Notes

Introduction

1. Marilyn French, The War Against Women (New York: Summit, 1992), p. 187. In fairness, I must say that I can find no point of origin for these widely circulated figures which may be apocryphal, like the “rule of thumb” often cited in domestic violence and academic literature as an old English “law” that permitted a man to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Historically the rule of thumb refers to a carpenter’s measure and has nothing to do with wife beating. I cite the “every-so-many-seconds” figures anyway since they seem to be based on statistical calculations of the rising incidence of battering that may very well be accurate. They are borne out in substance by the rising (and verifiable) homicide figures that follow in this discussion.

2. Femicide is on the rise worldwide. See Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, ed. Jill Radford and Diana E.H. Russell (New York: Twayne, 1992).

3. Susan Schechter, “Ending Violence Against Women and Children in Massachusetts Families: Critical Steps for the Next Five Years,” Massachusetts Coalition of Battered Women Service Groups (November 1992), p. 5.

4. Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976–1996, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999. Then too, the general downturn in homicides might be only an aberration. As I write in 1999, New Hampshire Public Radio tells me that worried police in this small state have recorded nineteen “domestic violence homicides” this year—the highest number since the “peak” year of 1991—and the year is not over.

5. Susan Schechter, Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women’s Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1982).

6. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963); Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement, ed. Robin Morgan (New York: Random House, 1970); Voices from Women’s Liberation, ed. Leslie B. Tanner (New York: New American Library, 1970).

7. Schechter, Women and Male Violence, p. 20.

8. Ibid., p. 11.

9. Ibid., p. 124.

10. Evan Stark and Anne Flitcraft, “Women and Children at Risk: A Feminist Perspective on Child Abuse,” International Journal of Health Services 18, no. 1 (1988); Linda McKibben et al., “Victimization of Mothers of Abused Children: A Controlled Study,” Pediatrics 84 (September 1989): 3.

11. For a detailed history of this work see Schechter, Women and Male Violence.

12. David Adams, “Treatment Models of Men Who Batter: A Profeminist Analysis,” in Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse, ed. Kersti Yllo and Michele Bograd (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1988), p. 191.

13. Private communication from Edward Goldolf, research director, Mid-Atlantic Addiction Training Institute, and professor of sociology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, December 2, 1999. (Italics mine.)

14. Kevin Canfield, “Incident Strikes Fear in Ex-Wife, Thurman Arrested After Encounter with 2nd Woman,” Hartford Courant, Nov. 27, 1999, p. B1.

15. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. E. J. Richards (New York: Persea, 1982), p. 187; Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792; rpt. New York: Norton, 1988); Frances Power Cobbe, “Wife-Torture in England,” The Contemporary Review 32 (April-July 1878): 55–87; John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869; rpt. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1970), see esp. part 2.

16. Patricia Nealon, “For abused, few places to turn,” Boston Globe, June 2, 1992, p. 6.

17. Milt Freudenheim, “Employers Act to Stop Family Violence,” New York Times, Aug. 23, 1988, p. 1.

18. The violence costs its victims too—an estimated $150 million annually in medical bills and property loss. National Crime Victimization Survey, 1999.

19. Interview with Anne Menard, then director, Connecticut State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, December 31, 1992.

20. “Domestic Violence Is a Crime,” report of the Family Violence Project, San Francisco Victim Witness Assistance Program, n.d.

21. French, The War Against Women; Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown, 1991); Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992).

1. Against the Law

1. The Fourth Amendment “right of the people to be secure in their persons” has been interpreted as establishing a right not only to be free of intrusions on personal dignity and safety authorized by the state, but also to bodily integrity, recognized judicially, for example, in cases involving the rights of terminally ill patients to refuse medical treatment and of mentally ill people to refuse antipsychotic drug treatment. The right to personal integrity also inheres in Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of “life, liberty {and} property.”

2. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, ed. Thomas M. Cooley, 4th ed. by James DeWitt Andrews (Chicago: Callahan, 1899), book I, pp. 134, 129, 134–38.

3. Union Pacific Ry. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891).

4. Carol Smart, Feminism and the Power of Law (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 142.

5. Uncited case referred to in Thurman v. City of Torrington, 595 F. Supp. 1521, 1528 (1984).

6. Ibid. Emphasis mine. Note the court’s reference to the thoroughly contemporary notion that some violence is not dangerous or damaging.

7. Elizabeth Pleck, Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 63–65

8. Elizabeth Pleck, “Wife Beating in Nineteenth Century America,” Victimology 4, no. 1 (1979): 60–74.

9. Cited in Sue E. Eisenberg and Patricia L. Micklow, “The Assaulted Wife: ‘Catch 22’ Revisited,” 3 Women’s Rights Law Reporter 138, 138–39 (1977).

10. Letter from Laurie Woods, Director, National Center on Women and Family Law, Dec. 15, 1992.

11. Schechter, Women and Male Violence, pp. 159–60. For a detailed summary of early efforts of the battered women’s movement to effect change in the criminal justice system see Schechter, pp. 157–74.

12. Charles Thurman was convicted of attempted murder and, when the conviction was overturned on a technicality, allowed to plead guilty to first degree assault. Sentenced in 1987 to twenty years, to be suspended after fourteen, he was released in 1991. Ray Routhier, “Thurman to be freed April 12,” Hartford Courant, March 15, 1991, pp. C1, C9.

13. Thurman v. City of Torrington, 595 F. Supp. 1521, 1523 (D. Conn. 1984).

14. P. G. Jaffe, D. A. Wolfe, and S. K. Wilson, Children of Battered Women (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1990), cited in Family Violence Bulletin 7, no. 1 (1991): 11.

15. U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, “Violence Against Women: A Week in the Life of America,” Majority Staff Report (Washington: Government Printing Office, October 1992), p. 33.

16. Smart, Feminism and the Power of Law, p. 67, citing M. J. Mossman, “Feminism and Legal Method: The Difference It Makes,” 3 Australian Journal of Law and Society 30–52 (1986).

17. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).

18. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869; rpt. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1970), p. 59.

19. Patricia Nealon and Sean P. Murphy, “Thwarting the killers is complex, elusive goal,” Boston Globe, June 2, 1992, pp. 1, 6.

20. DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep’t of Social Servs., 489 U.S. 189 (1989).

21. Caitlin E. Borgmann, “Battered Women’s Substantive Due Process Claims: Can Orders of Protection Deflect DeShaney?” 65 New York University Law Review 1280, 1320–22 (1990).

22. Elizabeth M. Schneider, “The Violence of Privacy,” 23 Connecticut Law Review 973, 985 (1991).

23. Ibid., p. 985, in part quoting Martha Minow, “Words and the Door to the Land of Change: Law, Language, and Family Violence,” 43 Vanderbilt Law Review 1665, 1671–72 (1990).

24. Catherine MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence,” Signs 8, no. 2 (1983): 644.

25. Amy Eppler, “Battered Women and the Equal Protection Clause: Will the Constitution Help Them When the Police Won’t,” 95 Yale Law Journal 788, 801 (1986).

26. Montalvo v. Montalvo, 55 Misc. 2d 699, 704, 286 N.Y.S.2d 605, 611 (Fam. Ct. 1968), cited in Maria L. Marcus, “Conjugal Violence: The Law of Force and the Force of Law,” 59 California Law Review 1657, 1684 (1981).

27. Philip Bennet and Doris Sue Wong, “Judge regrets he didn’t see Cartier’s record,” Boston Globe, June 2, 1992, pp. 1, 6.

