Women falling from heights in Turkey—can the Latin American model protocol help them?

Abstract

It is not always possible to determine the exact origin of death in cases of suspicious female deaths. Deaths resulting from falls present many challenges in forensic medicine. In order to overcome these difficulties, we screened the approaches to suspicious female deaths from international documents aimed at preventing violence against women worldwide, and we conclude that the Latin American Model Protocol (LAMP) is the most qualified one in addressing this issue. We have converted the LAMP into a checklist, compared it with the circumstances in the cases we present, and evaluated the potential benefits that LAMP could provide. The study examines three cases of women from Turkey who have died by falling from a height. In all cases, the women's partners were present with them at the time of incident. In all these three cases, partners were in a legally suspicious position and claimed that the incident was a suicide. The investigation and trial processes were different in all three cases, and various difficulties were encountered during the establishment of the truth. This study has demonstrated that, despite the actual occurrence of femicide, the use of the investigation steps proposed by LAMP and a comprehensive approach utilizing the scientific methods of forensic medicine, law, and other disciplines that can assist in analyzing the incident during the investigation process can help reveal the cases where defendants claim cases are suicide despite cases being a femicide.