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Murder instrument kitchen knife: “He says: If you go, I'll kill you.
She anticipates that "
Photo: LordHenriVoton / Getty Images / iStockphoto
SPIEGEL:
As a court expert, you regularly sit across from people who have committed serious acts of violence.
How often do you have to do with women?
Saimeh:
I don't keep a tally, but around 90 percent of my appraisal assignments are for men.
SPIEGEL:
Nevertheless, you have just devoted an entire book to "cruel women" - why?
To person
Photo:
Alexandra Höner
Nahlah Saimeh
, born in 1966, is a forensic psychiatrist
examining
defendants in many
high-profile
criminal proceedings.
She has published several books about her work.
For fourteen years she headed one of the largest German correctional clinics in Lippstadt-Eickelborn.
Today she works as a freelance reviewer and teaches at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.
Saimeh:
When we talk about equality, we also have to take women seriously in terms of their aggressive potential.
I believe that women are not that different from men.
But we tend to systematically underestimate the dangers posed by women, especially in the case of mentally ill offenders.
SPIEGEL:
To what extent?
Saimeh:
For example, if a woman gets schizophrenic psychosis, her risk of becoming violent increases by a factor of 23. For a man, only by a factor of 7. This is because men are at a higher risk of violence anyway.
But if a man makes threats out of nowhere and attacks strangers with a knife, we immediately recognize the potential danger.
In the case of women, we tend to minimize such aggression until serious crimes occur at some point.
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