28. Roberto Suro, “Husband Shoots 2 and Himself in Dallas Court,” New York Times, Jan. 20, 1993, p. A18.

29. Michael deCourcy Hinds, “Once Orderly Sanctuaries of Justice, Courts Now Tremble With Violence,” New York Times, Jan. 26, 1993, p. A14. See also Larry Olmstead, “When Passion Explodes Into a Deadly Rage,” New York Times, May 18, 1993, pp. A1, B4.

30. Martha R. Mahoney, “Legal Images of Battered Women: Redefining the Issue of Separation,” 90 Michigan Law Review 1, 43–49 (1991); letter from Laurie Woods, Director, National Center on Women and Family Law, Dec. 15, 1992.

31. Mahoney, “Legal Images,” 44–45; the statistical estimate is reported by Lee H. Bowker, Michelle Arbitell, and J. Richard McFerron, “On the Relationship Between Wife Beating and Child Abuse,” in Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse, ed. Kersti Yllo and Michele Bograd (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1988), p. 162.

32. Mahoney, “Legal Images,” 45, citing Phyllis Chesler, Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), p. 81.

33. Mahoney, “Legal Images,” 45, n. 202, citing Lenore Weitzman, The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America (New York: Free Press, 1985), pp. 233–34. In Weitzman’s study men won custody in 63 percent of “negotiated” cases and in 33 to 38 percent of cases fully contested in court.

34. Sorichetti v. City of New York, 95 Misc. 2d 451, 408 N.Y.S.2d 219 (1978), aff’d, 68 A.D.2d 1020, 417 N.Y.S.2d 202 (1st Dep’t 1979).

35. Sheila Weller, Marrying the Hangman: A True Story of Privilege, Marriage and Murder (New York: Random House, 1992), pp. 239–43.

36. Sheila Weller, “Abused By the Courts,” Village Voice, Dec. 1, 1992, pp. 32–33.

37. Letter from Laurie Woods, Director, National Center on Women and Family Law, December 1992.

38. For many other examples see Weller, Village Voice, Dec. 1, 1992, pp. 31–38.

39. Morgan v. Foretich, 846 F.2d 941, 942–50 (4th Cir. 1988); Bob Trebilcock, “Hiding Hilary,” Glamour, November 1988, p. 305.

40. Jane Sims Podesta and Paula Chin, “A Courageous Mother’s First Taste of Freedom,” People, Oct. 16, 1989, p. 78.

41. Steve Twomey and Elsa Walsh, “Morgan-Foretich Fight Ends—for Now,” Washington Post, Dec. 1, 1990, p. A7.

42. Ibid.

43. The law does so much harm to women and children, over and above its failure to provide a remedy for such harms as child abuse, sexual abuse, and battering, that British sociologist and legal scholar Carol Smart coined the term “juridogenic” to describe the potential of the law and legal process to generate such injuries. See Feminism and the Power of Law, p. 12. See also Ann Jones, “When Battered Women Fight Back,” Barrister 9, no. 4 (1982): 12–15, 48–51.

44. Ann Jones, Women Who Kill (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980), pp. 281–321.

45. Eileen McNamara, “Judge criticized after woman’s death,” Boston Globe, Sept. 21, 1986, p. 1.

46. Paul Langner, “Dunn given life term in wife’s slaying,” Boston Globe, May 20, 1987, pp. 1, 13. In July 1990 the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld the murder conviction. “SJC upholds conviction in slaying of battered wife,” Boston Globe, July 4, 1990, p. 23.

47. Eileen McNamara, “Judge is viewed as erring on abuse law,” Boston Globe, Oct. 24, 1986, p. 1; Mark Sommer, “Abused women battered again by judges,” Guardian, Nov. 12, 1986, p. 3; Gail Goolkasian, “Judging Domestic Violence,” 10 Harvard Women’s Law Journal 277 (1987).

48. Sheila Weller, “… til death do us part,” Redbook, Aug. 1989, p. 137.

49. U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary, The Violence Against Women Act of 1991, 102d Cong., 1st sess., S. Rept. 102–197, p. 34, citing Supreme Court of Georgia, “Report on Gender and Justice in the Judicial System” (1991) at 235.

50. Transcript of “Frontline” documentary #619, “My Husband Is Going to Kill Me,” WGBH Educational Foundation, Boston, 1988, p. 2. Subsequent details of the Guenther case are drawn from the transcript of this television documentary which was originally broadcast on PBS on June 28, 1988.

51. “Man accused of murdering wife was free despite intimidation reports,” AP dispatch, Columbus, Neb., n.d.

52. Ibid.

53. Maria K. Pastoor, “Police Training and the Effectiveness of Minnesota ‘Domestic Abuse’ Laws,” 2 Law And Inequality Journal 557, 573 n. 82 (1984).

54. “L.I. Man Kills Estranged Wife; Commits Suicide,” New York Times, Dec. 28, 1988, p. B2.

55. Eric Schmitt, “L.I. Man Fatally Shoots Wife, Then Himself,” New York Times, Dec. 30, 1988, p. B1.

56. Dan Fagin and Phil Mintz, “Stabbing Survivor Shot to Death on LI; Ex-Spouse Sought,” Newsday, Jan. 4, 1989, p. 7; Eric Schmitt, “Suffolk Woman Being Protected Is Shot to Death,” New York Times, Jan. 5, 1989, p. B8.

57. Kinsey Wilson and Joshua Quittner, “Wife-Slay Suspect Found Dead,” Newsday, Jan. 7, 1989, p. 5; “Man Found Dead in His Car Was Wanted in L.I. Killing,” New York Times, Jan. 7, 1989, p. 30.

58. “Husband Slays Wife in LI Murder-Suicide,” Newsday, Dec. 30, 1988, p. 25.

59. Weller, “… til death do us part,” pp. 113–14, 137–38.

60. Jane O’Reilly, “Wife Beating: The Silent Crime,” Time, Sept. 5, 1983, pp. 23–26; Caroline Knapp, “Open Season on Women,” Boston Phoenix, Aug. 7–13, 1992, p. 21.

61. Weller, “… til death do us part,” p. 114.

62. George James, “911 Operator Suspended Over Delay in Response to Call for Help,” New York Times, June 24, 1988, p. B3.

63. Dick Polman, “In the shadow of violence,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 9, 1989, p. K1. Subsequent details of Lisa Bianco’s story are drawn from this report.

64. Isabel Wilkerson, “Inmate on Leave Held in Death of His Ex-Wife,” New York Times, March 12, 1989, p. 22.

65. Helen Kennedy, “Despite increased restraining orders, women not always protected,” Boston Herald, April 6, 1992, p. 11.

66. Ibid.

67. John Laidler, “Unaware of threats, court freed Lawrence killer,” Boston Globe, April 7, 1992, pp. 1, 8; Beverly Ford, “Estranged husband kills wife, 2 teens and self in Lawrence,” Boston Herald, April 6, 1992, pp. 1, 11.

68. Eric Fehrnstrom, “Gov slams ‘cockeyed’ justice system,” Boston Herald, April 7, 1992, p. 10.

69. Margery Eagan, “System lets batterers think they can get away with it,” Boston Herald, June 2, 1992, p. 6.

70. Sharon Smith, quoted in “Frontline” documentary “My Husband Is Going to Kill Me,” transcript, p. 26.

71. Frank Bruni, “Court-’protected’ women fear for their lives,” New York Post, Jan. 9, 1989, p. 18.

72. Michelle Gellen, reporting on “Women at Risk” on the NBC nightly news, Jan. 8, 1990.

73. Ibid.

74. Knapp, Boston Phoenix, Aug. 7–13, 1992, p. 1.

75. Bruni, New York Post, Jan. 9, 1989, p. 18.

76. Jan Hoffman, “By Her Husband’s Hand,” Village Voice, Aug. 13, 1985, p. 92.

77. Ibid.

2. Rights and Wrongs

1. DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep’t of Social Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 193 (1989).

