Exploring detectives’ emotional and psychological experiences in interactions with families in intimate femicide cases

Abstract

Intimate femicide remains one of the most urgent and devastating forms of gender-based violence in South Africa. While existing research has centred on the prevalence and legal responses to such cases, less attention has been given to the emotional and psychological experiences of detectives who must engage with both the investigative process and the interaction with bereaved families. This study explores the emotional and psychological experiences of detectives’ interactions with families in intimate femicide cases. In-depth interviews were conducted with eight South African Police Service detectives from Gauteng province. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was utilised to explore the emotional and psychological impact of such work, focusing on death notifications and ongoing family interactions. Analysis revealed three interlinked findings: (1) detectives as first witnesses to families’ shock, disbelief, and embodied grief; (2) the emotional labour, cumulative strain, and personal identity spillover arising from repeated exposure to trauma; and (3) the challenges of managing death notifications in the context of training gaps, procedural frictions, and high family expectations. The study contributes to psychological literature on trauma-exposed occupations and emphasises the need for trauma-informed policing practices that address both interpersonal engagement and officer mental health.

Introduction

Intimate femicide, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2024), refers to the deliberate killing of women because of their gender, most often perpetrated within intimate relationships. The scale of this crisis remains staggering. In 2023, an estimated 60% of the 85,000 women and girls intentionally killed worldwide were murdered by intimate partners or family members, amounting to approximately 51,100 victims. This equates to an average of 140 women and girls killed every day by someone close to them (UN Women, 2024). Africa recorded the highest regional rate in 2023 at 2.9 victims per 100,000 female population, followed by the Americas (1.6) and Oceania (1.5), while Asia and Europe reported comparatively lower rates of 0.8 and 0.6 per 100,000, respectively (UN Women, 2024).

South Africa has consistently ranked among the countries with the highest intimate femicide rates globally (Abrahams et al., 2024). In 2019, the national femicide rate was recorded at 9 per 100,000 women (World Population Review, 2019). More recent data from the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) show that intimate partner violence remains a dominant driver of femicide, with 60% of women murdered in 2020/21 killed by an intimate partner (Pretorius, 2024). Between April and June 2024 alone, the South African Police Service (SAPS) reportedly recorded 996 femicide cases a 7.9% increase from the same period in the previous year. While the exact 2024 figure is not yet available in peer-reviewed literature, recent studies confirm that South Africa continues to have one of the highest femicide rates globally, with SAPS data indicating persistent and, at times, increasing trends in femicide cases (Abrahams et al., 2024; Bismilla et al., 2025; Mkwananzi & Nathane-Taulela, 2024). These figures are not abstract statistics; they reflect profound personal losses that shatter families, destabilise communities, and weigh heavily on the country’s collective conscience.

Gauteng Province, although the smallest province in land area, is the most populous and highly urbanised in South Africa (Katumba & Everatt, 2021), home to over a quarter of the national population (Dlamini et al., 2020; Nhamo et al., 2021). Recent reports indicate that Gauteng has experienced a notable increase in its femicide rate, rising from approximately 8.1 per 100,000 women in 2017 to around 9.2 per 100,000 in 2024, placing it among the highest provincial rates in the country (Abrahams et al., 2024; Pretorius, 2024). While such statistics provide a stark outline of the problem, they conceal the deep emotional toll carried both by bereaved families and by the professionals tasked with responding to these tragedies.

Most public and scholarly discourse has focused on the lived experiences of victims and their families, the performance of the criminal justice system, and the socio-cultural drivers of gender-based violence (Green et al., 2023; Hester et al., 2025). Far less attention has been paid to the emotional and psychological experiences of police detectives who investigate these crimes, deliver death notifications, and manage the initial interactions with families (De Leo et al., 2022; Gumani, 2022; Hofmann et al., 2023; Sibisi et al., 2022). Detectives occupy a unique position: they are required to operate as impartial agents of the law, yet they inevitably become witnesses to and carriers of the raw grief, anger, and despair of families who have just lost a loved one (De Leo et al., 2022; Hofmann et al., 2023).

For families, the aftermath of intimate femicide is often marked by complicated grief, post-traumatic stress, and feelings of betrayal or abandonment by societal institutions (Armour, 2002; Shear, 2012). Detectives, positioned at the intersection of legal duty and human empathy, are repeatedly exposed to these intense emotional states (Sibisi et al., 2022). International research has documented that professionals in trauma-exposed roles including police officers, social workers, and health care providers face heightened risks of secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, and emotional exhaustion (Chan & Wong, 2023; Cocker & Joss, 2016; Ogińska-Bulik et al., 2023; Regehr, Carey, et al., 2019). Yet, in South Africa, there is limited empirical research into how these experiences manifest in the specific context of intimate femicide and in the emotionally charged interactions detectives have with bereaved families.

