rising from 38% in 1995 to 45% in 2008. (Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008 (2011) at 18.)