2. “Hitting Home,” an episode of “48 Hours,” CBS TV, June 18, 1988.

3. Robin Finn, “The Battering of Tracey Thurman: Why Didn’t the Police Stop It?” Northeast Magazine, Aug. 25, 1985, pp. 14, 31–32; Amy Eppler, “Battered Women and the Equal Protection Clause: Will the Constitution Help Them When the Police Won’t,” 95 Yale Law Journal 788 (1986).

4. The conviction was later overturned on a technicality. At a second trial in 1987, Charles Thurman pleaded guilty to first degree assault and was sentenced to twenty years, to be suspended after fourteen, and five years probation. Ray Routhier, “Thurman to be freed April 12,” Hartford Courant, March 15, 1991, pp. C1, C9.

5. The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed by resolution of Congress on June 13, 1866. It was adopted July 21, 1868.

6. 17 Stat. 13 (1871) {codified as 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 (1982)}. Section 1983 reads in part: “Every person, who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”

7. Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 180 (1961), overruled in part in Monell v. New York Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978). In Monell the Supreme Court expanded the holding in Monroe to include government entities as well as individuals in the definition of “persons” contained in 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, thereby making it possible for a citizen to bring an action charging discrimination against a government entity. Monell, 436 U.S. at 691, 694.

8. Eppler, “Battered Women,” 806, n.74.

9. Thurman v. City of Torrington, 595 F. Supp. 1521, 1527 (D. Conn. 1984). Thurman’s was not the first case of a woman denied police protection to reach the courts. Looking at earlier cases in which women’s rights were denied, and hearing that language echoed in post-Thurman decisions denying women’s rights, one could make an argument that the Thurman decision favorable to women was a judicial aberration. One earlier example is a suit brought in 1972 against police by survivors of the victim of a fatal attack. According to the complaint, Ruth Bunnell had called the San Jose (California) police more than twenty times in a single year to report that her husband was abusing her and her two daughters, but they arrested him only once. In September 1972 she called police and told them her husband was on his way to her house to kill her. Police told her to wait until he arrived. When police showed up later in response to a neighbor’s call, she had already been stabbed to death. The California Court of Appeals upheld the trial court’s dismissal, holding that police had not “induced decedent’s reliance on a promise, express or implied, that they would provide her with protection.” Hartzler v. City of San Jose, 46 Cal. App. 3d 6, 10, 120 Cal. Rptr. 5 (1975). See also Joan Zorza, “The Criminal Law of Misdemeanor Domestic Violence, 1970–1990,” 83 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 44, 53–4 (1992).

10. The defendants appealed, and Thurman settled out of court for $1.9 million. The jury also awarded her son $300,000.

11. Howard Kurtz, “Battered by Husbands, Then by Laws,” Washington Post, National Weekly Edition, May 16–22, 1988, p. 10.

12. Bruno v. Codd, 90 Misc. 2d at 1047, 1048, 396 N.Y.S.2d 974, 975–76 (Sup. Ct. 1977). Other early tort actions against police successful in state courts include Baker v. New York, 25 A.D.2d 770, 269 N.Y.S.2d 515 (1966); Jones v. Herkimer, 51 Misc. 2d 130, 272 N.Y.S.2d 925 (Sup. Ct. 1966); Scott v. Hart, No. C-76-2395 (N.D. Cal. filed Oct. 28, 1976); Sorichetti v. City of New York, 95 Misc. 2d 451, 408 N.Y.S.2d 219 (1978), aff’d 70 A.D.2d 573, 417 N.Y.S.2d 202 (1979); Thomas v. City of Los Angeles, Civ. No. 000572 (Cal. Super. Ct. filed Aug. 16, 1979, consent judgment entered Nov. 7, 1985); Kubitcheck v. Winnett (Or. Cir. Ct. Hood River County, filed Nov. 13, 1980); Barnes v. Nassau County, No. 12433 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1982); Bonsignore v. City of New York, 683 F.2d 635 (2d Cir. N.Y. 1982); Doe v. City of Belleville, No. 81-5256 (S.D.Ill. consent judgment entered Sept. 9, 1983; Nearing v. Weaver, 295 Or. 702, 670 P.2d 137 (1983).

13. Laurie Woods, “Litigation On Behalf Of Battered Women,” 5 Women’s Rights Law Reporter 7 (1978).

14. Kurtz, Washington Post, May 16–22, 1988, p. 10.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep’t, 855 F.2d 1421 (9th Cir. 1988). As amended Feb. 27, 1990 and May 11, 1990.

18. 341 U.S. 123, 162–163, cited in Steven H. Gifis, Law Dictionary (Woodbury, New York: Barron’s, 1975), p. 66.

19. Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep’t at 1427.

20. Id. at 1422.

21. Id. at 1426.

22. Id. at 1428.

23. The facts presented are those alleged by the plaintiff as cited in the opinion of the United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit. See Watson v. City of Kansas City, 857 F.2d 690, 692–93 (10th Cir. 1988).

24. Watson at 696.

25. Id. at 697. Laura S. Harper notes: “Given the Thurman court’s acceptance of the domestic assault/nondomestic assault classification as gender-based discrimination, Thurman was a seminal case with potentially monumental impact. To date, however, other district and circuit courts have applied stricter gender-neutral standards.” “Battered Women Suing Police for Failure to Intervene: Viable Legal Avenues After DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services,” 75 Cornell Law Review 1393, 1404 (1990).

26. Watson v. City of Kansas City, 1989 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2388, at *14 (D. Kan. 1989), remanded by 857 F.2d 690 (10th Cir. 1988).

27. Id. at *5.

28. Hynson v. City of Chester, Legal Dep’t, 864 F.2d 1026, 1027 (3d Cir.), vacating 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3358 (E.D. Pa. 1988).The facts presented are cited in this opinion.

29. Hynson, 864 F.2d at 1030.

30. Id. at 1032.

31. Id. at 1031. Lauren L. McFarlane makes this point in a thorough discussion of these cases, “Notes: Domestic Violence Victims v. Municipalities: Who Pays When the Police Will Not Respond?” 41 Case Western Reserve Law Review 929, 947, n.104 (1991).

32. Hynson, 864 F.2d at 1031.

33. Id. The Hynson court follows the Watson court in citing Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256 (1979), a case involving preferential treatment of veterans in employment, which held that a plaintiff bringing a gender-based discrimination claim must show that “a gender-based discriminatory purpose has shaped … the legislation” in question, or in other words that a law, rule, classification, or policy was adopted on purpose to discriminate against women. Id. at 275.

34. Hynson, 864 F.2d at 1032.

35. Id. at 1032. Note that the court, so eager to deny that police nonarrest policy affects women, refers to the plaintiff as “his or her,” but it sees the “public official” as decidedly male.

36. Id. at 1027.

37. Benjamin Zipursky, “DeShaney and the Jurisprudence of Compassion,” 65 New York University Law Review 1101, 1104–5 (1990).

38. DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep’t of Social Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 193 (1989).

39. Id. at 194.

40. Id. at 192–93.

41. Zipursky, “DeShaney,” 1104.

42. DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 195–96.

43. Id. at 202–203. The majority opinion was joined by Justices Kennedy, O’Connor, Scalia, Stevens, and White. Dissenting, Justice Blackmun wrote that the Court’s retreat into “sterile formalism” prevented it from recognizing both “the facts of the case” and “the legal norms that should apply.” “The facts here involve not mere passivity,” he wrote, “but active state intervention.” Id. at 212.