This study addresses that gap by focusing on the emotional and psychological experiences of detectives in Gauteng during these interactions. Such encounters are inherently complex: detectives often face grief-stricken, angry, or emotionally numb responses from families (Hofmann et al., 2023; Sibisi et al., 2022; Worden, 2018), while managing their own reactions within an organisational culture that frequently stigmatises emotional expression and provides limited formal psychological support (De Leo et al., 2022; Gumani, 2022).

To interpret these experiences, this study draws on two complementary psychological frameworks. Emotional labour theory (Hochschild, 1983) conceptualises the professional management of feelings as both a public performance and a form of internal regulation. Subsequent scholarship extends this framework to include anticipatory regulation or ‘pre-performance’ phases, where professionals mentally rehearse and emotionally prepare before demanding encounters (Grandey & Melloy, 2017). In policing contexts, detectives are expected to convey empathy, authority, and composure simultaneously, even when confronted with intense emotional expressions from family members. This often requires surface acting, masking inner distress, or deep acting, aligning internal emotions with required displays (Hochschild, 1983). Such sustained regulation, particularly without institutional support, can lead to depletion, burnout, and compassion fatigue (Figley, 1995; Grandey & Melloy, 2017; Ogińska-Bulik et al., 2023; Regehr, Carey, et al., 2019).

Preparation for emotionally charged situations often involves moral and technical dilemmas, such as balancing compassion with procedural authority (Anderson et al., 2020). Emotional labour may lead to identity spillover, where work-related emotional roles affect personal relationships (Morabito et al., 2021), reflecting boundary permeability and the difficulty of containing occupational emotions (Wharton, 2009). When systemic constraints hinder moral obligations, moral distress can emerge (McCall & Salama, 2020). In high-violence contexts, these pressures are intensified by procedural frictions, where victims’ families’ emotional needs conflict with investigative or evidentiary requirements, amplifying emotional labour demands.

Vicarious trauma theory (Figley, 1995), along with the related concept of secondary traumatic stress (Bride, 2007), explains how repeated exposure to the trauma of others, particularly in empathetic roles, can cause cumulative shifts in worldview, emotional regulation, and perceptions of safety. Such exposure can leave professionals with sensory and emotional imprints of traumatic events, including vivid recollections of sounds, images, and physical reactions observed in others (Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995). These experiences may manifest in nightmares, appetite changes, intrusive thoughts, hypervigilance, avoidance behaviours, or emotional numbing.

In high-trauma occupations like policing, these effects are often compounded by chronic, repeated encounters without adequate recovery time (Regehr, Carey, et al., 2019). Vicarious trauma can alter personal relationships, leading to protective or controlling behaviours towards loved ones and withdrawal from intimacy (Morabito et al., 2021). Unresolved cases can act as chronic stressors, keeping professionals in a prolonged state of empathic engagement without closure. This ongoing exposure is strongly linked to emotional exhaustion and moral distress, particularly in health care and humanitarian contexts. Systematic reviews and empirical studies have demonstrated that moral distress arising from ethical conflicts and the inability to act according to one’s professional values significantly contribute to emotional exhaustion and burnout among health care professionals (Dzeng & Wachter, 2019; Fumis et al., 2017; Kok et al., 2023; Orgambídez et al., 2025). While these impacts have been well-documented in health care and humanitarian fields, there remains a notable gap in research specifically addressing these issues within the South African policing context.

By situating detectives’ experiences within these theoretical perspectives, this study moves beyond procedural accounts to centre the emotional and psychological realities of those who must break the worst possible news. It contributes to scholarship on trauma-exposed occupations while also highlighting the urgent need for trauma-informed policing and grief-sensitive communication practices in South Africa.

Research question and objectives

In light of the contextual and theoretical framing, this study is guided by the following research question:

• RQ1. What are the emotional and psychological experiences of police detectives in their interactions with families in intimate femicide cases?

To address this question, the study pursues the following objectives:

1. To examine police detectives’ observations of families’ emotional reactions when informed about the death of a loved one due to intimate femicide.

2. To understand the emotional experiences of police detectives in handling intimate femicide cases during interactions with families.

3. To identify the challenges faced by police detectives when delivering death notifications to families in cases of intimate femicide.

Method

Research design

The study adopted a qualitative approach with an Interpretative Phenomenological design (Smith et al., 2009) as adapted by Smith and Nizza (2022) to explore the lived emotional and psychological experiences of police detectives during interactions with families in intimate femicide cases. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) focuses on exploring how individuals perceive and make sense of their lived experiences. It emphasises the subjective understanding of a phenomenon, offering an interpretive account of participants’ meanings and psychological insights. IPA conceptualises this meaning-making as a collaborative process involving a ‘double hermeneutic’, whereby the researcher seeks to interpret participants’ own interpretations of their experiences (Murray & Wilde, 2020). Its idiographic focus, that is its commitment to detailed cases-by-case analysis, allowed for an in-depth examination of each participant’s meaning-making before moving to cross-case thematic patterns (Love et al., 2020; Smith & Nizza, 2022).

