Abstract
Skeletal lesions reveal clues about an individual’s lifeways and inform on the proximate trauma related to death. Blunt force skeletal trauma (BFT) evidenced skeletally by fractures and, depending on the stage of healing, callus formation may be visible macroscopically or radiographically. Indeed, skeletal analysts determine whether an injury occurred antemortem (in-life) or perimortem (at or around death) based upon gross and radiographic observations of skeletal lesions. Meta-analyses of domestic violence (DV) casework suggests that BFT is more commonly observed by investigators and clinicians than sharp force trauma. Furthermore, these data indicate that males are more commonly victimized by interpersonal violence (i.e., combat) while females are more often victims of DV. Because most observations come from psychosocial settings on the living, these researchers tended to neglect the underlying skeletal trauma that was not acute but provided evidence of repeated BFT events. In order to understand how skeletal trauma can refute or support victim or batterer testimony, I evaluated male (n = 94) and female (n = 23) forensic anthropology cases involving decedents from within the Florida Medical Examiner System for evidence of BFT and DV to investigate sex-related differences. Specifically, this study evaluated closed forensic anthropology cases from 2004 – 2017. I documented the trauma location, mechanism of injury, discovery location, interval of trauma (ante- or peri-), and whether DV was identified. To statistically evaluate sex-related differences, I used Chi-Squared tests with Fisher’s Exact tests as a correction for unequal and small sample sizes. The aim of this research was to develop a more holistic approach to femicide (intentional killing of a woman because she is a female) and BFT cases. I found a statistically significant difference between the samples with respect to presence of antemortem trauma (p = 0.002665). Overall, the most common location of BFT was the thorax (n = 68); however, when parsed by sex, females showed highest frequency of BFT on the skull (n = 12). Finally, I also observed a discrepancy in the trends of how circumstantial data was collected and analyzed by the forensic anthropologist. For example, males most often received full-body analysis (n = 58); whereas, females received partial skeletal analysis (n = 13) although this difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.1567). Moreover, medical records used to supplement or explain antemortem trauma were present in 76% of male cases compared to 24% of the females cases though the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.4489). DV was identified in six cases (n = 5 females, n = 1 male) with this difference being statistically significant (p = 0.001044).