44. Id. at 212. Emphasis mine. Justices Marshall and Blackmun concurred with Justice Brennan’s dissenting opinion, and Justice Blackmun also wrote a dissenting opinion.

45. In a lengthy dissenting opinion, Judge Irving L. Goldberg argued: “DeShaney should play no role in McKee’s case.” McKee v. City of Rockwall, 877 F.2d 409, 417 (5th Cir. 1989) cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1023 (1990).

46. The allegations of the complaint are recounted and discussed by the appeals court in McKee at 409–11.

47. McKee at 409.

48. The affidavit is presented and discussed by the appeals court in McKee at 411.

49. McKee at 410. The court of appeals remanded McKee’s claim against the City of Rockwall to the district court for further adjudication, but as Judge Goldberg observed in his dissenting opinion, “the majority’s reasoning, that McKee made out no claim, virtually preordains judgment for the City of Rockwall on remand.” McKee at 417, n. 2.

50. Id. at 417.

51. Id. at 412, 415. Dissenting, Judge Goldberg remarked: “A trial may demonstrate that a ‘dislike’ and a de facto policy are one and the same.” McKee at 424.

52. Id. at 413.

53. Id.

54. The officers’ affidavits are discussed in McKee at 411.

55. Id.

56. Id. at 420.

57. These allegations, brought by Gayla McKee in her complaint, are discussed in McKee at 410.

58. Id. at 414.

59. Id. at 410–11.

60. Id. at 412.

61. In Bruno v. Codd, the class action suit brought in 1976 to compel New York City police to enforce laws against assault, the state court noted: “Plaintiffs do not seek to abolish the traditional discretionary powers of the police; they merely seek to compel the police to exercise their discretion in each ‘particular situation,’ and not to automatically decline to make an arrest solely because the assaulter and his victim are married to each other.” Bruno v. Codd, 90 Misc. 2d 1047, 1049, 396 N.Y.S. 2d 974, 976 (Sup. Ct. 1977).

62. Watson v. City of Kansas City, 857 F.2d 690, 695 (10th Cir. 1988).

63. McKee at 414. Emphasis mine.

64. Id. at 415.

65. Id. Dissenting Judge Goldberg disagreed with the majority’s reasoning on this point and many others, but not with their decision favorable to the police. Following the Hynson court, he would have dismissed Gayla McKee’s claims on grounds of police immunity.

66. Prior to DeShaney, at least two federal courts had dismissed battered women’s due process claims on grounds that the state had no special relationship with the woman and no affirmative duty to protect her. In Estate of Gilmore v. Buckley 787 F.2d 714 (1st Cir.), cert. denied 479 U.S. 882 (1986), a battered woman with an order of protection was kidnapped and murdered by her ex-boyfriend. In Turner v. City of North Charlestown 675 F. Supp. 314 (D.S.C. 1987), a battered woman with an order of protection was repeatedly threatened and then shot in the head by her estranged husband. DeShaney makes this tendency to dismiss the due process claims of battered women the rule. The McKee court dragged DeShaney into equal protection claims as well.

67. Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep’t, 855 F.2d 1421, 1423, 1426 (9th Cir. 1988). As amended February 27, 1990 and May 11, 1990.

68. Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep’t, 855 F.2d 1421; 1988 U.S. App. LEXIS 11594, **10, quoting DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep’t of Social Servs., 109 S. Ct. 998, 1005–06 (1989).

69. Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep’t, 855 F.2d 1421; 1988 U.S. App. LEXIS 11594, **11.

70. Hynson v. City of Chester, 731 F. Supp. 1236, 1239 (E.D. Pa. 1990), remanded by 864 F.2d 1026 (3d Cir. 1988).

71. The law distinguishes procedural due process rights from the substantive due process rights dealt with in DeShaney. Hence, a woman deprived by DeShaney of substantive due process claims might still enter a claim of violation of procedural due process rights.

72. Hynson, 731 F. Supp. at 1239.

73. See Luster v. Price, 1990 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8444, at *1–2 (W.D. Mo. 1990). The facts presented are those alleged by the plaintiffs and recounted in the court’s opinion.

74. Id. at *9–10.

75. Id. at *10. Emphasis mine.

76. See, for example, Caitlin E. Borgmann, “Battered Women’s Substantive Due Process Claims: Can Orders of Protection Deflect DeShaney?” 65 New York University Law Review 1280 (1990). Some theorists suggest that state courts may provide a “more hospitable forum” for state constitutional and tort claims of battered women. Laura S. Harper, “Battered Women Suing Police for Failure to Intervene: Viable Legal Avenues After DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services,” 75 Cornell Law Review 1393 (1990). See also “Failure to Intervene” in Women and the Law, ed. Carol Lefcourt (Cranbury, N.J.: Clark, Boardman, Callaghan, 1992), section 9B.03.

77. Dudosh v. City of Allentown 665 F. Supp. 381, 385 (E.D. Pa. 1987), vacated without op., 853 F.2d 917 (3d Cir. Pa. 1988) cert. denied sub nom. Dudosh v. Warg, 488 U.S. 942, reh’g granted sub nom. Dudosh v. City of Allentown, 722 F. Supp. 1233 (E.D. Pa. 1989). The facts presented are those alleged by the plaintiff and recounted in these opinions.

78. Dudosh v. City of Allentown, 722 F. Supp. 1233, 1235 (E.D. Pa. 1989).

79. Losinski v. County of Trempealeau, 946 F.2d 544, 547–48 (7th Cir. Wis. 1991), reh’g denied, 1992 U.S. App. LEXIS 195 (7th Cir. 1992) (en banc). The facts presented are those alleged by the plaintiffs and recounted in the court’s opinion.

80. Losinski, 946 F.2d at 550.

81. Brown v. City of Elba, 754 F. Supp. 1551, 1555 (M.D. Ala. 1990). The facts presented are those alleged by the plaintiff and recounted in the court’s opinion.

82. Id. at 1555–56.

83. Id. at 1555.

84. Borgmann, “Battered Women’s Due Process Claims,” 1314.

85. Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep’t, 855 F.2d 1421; 1988 U.S. App. LEXIS 11594, **10. As amended Feb. 27, 1990 and May 11, 1990.

86. Brown v. Grabowski, 922 F.2d 1097 (3s Cir. N.J. 1990), cert. denied sub nom. Borough of Roselle, 111 S. Ct. 2827 (1991).

87. Coffman v. Wilson Police Department, 739 F. Supp. 257, 260 (E.D. Pa. 1990). The facts presented are those alleged by the plaintiff and recounted in the court’s opinion.

88. Id. at 263.

89. Id. at 264.

90. Id. at 266.

91. Id. at 265–66 quoting Archie v. City of Racine, 847 F.2d 1211, 1226 (7th Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1065 (1989).

92. Coffman, 739 F. Supp. at 265–66.

93. Siddle v. City of Cambridge, Ohio, 761 F. Supp. 503, 510 (S.D. Ohio 1991).

94. Id. at 510–11.

95. Id. at 512.

96. Roberta M. Saielli makes this point in “DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services: The Future of Section 1983 Actions for State Inaction,” 21 Loyola University of Chicago Law Journal 191 (1989–90).

97. Daniel L. Schofield, “Domestic Violence, When Do Police Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect?” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, Jan. 1991, pp. 29–31.