Setting and context

The study was conducted in the Gauteng Province, the most populous and urbanised province in South Africa, which has one of the highest reported rates of intimate femicide nationally (Abrahams et al., 2024; Pretorius, 2024). The choice of Gauteng was purposive due to its high case volume and urban policing context, which provided access to detectives regularly exposed to femicide investigations and to interactions with diverse family groups.

Participants’ recruitment

Participants were serving detectives in the SAPS who specialised in investigating femicide and other serious violent crimes, including murder and sexual offences. Purposive sampling was used to ensure that those recruited could speak directly to the study’s focus on emotionally and psychologically intense interactions with bereaved families following intimate femicide.

To be eligible for inclusion, detectives had to:

1. Have a minimum of two years’ experience in investigative roles involving intimate femicide cases.

2. Have personally conducted death notifications to family members in at least one intimate femicide case.

These criteria were selected to ensure that participants had both procedural familiarity with femicide investigations and direct exposure to the emotionally charged family interactions central to this study. Detectives in purely administrative, supervisory, or non-investigative roles were excluded. Recruitment took place through the SAPS Gauteng Provincial Head Office, which issued the study information sheet and invitation via official communication channels to detectives across selected police stations. Importantly, participation was entirely voluntary. To minimise the risk of coercion in the context of SAPS’ hierarchical structure, the invitation clearly stated that:

• Supervisors would have no knowledge of who chose to participate.

• Decisions to participate or decline would have no bearing on employment or career progression.

• Participation involved direct, confidential contact with the researcher, rather than responding through the chain of command.

A total of ten prospective participants were approached through the SAPS Gauteng Provincial Head Office. Of these, eight met the inclusion criteria and agreed to take part. The final sample consisted of eight Black South African detectives (six men and two women) from the SAPS femicide unit. This cohort represents a hard-to-reach group given the nature of their work, which involves sustained exposure to high-pressure investigative environments and the psychological demands of engaging directly with bereaved families. Participants’ ages ranged from 28 to 54 years. All were proficient in English and represented diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, including speakers of IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, Sepedi, Xitsonga, Venda, Northern Sesotho, and Sesotho. Their professional experience ranged from active service in murder and violent crime units to specialisation in intimate femicide cases, making them a rich and information-dense source of qualitative data.

Data collection methods

Data were collected using semi-structured, individual interviews, a method well-suited to exploring the emotional and psychological dimensions of detectives’ work with bereaved families in intimate femicide cases. Prior to data collection, a briefing session was held with each participant to explain the purpose of the study, outline the voluntary nature of participation, and confirm eligibility in line with the inclusion criteria. The briefing also served to build rapport and set expectations for the interview process. Interviews were guided by open-ended questions designed to elicit rich, detailed accounts of lived experience. Core prompts included:

• ‘Please explain your experiences of working with families of victims of intimate femicide’.

• ‘How did you feel when working with these families?’

Follow-up probes were used flexibly to encourage elaboration, explore emotional responses in greater depth, and clarify meaning. All interviews were conducted face-to-face in English in November 2022 at a police station in Gauteng, with participants able to use words or phrases from their home languages for emphasis. These instances were later translated during transcription to preserve accuracy and nuance. Each interview lasted approximately 40–60 min and was held in a private space to protect confidentiality and psychological safety.

Given the sensitive nature of the topic, the researcher followed trauma-informed interviewing practices. Participants were allowed to set the pace of the conversation, while the researcher remained attentive to any signs of emotional distress. They were also reminded that they could pause, skip any questions, or end the interview at any time without consequence. A referral list for SAPS Employee Health and Wellness counsellors and independent trauma counselling services was provided to all participants at the end of their interviews.

Data saturation was reached when no new themes or insights emerged in the final interviews, indicating that the data collected was sufficiently rich and detailed to address the research objectives. All interviews were audio-recorded with consent and transcribed verbatim, with identifying details removed during transcription to ensure anonymity.

Data analysis

Data were analysed using IPA (Smith & Nizza, 2022), which builds on Smith’s (1996) earlier work with colleagues on the original IPA framework (Smith et al., 2009). The updated model was chosen for its more structured and transparent process in moving from individual experiential accounts to cross-case themes, while retaining IPA’s idiographic depth. This inductive and idiographic method is particularly suited to exploring participants’ meaning-making.

Following Smith and Nizza’s (2022) updated guidelines, the researcher repeatedly read each transcript, making exploratory notes on descriptive, linguistic, and conceptual aspects (Smith & Nizza, 2022). From these, concise experiential statements were derived to capture the essence of each participant’s account. These statements were clustered into Personal Experiential Themes (PETs), which represent each participant’s individual meaning-making. These PETs were then labelled, consolidated, and organised into tables. Group Experiential Themes (GETs) were subsequently developed by identifying points of convergence and divergence across participants, reflecting shared and distinctive elements of experience (Smith et al., 2021; Smith & Nizza, 2022). An interpretive, descriptive, and empathic account of the themes was then produced. The primary author developed the PETs, while the second author reviewed them, confirmed their validity, and collaborated in refining both PETs and GETs to ensure coherence.

