By Michael Phillips | Wisconsin Bay News / Father & Co.
A deeply reported investigation by Nebraska Public Media has put hard numbers and human faces to a grim reality: in 2025, Nebraska recorded 12 murder-suicides, leaving 25 people dead, most of them women and girls killed by current or former intimate partners. It is a devastating toll for a largely rural state—and a warning sign for others, including Wisconsin.
The reporting traces a convergence of failures: dwindling domestic-violence services, inconsistent enforcement of protection orders, and the uniquely dangerous period after separation—when abusers often escalate toward a final, irreversible act. But for readers on the center-right, the story also raises questions that go beyond funding levels alone.
A System Under Strain
From 2019 to 2025, Nebraska documented 30 murder-suicides and 62 deaths. In intimate-partner cases, 27 of 33 victims were women, killed by husbands, boyfriends, or ex-partners. The pattern is tragically familiar nationwide, even as overall homicide rates decline.
What makes Nebraska’s spike stand out is timing. The surge coincides with a collapse in federal VOCA funding—money derived from criminal fines that once sustained victim services. As prosecutions declined and collections fell, Nebraska’s VOCA funds dropped from roughly $20 million in 2018 to under $5 million by 2024. Two separate attempts by lawmakers to backfill the gap failed amid budget pressures and reporting disputes.
Rural providers were hit hardest. In wide swaths of the state, shelters gave way to short-term hotel vouchers, outreach staff were cut, and victims faced longer waits or longer drives—barriers that can prove fatal when violence escalates quickly.
Protection Orders That Don’t Protect
Several 2025 cases shared a chilling detail: victims had just sought protection orders.
One young woman was killed hours after filing. Another was murdered days after filing for divorce. In the case of 23-year-old Jaliyah Compton, two protection orders were denied after a contested hearing. She was later shot by her former partner, who then took his own life.
Protection orders matter—but only if enforced consistently. Firearm surrender provisions vary by county, are often voluntary, and rely heavily on compliance rather than verification. Nebraska has no “red flag” law, a fact praised by gun-rights advocates but questioned by victim-safety groups who point to separation-period lethality.
For center-right readers, this tension is familiar: how to protect due process and constitutional rights while ensuring that court orders carry real, immediate weight when credible threats are raised.
The Missing Conversation: Men, Mental Health, and Suicide
One underexplored dimension of murder-suicide is the suicide itself. These crimes are overwhelmingly committed by men, and they overwhelmingly end in self-inflicted death. Depression, untreated mental illness, substance abuse, and isolation appear repeatedly in case histories—yet prevention efforts often focus almost exclusively on victims, not perpetrators in crisis.
That’s not an argument for sympathy over accountability. It’s an argument for earlier intervention—especially for men who are unraveling in the wake of relationship breakdown, job loss, or custody disputes. Ignoring male mental health doesn’t protect women; it leaves warning signs unaddressed until it’s too late.
What This Means for Wisconsin
Wisconsin has avoided a similar spike so far—but the ingredients exist here, too: rural service gaps, strained courts, inconsistent enforcement, and mental-health systems stretched thin. Nebraska’s experience should be read as a cautionary tale, not a regional anomaly.
From a center-right perspective, the path forward isn’t simply “more spending” or “more laws.” It’s better enforcement of existing orders, stable and accountable funding, community-based solutions that reach rural families, and a serious effort to engage men before crises turn deadly.
Domestic violence is not a culture-war issue. It is a public-safety issue, a family-stability issue, and a moral one. When the safety net frays, the cost is measured not in budgets—but in lives left behind, especially children who grow up carrying trauma no policy can easily undo.
Nebraska’s numbers should prompt hard questions nationwide. The next tragedy doesn’t have to.
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