Quantitative analysis of victim demographics and injury characteristics at a metropolitan Medico-Legal Center

For the timeframe of February 1st, 2003 until December 31st, 2005, all forensic medical experts at the Medico-Legal Center of the Institute of Legal Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, completed a standardized questionnaire for every consenting surviving violence victim (n =2733) age 14 and older. Central to the quantitative analysis of the data collected was the extraction of specific injury characteristics from the sample population. A correlation was demonstrated between injury typologies and four possible perpetrator–victim constellations, each of which was subcategorized into sexual and non-sexual assaults.