Ethical considerations

Prior to the commencement of the research study, ethical clearance was obtained from the Faculty of Humanities Research Ethics Committee at the University of Pretoria (Reference Number: HUM018/0322). Permission was also obtained from the SAPS Gauteng Research Division. Informed consent forms were distributed to participants prior to the interviews to provide them with full details about the nature and purpose of the study. Informed consent forms were signed to indicate the detectives’ voluntary consent to participate in the study. Signed consent forms and interview recordings were securely stored on a password-protected device accessible only to the principal researcher. Hard copies of consent forms were locked in a secure cabinet at the host university’s research office. Given the emotionally sensitive nature of the topic, participants were informed of potential psychological risks and were provided the option to discontinue the interview at any point. They were also informed of available psychosocial support services offered by the SAPS Employee Health and Wellness Unit should distress arise. Pseudonyms were used to protect participants’ identities. Pseudonyms were integrated into various stages of the study including interviews, data transcription, data analysis, and research reports to ensure confidentiality throughout the research process. All identifying information was removed during data transcription to further ensure confidentiality and anonymity in the study.

Strategies employed to ensure trustworthiness

The research employed four strategies to ensure trustworthiness as postulated by Lincoln and Guba (1985); credibility, dependability, confirmability and transferability. To ensure credible results, an appropriate research design was selected to accurately and authentically present participants’ experiences. Dependability was ensured using audit trails and audio recordings. The researcher maintained a record of the original data and ensured that the findings were presented exactly as shared by the participants. Transferability was ensured through the collection of thick descriptions to demonstrate that the study’s findings could be applied to different settings and contexts (Haq et al., 2023). Purposive sampling allowed the researcher to intentionally sample participants, which further enhanced the transferability of the findings. A detailed and rich description of the research setting, data collection process, participants and findings was used to ensure confirmability.

Findings

Using IPA, three core findings emerged: (1) families’ shock, disbelief, embodied grief, and detectives as first witnesses; (2) detectives’ emotional labour, cumulative strain, identity spillover, and uneven coping; and (3) training gaps, procedural frictions, and the heat of expectations. These themes are supported by personal experiential themes derived from the participants’ accounts of their experiences.

GET 1. Families’ shock, disbelief and embodied grief and detectives as reluctant witnesses to first trauma

Disbelief and temporal rupture (‘But I just spoke to her . . .’)

P1 described the jolt of disbelief when families try to reconcile the unthinkable with moments-ago normality:

Some. . . will say we are lying. . . ‘But I was speaking to this person over the phone moments ago.’ (P1)

That insistence on recent contact ‘moments ago’ creates a temporal paradox. For the family, the death is not only devastating; it feels chronologically impossible. Disbelief works here as an immediate psychological defence, pushing back against the collision between a fresh memory and an irreversible reality.

P3 echoed this stunned response, noting how shock quickly became visible in the body:

You find that these people are in a state of shock . . . deeply affected . . . crying. (P3)

Shock is not only emotional but also something you can see. Detectives are confronted with the instant when comprehension fails and grief floods in.

P5 recalled a particularly searing case involving a mother whose daughter had reported an assault, only to be killed the following day:

It was the most traumatising because I had just seen her, and now I had to tell her mother she was gone. (P5)

For P5, the disbelief was two-fold, the mother’s and his own. The immediacy of prior contact collapsed the professional distance, making him not just the bearer of news but a secondary witness to its incomprehensibility.

Grief in the body (crying, collapse, fainting)

P3 spoke of grief as something that manifests in the body before it is ever articulated:

You can see . . . they are deeply affected . . . you can see that they are crying. (P3)

The repetition of ‘you can see’ anchors grief as visible and unavoidable; it is not hidden or sanitised but immediately present in facial expressions, tears, and posture. For P3, the first moments of contact are marked by a sensory overload of human distress, where words become secondary to the physical presence of grief.

P8 described a more acute physiological reaction in some families:

Some families faint, others cry excessively. (P8)

Here, the use of ‘excessively’ reflects not judgement but the intensity of grief overflowing physical containment. Fainting signals a total bodily shutdown in response to unbearable news. For the detective, this not only demands emotional management but also immediate physical intervention to ensure safety.

P6 recalled a woman’s collapse on the veranda, forcing a sudden shift from messenger to physical support:

She just went weak . . . we had to carry her inside. (P6)

The phrase ‘went weak’ conveys an almost instantaneous draining of strength, as if the news physically dismantled her body’s ability to stand. In that moment, P6’s role moved beyond the investigative to a profoundly human one, literally holding the weight of another’s grief.

