SAN FRANCISCO | A unique and highly disturbing case report of domestic violence, in which a woman’s partner used a knife to carve his first and last name into different parts of her body, was described at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association here.

After performing an extensive literature search, Dr. Lissette Rodriguez and Dr. Indhira Almonte from the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center in New York found that such cases of non-self-induced carving have been reported in the context of hate crimes, but not as spousal abuse.

The victim is a now 22-year-old unemployed Hispanic female with a Grade 10 education who denied any history of alcohol or illicit drug use, self-mutilation, or physical or sexual abuse in childhood.

At 20, she began dating a man seven years her senior, and after a brief courtship moved in with him and his parents and sister. Soon after, he exhibited extremely possessive behaviour (including demands that she have his name tattooed on her body) and became physically and verbally abusive.

After numerous altercations with her partner, she went to an emergency room at a nearby hospital where she was diagnosed with a compound forearm fracture and scalp lacerations. It was also determined that she was six weeks pregnant.

During the physical examination, doctors noted several more carvings in different parts of her body, including her lower back, ranging in size from 15 cm to 25 cm and depicting her partner’s name. When questioned, the patient said they were made one at a time over an eight-month period. She suspected her partner was drugging her so he could do this, but she had never divulged the carvings and had not received treatment for them.

The partner was arrested by police, and the woman now lives elsewhere with their one-year-old child.