98. U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. The Violence Against Women Act of 1991, 102nd Cong., 1st sess., S. Rept. 197 (1991), p. 52.

99. Joyce E. McConnell, “Beyond Metaphor: Battered Women, Involuntary Servitude and the Thirteenth Amendment,” 4 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 206 (1992).

100. Only five days after handing down DeShaney, the Supreme Court held that a city could be held liable under Section 1983 for injuries to individual citizens resulting directly from the city’s failure to train its police force adequately. City of Canton, Ohio v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378 (1989).

101. Interview with Laurie Woods, Director, National Center on Women and Family Law, Dec. 22, 1992.

102. Telephone interview with Elizabeth Schneider, Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Dec. 30, 1992.

103. “Calling it ‘date rape’ doesn’t change a thing,” Boston Globe, Dec. 10, 1989, p. A18.

104. Witness the public furor and the readiness of many reporters, jurors, and members of the public to blame the victims who brought rape accusations against Mike Tyson, William Kennedy Smith, several St. John’s College students, and several Glen Ridge (New Jersey) high school boys. Witness also the current popularity of fraternity gang rape as a kind of college intramural sport. See especially Peggy Reeves Sanday, Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus (New York: New York University Press, 1990).

3. What Is “Domestic Violence”?

1. To see what “domestic violence” looks like, see Donna Ferrato, Living with the Enemy (New York: Aperture, 1991).

2. Susan Schechter, Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women’s Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1982), p. 201.

3. Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic, 1992), p. 9.

4. Ibid., p. 69.

5. Telephone interview with Susan Schechter, Program Coordinator of AWAKE (Advocacy for Women and Kids in Emergencies), Children’s Hospital, Boston, Mass., Jan. 22, 1993.

6. Gerald T. Hotaling and David B. Sugarman, “An Analysis of Risk Markers in Husband to Wife Violence: The Current State of Knowledge,” Violence and Victims 1, no. 2 (1986): 101–124.

7. Lenore E. Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome (New York: Springer, 1984), p. 59; Lee H. Bowker, Michelle Arbitell, and J. Richard McFerron, “On the Relationship Between Wife Beating and Child Abuse,” in Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse, ed. Kersti Yllo and Michele Bograd (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1988), pp. 162–63.

8. Evan Stark and Anne Flitcraft, “Women and Children at Risk: A Feminist Perspective on Child Abuse,” International Journal of Health Services 18, no. 1 (1988); Linda McKibben et al., “Victimization of Mothers of Abused Children: A Controlled Study,” Pediatrics 84, no. 3 (1989).

9. Interview with Evelina Giobbe, founder of W.H.I.S.P.E.R., an organization of women used in prostitution and the sex industry, Oct. 3, 1987. See also Kathleen Barry, Female Sexual Slavery (New York: Prentice Hall, 1980), pp. 78–82.

10. Diana E. H. Russell, Rape in Marriage (New York: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 279–80.

11. Deborah Cameron and Elizabeth Frazer, The Lust to Kill (New York: New York University Press, 1987), pp. 17–34.

12. Sharon Lamb, “Acts Without Agents: An Analysis of Linguistic Avoidance in Journal Articles on Men Who Batter Women,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 61, no. 2 (1991): 250–57. Lamb surveyed eleven journals from four academic disciplines. Among her findings: “At least half of the sentences about abuse refused to hold the man responsible for the violent acts he committed against the woman who was his wife, lover, or partner” (255). In The War Against Women (New York: Summit, 1992), Marilyn French observes: “So powerful and pervasive is the taboo against blaming men-as-a-class in our society that even social scientists who deplore male violence against women perpetuate a sense of male blamelessness for these acts” (p. 189).

13. Laura S. Harper, “Battered Women Suing Police for Failure to Intervene: Viable Legal Avenues After DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services,” 75 Cornell Law Review 1393, 1426, n.216 (1990).

14. Surgeon General Antonia C. Novello, quoted in “Physicians Begin a Program to Combat Family Violence,” New York Times, Oct. 17, 1991, p. 15.

15. Sally Jacobs, “In Hub and beyond, HIV seen as latest whip for batterers,” Boston Globe, Jan. 24, 1993, pp. 21, 24.

16. Marilyn French, The War Against Women, p. 187.

17. Herman, Trauma, p. 32.

18. Ibid., p. 28. For a complete list of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder see Herman, p. 121.

19. Ibid., p. 119.

20. David Adams, “Treatment Models of Men Who Batter: A Profeminist Analysis,” in Yllo and Bograd, eds., Feminist Perspectives, p. 191.

21. Ibid., p. 190.

22. Amnesty International, Report on Torture (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973), p. 173. See also A. D. Biderman, “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War,” Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine 33 (1957): 616–25. The chart reproduced was adapted for use at a shelter in Northampton, Massachusetts. For lists of controlling techniques commonly used by batterers, see Ann Jones and Susan Schechter, When Love Goes Wrong: What to Do When You Can’t Do Anything Right (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 17–22.

23. Adams, “Treatment Models,” p. 194.

24. Ellen Pence, “How Society Gives Men Permission to Batter,” In Our Best Interest, part 2, a videotape produced by the Women’s Coalition, Duluth, Minn., n.d.

25. Lenore E. Walker, The Battered Woman (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), pp. 65–70. Walker was the first to identify a cycle of violence and to label its phases. Compare John Stoltenberg, Refusing to Be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice (Portland, Oreg.: Breitenbush, 1989): “The appeal for ‘forgiveness’ … functions to trap and lock in any female who may have been considering withdrawing her sustenance from him. The forgiveness asked—though it is always demanded, because even here pressure is applied—is a form of insistence that she remain in relation to him” (p. 23).

26. Russell, Rape in Marriage, p. 273; see also Lewis Okun, Woman Abuse: Facts Replacing Myth (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 113–39; and, for example, Ann Jones, Everyday Death: The Case of Bernadette Powell (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), and Brian Vallée, Life with Billy (New York: Pocket Books, 1989).

27. Herman, Trauma, p. 75.

28. Interview with a survivor of battery who requested anonymity, in Minnesota, Sept. 2, 1987.

29. Interview with a survivor of battery who requested anonymity, in Hawaii, Nov. 28, 1987.

30. Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence: Boston 1880–1960 (New York: Viking, 1988), pp. 286–87.

31. Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives, p. 287.

32. Interview in Indiana, May 5, 1979. Name withheld.

33. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Knopf, 1985), pp. 90–93.

34. Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives, p. 255.

35. Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1990), p. 2.

36. Bly, Iron John, pp. 87, 8, 26.

37. Elizabeth Wilson, What Is to Be Done About Violence Against Women? (London: Penguin, 1983), p. 95.

38. Pence, “How Society Gives Men Permission to Batter,” In Our Best Interest, part 2.

39. Pence, “Why Do I Feel So Crazy?” In Our Best Interest, part 2.

40. Susan Diesenhouse, “Women Driven to Kill Are Shown More Mercy,” New York Times, Jan. 30, 1989, p. A10.

41. Charles Patrick Ewing, Battered Women Who Kill: Psychological Self-Defense As Legal Justification (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1987), p. 118.

42. Diesenhouse, New York Times, Jan. 30, 1989, p. A10. Interview with Kathleen (Kaplan) Brewster, March 28, 1993.

43. Angela Browne and Kirk R. Williams, “Exploring the Effect of Resource Availability and the Likelihood of Female-Perpetrated Homicides,” 23 Law and Society Review 80 (1989). Browne and Williams report that between 1979 and 1984 the number of “male partners” killed by women decreased by more than 25 percent.