Yearning for sense-making and early pressure for closure

P3 noted how, in some cases, families moved almost immediately from shock to interrogation, searching for explanations to make sense of what had just been said:

[They] want to get the closure as to what could have caused [it]. (P3)

‘Closure’ is not yet about justice; it’s about stitching the first loose threads of a narrative that has been violently torn apart. In the absence of answers, detectives stand in as both messenger and placeholder for the truth.

P6 reflected on how these moments also stir painful memories for families, deepening the urgency to know why and how:

It always brings back sad memories . . . It’s always difficult to accept. (P6)

The inability to ‘accept’ becomes intertwined with the demand for facts. For detectives, this means navigating conversations where the emotional wound is still open, yet questions have already begun to harden into demands.

P7 described the directness of these early interactions and the way police status fast-tracks the expectation of answers:

They say, ‘You must know, you’re the police.’ (P7)

This assumption reflects a public image of the police as omniscient, capable of knowing instantly what has happened and who is responsible. In intimate femicide cases in South Africa, where investigations can be painstaking, evidence scarce, and community tensions high, this expectation can be profoundly mismatched with investigative realities.

Anger, mistrust, and blame as grief’s direction of travel

P2 described the way grief can swiftly convert into anger, with the police as the most visible arm of the state becoming the target:

They think if you’re a policeman, you must do whatever policemen are doing . . . [They said] we should have arranged even a helicopter. . .’ (P2)

This statement reflects not only unrealistic demands but also a symbolic projection of the belief that the police should have the capacity to prevent the harm altogether. When the unthinkable happens, detectives inherit the emotional weight of expectations, even when the events were beyond their control.

P4 added that families often resist procedural explanations, interpreting adherence to process as indifference or delay:

They want things to be done their way . . . they don’t want to hear [about procedure]. (P4)

In a context where intimate femicide is rampant, and where trust in formal systems is already frayed, procedure itself can feel like an additional barrier to justice.

P7 experienced this on a community-wide scale after an arrest was made but bail was granted:

To them, the police didn’t do anything – even if we did. (P7)

The anger is less about individual officers and more about the broader justice system, yet detectives, as the face of that system, become the point of contact for disillusionment.

GET 2. Detectives’ emotional and psychological experiences: the emotional labour of detectives, anticipatory dread, cumulative strain, and identity spillover

Anticipatory dread around death notifications

P4 described the inner wrestling that starts long before the doorbell rings:

There is no specific way of breaking the news . . . You ask yourself, how am I going to tell a person? It is not an easy thing . . . it is a challenge. (P4)

The repetition of ‘how’ signals more than uncertainty about wording; it reflects a moral weight in knowing that one’s words will irreversibly alter another’s reality. For P4, the lack of a ‘specific way’ becomes a stressor, forcing detectives to improvise in high-stakes moments.

P2 echoed this anticipatory tension, describing a physicalised anxiety even before first contact:

You are tense even before you knock . . . you don’t know how they will take it. (P2)

Here, ‘before you knock . . .’ shows that moment in-between where you’re standing at the door, knowing what you have to say, but not yet having said it, holding the news in their body, uncertain how it will land. The phrase ‘how they will take it’ acknowledges that grief reactions are unpredictable, adding to the pressure.

For P6, the weight is not only in the moment but across time:

It becomes an emotional roller coaster throughout the career . . . what we deal with on a daily basis. (P6)

This metaphor of a roller coaster frames the work as cyclically unsettling, never allowing for complete emotional equilibrium. Even with experience, the anticipatory dread does not dissolve; rather, it accumulates, becoming part of the fabric of the detective’s professional identity.

Cumulative exposure, intrusions, and ‘not getting used to it’

P6 described the lingering impact of particularly brutal crime scenes, noting that the after-effects were not his alone; they reverberated through the unit. In one instance, he arranged debriefings for ‘the boys’ who, after seeing decomposed bodies, ‘couldn’t sleep . . . couldn’t eat meat’:

It stays with you . . . you see it when you close your eyes. (P6)

The phrase ‘stays with you’ suggests a kind of psychic residue that is not easily washed away, an enduring imprint on the mind’s eye. The imagery of closing one’s eyes and still seeing the scene reveals how the work breaches the boundaries between external and internal worlds; the violence becomes part of one’s inner landscape. The fact that P6, as a commander, arranged debriefings also points to a dual emotional load: carrying his own images while holding the distress of others.

P8 shared an account of a widow’s grief that took on a haunting quality:

She still comes to me in my dreams. (P8)

The use of ‘still’ indicates persistence; the woman’s presence remains in P8’s subconscious long after their interaction ended. This reflects an intrusive recollection rather than ordinary memory, suggesting that the experience continued to affect the detective’s emotional state beyond the professional setting and contributed to ongoing fatigue.

For P1, the cumulative strain sometimes tipped into an immediate breaking point:

I didn’t take it very well . . . I asked to go home. (P1)

This admission challenges any assumption that repeated exposure leads to desensitisation. Instead, it shows that there are threshold moments when the detective’s internal resources are depleted to the point where withdrawal becomes the only viable coping strategy.

