The sentencing of Rex Heuermann in the murders of at least eight women on Long Island should not be treated as the end of a horrific case. It should force us to confront America’s ignored femicide crisis.
Popularized in the 1970s by Diana Russell, the term femicide describes the killing of a woman because she is a woman. It is the most extreme form of gender-based violence. In the United States, where an average of five women are murdered by men every day, we rarely name these gender-motivated killings for what they are.
When femicide is acknowledged at all, it is in reference to violence against women abroad, usually in the Global South. And while most femicides occur in the context of domestic violence, they are also prevalent in the sex trade, where women systematically face abuse and exploitation.
Heuermann targeted at least six of his known victims through the sex trade. His case is part of a long, well-documented pattern of serial killers using the sex trade to access women they perceive as disposable and unlikely to generate urgency if they disappear. Gary Ridgway, Joel Rifkin, Robert Pickton, Peter Sutcliffe, and other serial predators have relied on the same conditions.
Women in the sex trade face an extraordinarily high risk of lethal violence. Researchers have estimated that they are 60 to 100 times more likely to be murdered than other women. These are predictable outcomes of a system that exposes women, often in isolation, to contact with unknown men under conditions shaped by coercion, stigma, and inequality.
Research on serial murder shows the same pattern. One study found that in serial murder cases involving only female victims, the proportion involving women in prostitution jumped from 16% in the 1970s to 69% in the 2000s.
At Sanctuary for Families, we support survivors of trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation while advancing systems-level responses to femicide. Our clients describe sex buyers who disregard boundaries, escalate harm, and act with a sense of entitlement. We also see how traffickers and buyers weaponize survivors’ economic precarity, immigration status, and prior trauma to control and abuse them. These harms are too often minimized.
The normalization of buying sex creates a landscape where men can seek out women in vulnerable situations, often anonymously and with little accountability. Serial perpetrators know that women in the sex trade are less likely to be believed when harmed, and less likely to be searched for when they are reported missing.
Naming the killings of Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla, and Karen Vergata as femicides exposes the misogyny behind the violence.
Femicide is preventable only when we understand its driving forces: male entitlement, systemic vulnerability, and the normalization of buying access to women’s bodies. Without that understanding, more women will die.
A meaningful response requires three things: formally recognizing and tracking femicide in the United States; extending accountability beyond individual perpetrators to the systems that enable exploitation; and investing in survivor-centered services and exit pathways that can prevent violence from escalating.
Heuermann targeted women he thought would be treated as disposable. Their families and friends refused that logic. We must, too. His sentencing should push us to confront the epidemic of femicide, including in the sex trade, and build systems that treat every woman’s life as worthy of safety, prosperity, and dignity.
Kluger is a former New York State judge and the CEO of Sanctuary for Families. Choudhury is Program Director of Sanctuary for Families’ EMPOWER Center.