44. Holly Maguigan, “Battered Women and Self-Defense: Myths and Misconceptions in Current Reform Proposals,” 140 University of Pennysylvania Law Review 379, 397, n.67 (1991), citing statistics from the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. For discussion of “homicidal self-help” see Maria L. Marcus, “Conjugal Violence: The Law of Force and the Force of Law,” 69 California Law Review 1657, 1658 (1981).

45. Faith McNulty, The Burning Bed (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980); for cases of Francine Hughes and other battered women who killed their assailants see Ann Jones, Women Who Kill (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980), pp. 281–321; for other cases see Angela Browne, When Battered Women Kill (New York: Free Press, 1987); see also Joyce E. McConnell, “Beyond Metaphor: Battered Women, Involuntary Servitude and the Thirteenth Amendment,” 4 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 206 (1992); Cynthia K. Gillespie, Justifiable Homicide: Battered Women, Self-Defense, and the Law (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989); Ewing, Battered Women Who Kill; and Vallée, Life with Billy.

46. Law professor Holly Maguigan exploded the popular myth that battered women typically kill “sleeping men.” Reviewing 270 homicides, she found that 75 percent occurred during confrontations. Only 8 percent were “sleeping man” cases. In another 8 percent the woman acted during a lull in the man’s violence against her; 4 percent were contract killings. (In 5 percent of the cases the circumstances could not be determined.) Maguigan, “Battered Women and Self-Defense,” 396–97.

47. For discussion of this issue see Elizabeth M. Schneider, “Describing and Changing: Women’s Self-Defense Work and the Problem of Expert Testimony on Battering,” 9 Women’s Rights Law Reporter 195 (1986); Lenore Walker, “A Response to Elizabeth M. Schneider’s Describing and Changing,” 9 Women’s Rights Law Reporter 223 (1986). Expert testimony that a woman suffers from “battered woman’s syndrome” is now used in child custody disputes to label her an unfit mother. Interview with Joan Zorza, National Center on Women and Family Law, Feb. 12, 1993.

48. Louise Bauschard and Mary Kimbrough, Voices Set Free: Battered Women Speak from Prison (St. Louis: Women’s Self-Help Center, 1986), pp. ix-x; see also pp. 117–33.

49. Telephone interview with Leigh Dingerson, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Feb. 12, 1991.

50. Isabel Wilkerson, “Clemency Granted to 25 Women Convicted for Assault or Murder,” New York Times, Dec. 22, 1990, p. 1.

51. Janet Naylor, “Schaefer to free 8 battered women who fought back,” Washington Times, Feb. 20, 1991, p. A1; Howard Schneider, “MD to Free Abused Women, Schaefer Commutes 8 Terms, Citing Violence,” Washington Post, Feb. 20, 1991, p. A1.

52. Naylor, Washington Times, Feb. 20, 1991, p. A5.

53. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, ed. Thomas M. Cooley, 4th ed. by James DeWitt Andrews (Chicago: Callahan, 1899), book 4, pp. 93, 203–4.

54. “Fact File,” CA Reporter, newsletter of the Correctional Association of New York, April 1991, p. 4.

55. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, telephone interview with statistician Stephanie Greenhouse, Nov. 30, 1992.

4. The Language of Love

1. Brown v. Grabowski, 922 F.2d 1097, 1117 (3d Cir. N.J. 1990), Cert. denied sub nom. Borough of Roselle, 111 S. Ct. 2827 (1991). The New Jersey Domestic Violence Act took effect in 1982. Deborah Evans was killed in February 1985.

2. Theodor H. Van de Velde, Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique, trans. Stella Browne (New York: Random House, 1930), pp. 158–59. Van de Velde quotes (without citation) from Ellis’s “Love and Pain,” vol. 3 of Studies in Psychology.

3. Alex Comfort, The New Joy of Sex: The Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking for the Nineties (New York: Pocket Books, 1991), pp. 98–99. Comfort’s habitual use of pronouns without antecedents often leaves the meaning obscure; I represent the sense of these passages as best I can.

4. Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men (New York: Vintage, 1992), p. 26.

5. George R. Bach and Peter Wyden, The Intimate Enemy: How to Fight Fair in Love and Marriage (New York: Avon, 1970).

6. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage, 1989), pp. xxviii—xxx.

7. Bly, Iron John, p. 1.

8. Ibid., p. 175.

9. Bach and Wyden, Intimate Enemy, p. 27.

10. George Bach and Herb Goldberg, Creative Aggression: The Art of Assertive Living (1974; rpt. New York: Anchor, 1983), p. 272.

11. Ibid., p. 274.

12. In this context the smile, a sign of appeasement, has more to do with relative power than with gender as such.

13. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (1930; rpt. New York: Norton, 1961), p. 60.

14. Jean Baer, How to Be an Assertive (Not Aggressive) Woman in Life, in Love, and on the Job: A Total Guide to Self-Assertiveness (New York: New American Library, 1976).

15. Harriet Goldhor Lerner, The Dance of Anger: A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 2.

16. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 24–63.

17. Bach and Goldberg, Creative Aggression, p. 215.

18. Carol Tavris, Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), p. 42.

19. Ibid., p. 121. Emphasis mine.

20. Lerner, Dance of Anger, p. 2.

21. Interview with a survivor of battery who requested anonymity, in California, March 15, 1989.

22. Bach and Wyden, Intimate Enemy, p. 116.

23. Ibid., p. 116. Emphasis mine. Note also the idea that a “tongue lashing may hurt more than physical violence,” another common “justification” for assault, equating verbal and physical aggression, and conceptualizing physical assault as self-defense against women’s “nagging” or “bitching.” For discussion of this justification offered by batterers, see James Ptacek, “Why Do Men Batter Their Wives?” in Yllo and Bogard, eds., Feminist Perspectives, pp. 141–56.

24. Bach and Wyden, Intimate Enemy, pp. 116–17.

25. For an analysis of a paradigmatic “rough sex” murder case in which the woman was blamed for her own death, Robert Chambers’s killing of Jennifer Levin, see Helen Benedict, Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 147–88.

26. Comfort, New Joy of Sex, p. 99. Comfort adds the warning: “Don’t ever put up with real violence—it will escalate, however much the aggressor apologizes.” He does not explain the difference between “real” violence and violence that is not real.

27. Alison Carper, “The Danger Dance,” New York Newsday, July 22, 1992, p. 5.

28. For a feminist analysis of pornography see especially Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Perigee, 1981), and Catherine MacKinnon, “Part 3: Pornography,” Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 127–213.

29. Michael S. Kimmel, “Introduction: Guilty Pleasures—Pornography in Men’s Lives,” Men Confront Pornography, ed. Michael S. Kimmel (New York: Meridian, 1991), p. 1. Kimmel cites industry figures for 1984: 200 million issues of 800 hard- and soft-core magazines sold in the United States, generating over $750 million.

30. Kimmel, Men Confront Pornography, pp. 6, 8.

31. Diana E. H. Russell records reports from women whose partners forced them to “try” things they had seen in pornographic magazines or films. Rape in Marriage (New York: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 83–86.

32. Edward Donnerstein and Daniel Linz, “Mass Media, Sexual Violence, and Male Viewers: Current Theory and Research,” in Kimmel, ed., Men Confront Pornography, p. 231.

33. Ibid., pp. 219–22.

34. Ann Jones, Everyday Death: The Case of Bernadette Powell (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1985), pp. 158–59.

35. People v. Powell, 96 A.D.2d 610, 464 N.Y.S.2d 611 (1983).

36. Paula Chin and Civia Tamarkin, “The Door of Evil,” People, August 12, 1991, pp. 35–36; Estate of Sinthasomphone v. City of Milwaukee, 785 F.Supp. 1343 (E.D. Wis. 1992).