Identity spillover and overprotection in personal life

P6 reflected on how his work had reshaped his role as a father:

I become a very protective and controlling father . . . I’m not letting these girls grow up. (P6)

The choice of ‘controlling’ alongside ‘protective’ suggests an awareness that his safeguarding is not neutral; it’s restrictive, perhaps even stifling. Protective love is saturated with fear, informed by the gendered violence he witnesses daily. The personal and professional are intertwined; the horrors at work seep into his parenting, shaping it into something more defensive than nurturing.

P7 described a similar shift, although couched in the language of precaution:

I tell them, share your location . . . better to be safe than sorry. (P7)

The imperative ‘share your location’ is a digital-age expression of hypervigilance – an attempt to extend his protective reach beyond physical proximity. The well-worn idiom ‘better to be safe than sorry’ acts as a moral justification for surveillance-like behaviour, recasting it as common sense. In this, P7’s personal relationships are subtly reorganised around monitoring, with safety as the unquestioned end.

For P8, the spillover manifests in withdrawal rather than control:

Maybe when my boyfriend raises his voice . . . I decide to stay alone so that you are safe. (P8)

‘You’ is ambiguous; it may refer to herself or to women more generally, as though her withdrawal is both a personal self-preservation strategy and a symbolic act in solidarity with other women. The decision to ‘stay alone’ signals not just avoidance of harm, but a restructuring of intimacy itself, where potential threats are pre-emptively removed by eliminating relational closeness.

Moral distress, ‘feeling like a failure’, and longing to deliver good news

P8 gave voice to the personal weight of stalled investigations:

You feel like a failure . . . you have exhausted all avenues. (P8)

This holds a kind of heaviness – a pause that marks the space between effort and futility. ‘Failure’ here is not only professional but deeply personal, as if the inability to produce an arrest or conviction undermines their very sense of self-worth. The phrase ‘exhausted all avenues’ speaks to the relentless nature of the work, suggesting not just procedural dead ends but emotional depletion. The detective’s identity becomes tied to the outcome, and when justice is delayed or denied, the detective’s own sense of adequacy is corroded.

P5 offered a stark emotional contrast between different notification moments:

You hear the parent crying a different cry [when there’s an arrest/sentence] . . .’ (P5)

The ‘different cry’ is both literal and symbolic – a shift in tone that marks the moment grief is tempered by relief, or perhaps by the validation that someone has been held accountable. In this framing, justice is not an abstract principle but a felt change in the timbre of mourning. P5’s longing to hear this cry reveals how success in policing intimate femicide cases is experienced not through commendations or statistics, but in the altered emotional landscape of the bereaved.

P7 broadened the scope to the systemic:

The justice system also fail us . . . the community says the police did nothing. (P7)

This statement captures the double bind detectives face: even when they fulfil their investigative role, the failures of the larger justice system – bail decisions, reduced sentences, prolonged trials – become theirs to carry in the eyes of the community. The phrase ‘also fail us’ situates detectives not only as enforcers but as fellow victims of systemic dysfunction, absorbing blame that is not entirely theirs.

Idiographic divergence: ‘I’m fine’ vs ‘this broke me’

P3 consistently positioned themselves as unaffected by the emotional toll of the work:

It doesn’t affect me . . . I’m used to these kind of cases . . . I do enjoy them. (P3)

The repetition of ‘I’ and the steady tone suggest a carefully maintained professional front – a performance of competence that rests on emotional containment. The claim of ‘enjoyment’ might function as a psychological shield, reframing the work not as trauma exposure but as mastery of difficult terrain. In the South African policing context, where emotional expression can be stigmatised as weakness, this stance offers both a protective identity and a means to remain operationally effective.

By contrast, P4 described moments where the emotional toll breached professional containment:

It’s hard . . . you have to work and you cannot show emotion . . . I could see that’s where it’s breaking me a lot. (P4)

This account acknowledges limits despite attempts to suppress visible affect, underscoring variability in how detectives manage sustained exposure. Positioned against ‘I’m fine’ narratives, it reflects a ‘this broke me’ response, revealing a more vulnerable side of coping within the same work environment.

Similarly, P6 admitted to breaking points that required external support:

We needed to be debriefed . . . the boys couldn’t sleep . . . couldn’t eat meat. (P6)

The move from ‘I’ to ‘we’ shifts the focus to collective impact, suggesting that these breaking points are not anomalies but shared human limits within the unit. P6’s choice to seek debriefing reflects a leadership role that legitimises help-seeking for others, even in a culture of stoicism.

GET 3. Challenges of death notifications: training gaps, procedural frictions, and the heat of families’ expectations

‘No script to break such news’ protocol and skills void in death notification

P4 lamented the lack of formal preparation:

There is no standardised way of telling someone that their loved one has been killed. . . We need training or a specific department for this. (P4)

This absence of structured guidance forces detectives to rely on instinct, improvising in moments that can permanently shape a family’s grief narrative.

P8 described her own protective workaround:

You do not shock the family over the phone . . . I go to them, then tell them face-to-face. (P8)

In the absence of official protocols, detectives create their own ethics of care, often drawing on personal values rather than institutional frameworks. The skill to ‘break a life’ in a way that limits secondary trauma is left to personal judgement – a risky gap in a policing environment where the stakes are both legal and deeply human.

‘We want it now’: urgency vs legal timelines

P4 reflected on the procedural resistance they encounter:

They want things to be done their way . . . they don’t want to hear [about procedure]. (P4)

P5 described the pressure that builds when rumours raise unrealistic expectations:

They say, ‘The boyfriend did it, why haven’t you arrested him?’ . . . you have to entertain a family in grief while there is nothing you can act on. (P5)

Detectives stand at the friction point between two positions: the legal process, paced by evidence gathering and court readiness, and the family’s emotional timeline, which seeks immediate certainty.

Persistent contact, porous boundaries

P8 described the relentlessness of family calls, even after hours:

They will call you day and night . . . saying you are sleeping while the killer is roaming out there. (P8)

P7 admitted that the pressure often pulled him into work beyond official hours:

Even on weekends . . . I still follow up to push for results. (P7)

These accounts reveal how, in intimate femicide investigations, the formal working day does not exist. The grieving family’s sense of urgency, fuelled by both fear of further harm and distrust of the justice process, keeps detectives on emotional standby around the clock. The boundary between professional duty and personal time becomes permeable, almost erased.

Systemic constraints and contested legitimacy

P7 described how even after achieving the operational milestone of an arrest, the outcome could quickly unravel in court:

The justice system also fail us . . . to the community they say the police did not do anything. (P7)

For P7, the sense of accomplishment in apprehending a suspect is eroded when bail is granted or sentences feel light. The detective’s professional legitimacy built painstakingly over months of investigative work is instantly undermined in the eyes of the community.

P2 recalled a strikingly unrealistic expectation from one family:

They think if you’re a policeman, you must do whatever policemen are doing . . . [They said] we should have arranged even a helicopter . . . (P2)

The grief crystallises into tangible demands, however impractical, and positions the detective as both all-powerful and inevitably failing.

These narratives reflect a broader systemic tension in SAPS intimate femicide investigations: detectives operate within a multi-agency justice chain, but the public often collapses all accountability onto them. Delays in forensic processing, overburdened courts, and witness intimidation are invisible to grieving families; what remains visible is the detective’s face, uniform, and phone number.

Dual roles – comforter and investigator

P1, who had prior training as a social worker before joining SAPS, explained how she naturally integrates emotional support into investigative work:

I know how to talk to them . . . so they can be calm. (P1)

For P1, the death notification moment is not just the delivery of factual news but also an intervention aimed at stabilising the family. She frames this care not as an optional extra but as part of ‘doing the job properly’. Her ability to contain the family’s emotions in the immediate aftermath becomes a form of procedural groundwork, making later investigative contact more possible.

P8 spoke about becoming ‘a mother’ to certain families after the notification:

They call you . . . sometimes it’s about the case, sometimes it’s just to talk. (P8)

Her metaphor of ‘mothering’ signals an ongoing emotional bond that extends well beyond the legal requirements of the case. In the intimate femicide context where victims are often daughters, sisters or mothers, detectives, especially women, can be drawn into a surrogate caregiving role.

What emerges is a pattern where families’ trust is built not only on the detective’s investigative competence but also on their willingness to be emotionally present. Yet, this emotional engagement sits in tension with institutional realities: detectives are not formally trained or resourced to act as counsellors, and the SAPS structure does not officially recognise the relational labour embedded in these cases.

Discussion

This study examined the lived emotional and psychological experiences of SAPS detectives when working with intimate femicide cases. Using IPA, three core findings emerged: (1) the emotional labour and vicarious grief of detectives; (2) identity spillover in detectives’ lives; and (3) navigating institutional gaps and emotional demands in death notifications. These are discussed through the lenses of Emotional Labour Theory (Hochschild, 1983) and Vicarious Trauma Theory (Figley, 1995), supported by relevant literature.