37. “Tracy,” music and lyrics by W. Antichrist, on Rotting, an album recorded by the heavy metal band Sarcofago, Kraze Records.

38. Niggas with Attitude, Priority Records, 1991.

39. “Mind of a Lunatic,” The Geto Boys, Rap-A-Lot Records, 1990.

40. Interviews with Iris Fischer, Jennifer Fisher, and Margaret Rooks, South Hadley, Massachusetts, April 8 and May 11, 1992.

41. Dick Polman, “In the shadow of violence,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 1989, p. K1.

42. Victoria Benning and David L. Schutz, “Ex-boyfriend fatally shoots woman on Allston street, then kills self,” Boston Globe, May 31, 1992, p. 28.

43. Ibid.

44. Peter Gelzinis, “Former victim tries to grapple with sense of relief and pain,” Boston Herald, June 2, 1992, p. 7.

45. For analysis of bias in press coverage of sex crimes, see Benedict, Virgin or Vamp.

46. Batterers who accuse “their” women of infidelity are often projecting their own behavior. Jose Dolores Martinez of the Bronx, for example, shot and killed his wife, whom he believed to be unfaithful, and her niece, then killed his girlfriend, took another of his girlfriends hostage, and finally killed himself in her bed. Relatives said that Maria Altagracia Martinez, a faithful wife, never left her apartment without her jealous husband’s permission. Cases like this occur frequently. Ray Sanchez and Bruce Stanley, “Suspect Kills Self,” New York Newsday, July 4, 1992, p. 6.

47. Sheridan Lyons, “Man who killed wife gets 10-year maximum term,” Baltimore Sun, June 24, 1989, p. 8A. Emphasis mine.

48. Ibid.

49. Maria Archangelo, “Man who strangled wife seeks early release from prison,” Baltimore Sun, March 3, 1991, p. 6.

50. John Stoltenberg, Refusing to Be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice (Portland, Oreg.: Breitenbush, 1989), p. 23. Emphasis mine.

51. Mary Murphy, “Why Robin Givens Has Rolled with the Punches—and Still Loves Tyson,” TV Guide 37, no. 26 (July 1, 1989), 11.

52. “Accuser: Tyson laughed while he raped me,” Boston Herald, Jan. 31, 1992, p. 1.

53. Michael Madden, “Strength rings in tiny voice,” Boston Globe, Jan. 31, 1992, pp. 39–40; Beverly Ford, “Accuser described as intelligent, outgoing Providence student,” Boston Herald, Jan. 31, 1992, p. 19.

54. E. R. Shipp, “Tyson Gets 6-Year Prison Term For Rape Conviction in Indiana,” New York Times, March 27, 1992, p. 1. The sentence was ten years with four suspended. Judge Patricia J. Gifford denied Tyson’s request to remain free pending an appellate decision.

55. Murphy, TV Guide, July 1, 1989, pp. 9, 11.

56. Michael Lev, “A Ballplayer’s Life Turns on a Home Run,” New York Times, July 20, 1989, p. B12.

57. AP Dispatch, “Officer Kills Lover in Suicide,” New York Times, May 20, 1989, p. 31. Note the odd use of the singular possessive “lover’s quarrel” in the police press release. It may be only a typographical error, but it is an accurate assessment of the one-sided nature of the “quarrel.”

58. New York Post, May 20, 1989, p. 1.

59. Interview with a survivor of battery and stalking who requested anonymity, in New York, May 20, 1991.

60. For an example of the indictment of battered women as collaborators, see Susan Brownmiller, “Madly in Love,” Ms., April 1989, p. 64.

61. Gelzinis, Boston Herald, June 2, 1992, p. 7.

5. Why Doesn’t She Leave?

1. “Hitting Home,” an episode of “48 Hours,” CBS TV, June 18, 1988.

2. Charles Thurman’s conviction was overturned on a technicality. Retried in 1987, he pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and was sentenced to 20 years, to be suspended after 14, and 5 years probation. Under a 1990 Supreme Court ruling that grants more time off for good behavior to prisoners who were convicted twice, Thurman was released from prison eight months earlier than expected. Ray Routhier, “Thurman to be freed April 12,” Hartford Courant, March 15, 1991, p. C1; Ray Routhier, “Thurman quietly escorted at night from prison to halfway house,” Hartford Courant, April 13, 1991, p. C9; Ray Routhier, “Kentucky bars ‘Buck’ Thurman,” Hartford Courant, April 19, 1991, p. B1.

3. Routhier, Hartford Courant, March 15, 1991, p. C1.

4. Telephone interview with Anne Menard, Executive Director, Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Nov. 30, 1992.

5. “48 Hours,” June 18, 1988.

6. Ibid.

7. Sam Roberts, “Indictment 62/87: A Battered Wife Turns to Violence,” New York Times, April 9, 1987, p. B1; Sam Roberts, “A Victim’s Peril: Lack of Money For a Divorce,” New York Times, Oct. 1, 1987, p. B1.

8. Marilyn French, The War Against Women (New York: Summit, 1992), p. 188.

9. “The News at Six,” WCBS TV, New York City, September 5, 1987.

10. Julie Johnson, “Queens Woman Acquitted in Killing of Husband,” New York Times, Oct. 1, 1987, pp. B1, B4.

11. William Ryan, Blaming the Victim, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 1976), p. 15.

12. Ibid., p. 13.

13. Ibid., p. 16.

14. Ibid., pp. 8–9.

15. Ibid., p. 29.

16. John E. Snell, Richard J. Rosenwald, and Ames Robey, “The Wife-Beater’s Wife: A Study of Family Interaction,” Archives of General Psychiatry 11 (August 1964): 110–11.

17. Commenting on “The Wife-Beater’s Wife,” Judith Lewis Herman writes: “While this unabashed, open sexism is rarely found in psychiatric literature today, the same conceptual errors, with their implicit bias and contempt, still predominate.” Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic, 1992), p. 117.

18. Richard J. Gelles and Murray A. Straus, Intimate Violence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. 89. Emphasis mine.

19. Susan Schechter, Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women’s Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1982), pp. 192–95.

20. Leonard Buder, “A Police Study Challenges Belief Family Fights Are Riskiest Duty,” New York Times, Feb. 11, 1979, p. 50; see also Ann Jones, Women Who Kill (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980), pp. 304–5.

21. Lawrence W. Sherman and Richard A. Berk, The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment (Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation Reports 1, 1984), p. 2; see also Sherman, Policing Domestic Violence: Experiments and Dilemmas (New York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 30–32, and Joan Zorza, “The Criminal Law of Misdemeanor Domestic Violence, 1970–1990,” 83 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 46, 51–52 (1992). Quoting a study by Joel Garner and Elizabeth Clemmer, Danger to Police in Domestic Disturbances—A New Look: Research in Brief (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, 1986), Zorza reports: “The reality … is that domestic disturbance incidents, which account for thirty percent of police calls, account for only 5.7 percent of police deaths, making domestic disturbances one of the least dangerous of all police activities” (52).

22. U.S. Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence, U.S. Department of Justice, Final Report (1984), p. 22.

23. Sherman and Berk, Police Foundation Reports 1, p. 2.

24. Scott v. Hart, No. C-76-2395 (N.D. Cal. filed Oct. 28, 1976).

25. Bruno v. Codd, 90 Misc. 2d 1047, 396 N.Y.S.2d 974 (Sup. Ct. 1977).

26. International Association of Chiefs of Police, “Wife-Beating,” Training Key 245 (1976); “Investigation of Wife-Beating,” Training Key 246 (1976).