The emotional labour and vicarious grief of detectives

Families’ first reactions of disbelief, visible grief, fainting, and accusations place detectives directly in the path of unmediated trauma. Families often questioned the reality of the death (‘I just spoke to her’), reflecting a temporal paradox in which the death seemed chronologically impossible. Such responses are consistent with bereavement research indicating that disbelief is a common immediate defence against traumatic loss (Worden, 2018). From an emotional labour perspective, the role requires simultaneous demonstration of empathy, calm authority, and procedural clarity. Detectives must regulate their own affect in real time, often through surface acting (masking internal distress) or deep acting (aligning internal feelings with the required emotional display) (Hochschild, 1983). These demands echo findings from international policing studies showing that officers delivering death notifications perform high-stakes emotional labour without formal preparation (Lilly & Wiederhold, 2021; Regehr, LeBlanc, et al., 2019). South African research has similarly shown that police in violent crime contexts face acute emotional strain when engaging with victims’ families, with many learning to cope informally due to lack of institutional training (Joubert & Hesselink, 2019; Pretorius & Botha, 2009). From the standpoint of vicarious trauma theory, the intimate proximity to a family’s first moments of violent loss imprints detectives with sensory and emotional details: sobbing, collapse, and blank stares, which can be re-experienced later (Bride, 2007; Figley, 1995). Studies on femicide in South Africa (Abrahams et al., 2013; Mathews et al., 2015) highlight the brutal suddenness of these deaths, which exacerbates the shock experienced by families and, by extension, the detectives who bear witness.

Identity spillover in detectives’ lives

Detectives reported anticipatory dread before delivering notifications, rehearsing how to deliver such news illustrative of the pre-performance phase of emotional labour (Grandey & Melloy, 2017). Here, both moral and technical dilemmas emerge: detectives must convey compassion without overwhelming the family, while also upholding authority and remaining human. The cumulative exposure to multiple notifications, graphic crime scenes, and unresolved cases reflects the vicarious trauma pathway described by Figley (1995). Detectives described nightmares, appetite loss, hypervigilance, and avoidance symptoms consistent with secondary traumatic stress (Bride, 2007). Unlike some trauma-exposed professions where exposure is occasional, SAPS detectives in violent crime units face chronic, repeated encounters with acute grief, often without adequate recovery time.

South African studies have documented similar patterns among police and emergency responders. Pienaar and Rothmann (2006) found high levels of burnout and emotional exhaustion among SAPS members exposed to repeated trauma, while Botha and Wild (2013) showed that paramedics develop hypervigilant personal habits as a spillover from work exposure. Internationally, Morabito et al. (2021) note that in high-violence contexts, identity spillover often manifests as overprotection of family or withdrawal from intimate relationships patterns mirrored here in detectives’ parenting behaviours and relationship decisions. Emotional labour in this context extends beyond the workplace, with protective and controlling behaviours reframed as acts of care. However, such blurred boundaries also risk compassion fatigue and personal relationship strain (Ogińska-Bulik et al., 2023).

Navigating institutional gaps and emotional demands in death notifications

Detectives consistently noted the absence of a standardised protocol for death notifications. Without formal guidance, they relied on improvisation and personal ethics, echoing international calls for structured training in grief-sensitive communication for law enforcement (Anderson et al., 2020; Regehr, LeBlanc, et al., 2019). In South Africa’s high-GBV context, this lack of institutional preparation amplifies emotional labour demands, as detectives must both construct and deliver the ‘script’ in real time (Ogińska-Bulik et al., 2023). Procedural frictions emerged where families’ emotional urgency collided with the evidentiary timelines of the legal system. Detectives became translators of legal process into compassionate terms yet often faced resistance to procedural explanations. This mirrors findings from Canadian policing studies where unresolved investigations prolong emotional engagement with families and contribute to compassion fatigue (Regehr, Carey, et al., 2019). The persistent contact described by detectives’ late-night calls; weekend follow-ups reflect what Wharton (2009) terms ‘boundary permeability’ in emotional labour. While ongoing accessibility builds trust, it also fuels exhaustion and role diffusion. This dual role of comforter and investigator, particularly among female detectives who drew on prior caregiving experience, parallels findings in South African social work and trauma counselling, where emotional support is both expected and undervalued (Langa & Eagle, 2008). Finally, systemic constraints (delays in forensic processing, bail decisions) eroded detectives’ legitimacy in the eyes of the community. As in other trauma-exposed professions, failure to meet public expectations, even when caused by structural factors intensified feelings of moral distress (McCall & Salama, 2020). In vicarious trauma terms, unresolved cases act as chronic stressors, keeping detectives in a prolonged state of empathic engagement without closure.

Conclusion

This study highlights the profound emotional and psychological toll on SAPS detectives tasked with delivering death notifications in intimate femicide cases, revealing their role as both first witnesses to traumatic grief and sustained carriers of its impact. Findings show that in the absence of structured protocols and formal training, detectives draw on personal ethics and emotional labour to navigate moments of disbelief, embodied grief, and anger, while managing cumulative strain, identity spillover, and procedural tensions. These dynamics, interpreted through emotional labour theory and vicarious trauma theory, emphasise the urgent need for trauma-informed training, structured debriefing systems, and organisational recognition of the hidden relational labour embedded in such work. While the small, context-specific sample including its racial homogeneity limits generalisability, the findings offer critical insights for strengthening detective well-being and investigative efficacy in South Africa’s high-GBV environment. Practically, SAPS should develop grief-sensitive communication protocols, integrate psychological support into operational frameworks, and foster an institutional culture that legitimises emotional expression, ensuring detectives can sustain both their mental health and their compassionate engagement with bereaved families.