27. Nancy Loving, Responding to Spouse Abuse and Wife Beating: A Guide for Police (Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum, 1980).

28. Sherman and Berk, Police Foundation Reports 1, p. 5.

29. Sherman, Policing Domestic Violence, p. 254. Although local law enforcement agencies in these cities reported that their pro-arrest practices, as part of a coordinated criminal justice system response, contributed to the decrease in domestic assault and homicide, Sherman attributes the falling rates of homicide to “chance fluctuation.”

30. Ibid., p. 109.

31. Ibid., p. 115.

32. Zorza, “Criminal Law,” 63–65.

33. Zorza, “Criminal Law,” 64; Brown v. Grabowski, 922 F.2d 1097, 1116 (3d Cir. N.J. 1990), Cert. denied sub nom. Borough of Roselle, 111 S. Ct. 2827 (1991).

34. U.S. Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence, Final Report, p. 23.

35. Zorza, “Criminal Law,” 71.

36. “Immediate Arrest in Domestic Violence Situations: Mandate or Alternative,” 14 Capitol University Law Review 243 (1985).

37. Zorza, “Criminal Law,” 71.

38. Patricia Nealon and Sean P. Murphy, “Thwarting the killers is a complex, elusive goal,” Boston Globe, June 2, 1992, p. 6.

39. Don Terry, “Woman in Divorce is Slain in Court,” New York Times, May 6, 1992, p. A21.

40. Don Terry, “Killing of Woman Waiting for Justice Sounds Alert on Domestic Violence,” New York Times, March 17, 1992, p. A14. Franklin was arrested at the scene and charged with first-degree murder.

41. Larry Olmstead, “When Passion Explodes Into a Deadly Rage,” New York Times, May 18, 1993, pp. A1, B4.

42. Surgeon General Antonia C. Novello, address to an American Medical Association press conference on violence, New York City, Jan. 16, 1992.

43. Ibid.

44. “Domestic Violence Intervention Calls for More Than Treating Injuries,” JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 264, no. 8 (1990): 939.

45. “Violence Against Women: Relevance for Medical Practitioners,” JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 267, no. 23 (1992): 3186; Evan Stark, Anne Flitcraft, et al., Wife Abuse in the Medical Setting: An Introduction for Health Personnel, Domestic Violence Monograph Series, No. 7 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Domestic Violence, 1981), p. v.

46. “Wife Abuse: An Opportunity for Prevention,” Injury Prevention Network Newsletter 5, no. 1 (1988): 3.

47. “Violence Against Women,” JAMA 267 (1992): 3187.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., 3186–87.

50. Novello, address to AMA conference, January 16, 1992.

51. Stark, Flitcraft, et al., Wife Abuse in the Medical Setting, p. vii.

52. Patricia Nealon, “For abused, few places to turn,” Boston Globe, June 2, 1992, p. 6.

53. “Domestic Violence Intervention,” JAMA 264 (1990): 939.

54. Ibid., 940.

55. Ibid., 939.

56. Demie Kurz and Evan Stark, “Not-So-Benign Neglect: The Medical Response to Battering,” in Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse, ed. Kersti Yllo and Michele Bograd (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1988), p. 253.

57. “Wife Abuse: An Opportunity for Prevention,” Injury Prevention, 2–3.

58. “Campaign Alerts Physicians to Identify, Assist Victims of Domestic Violence,” JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 261, no. 7 (1989): 963.

59. Nealon, Boston Globe, June 2, 1992, p. 6.

60. “Campaign Alerts Physicians,” JAMA 261 (1989): 963.

61. Surgeon General Antonia C. Novello, address to American Medical Association press conference on violence, Chicago, October 16, 1991.

62. Janice Perrone, “Doctors’ attitudes affecting family violence problem,” American Medical News, Feb. 3, 1992, p. 27. The study is the “Health Care and Family Violence Field Project,” a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study, the principal investigator Dr. Eli H. Newberger, Director of the Family Development Program at Boston’s Children’s Hospital.

63. Stark, Flitcraft, et al., “Wife Abuse in the Medical Setting,” p. v.

64. “Domestic Violence Intervention,” JAMA 264 (1990): 939.

65. Ibid., citing American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 56 (1986): 360–70.

66. Ellen Pence et al., In Our Best Interest: A Process for Personal and Social Change (Duluth: Minnesota Program Development, Inc., 1987), p. 61.

67. “Til Death Do Us Part,” an episode of “48 Hours,” CBS TV, Feb. 6, 1991.

68. Martha R. Mahoney, “Legal Images of Battered Women: Redefining the Issue of Separation,” 90 Michigan Law Review 1, 65–66 (1991).

69. Arn Shackelford, “Decision shocks workers at women’s shelter,” Grand Rapids Press, May 12, 1989, p. A4.

70. Ellen Goodman, “Excuses, not penalties,” Boston Globe, May 23, 1989, p. 15.

71. Tracy L. Sypert and Arn Shackelford, “Ratliff only recalls bits, pieces: lawyer,” Grand Rapids Press, April 27, 1989, p. A1.

72. “Iron’s friends decry verdict, but Ratliff’s supporters satisfied,” Grand Rapids Press, May 12, 1989, p. A1.

73. Tracy L. Sypert, “Ratliff’s Defense: ‘Diminished capacity,’” Grand Rapids Press, April 14, 1989, p. A2.

74. Tracy L. Sypert, “Ratliff judge bars details on 1st wife,” Grand Rapids Press, May 2, 1989, pp. Al, A4.

75. Tracy L. Sypert, “Jurors felt Ratliff was ‘provoked,’” Grand Rapids Press, May 12, 1989, p. A1.

76. Goodman, Boston Globe, May 23, 1989, p. 15.

77. Sypert, Grand Rapids Press, May 12, 1989, p. Al.

78. Ibid., p. A4.

79. Arn Shackelford, “New Ratliff trial unneeded, prosecutor says,” Grand Rapids Press, Aug. 13, 1989, p. Fl.

80. Grand Rapids Press, May 12, 1989, p. A4.

81. Elizabeth Pleck, Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy Against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 193.

82. Schechter, Women and Male Violence, p. 142.

83. Gerald T. Hotaling and David B. Sugarman, “An Analysis of Risk Markers in Husband to Wife Violence: The Current State of Knowledge,” Violence and Victims 1, no. 2 (1986) 120.

84. Suzanne K. Steinmetz, “The Battered Husband Syndrome,” Victimology 2, nos. 3/4 (1977): 499–509; Murray A. Straus, “Wife Beating: How Common and Why?” Victimology 2, nos. 3/4 (1977–78): 443–58; Murray A. Straus, “Measuring Intrafamily Conflict and Violence: The Conflict Tactics (CT) Scales,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 41 (1979): 75–88; Murray A. Straus, Richard J. Gelles, and Suzanne Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family (New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1980), pp. 253–56.

85. R. Emerson Dobash and Russell P. Dobash, “Research as Social Action: The Struggle for Battered Women,” in Yllo and Bograd, eds., Feminist Perspectives, p. 58; the most thoroughgoing critiques are Elizabeth Pleck, Joseph H. Pleck, Marilyn Grossman, and Pauline B. Bart, “The Battered Data Syndrome: A Comment on Steinmetz’s Article,” Victimology 2, nos. 3/4 (1977–78): 680–83; Schechter, Women and Male Violence, pp. 209–16; Mildred Pagelow, “The Battered Husband Syndrome: Social Problem or Much Ado about Nothing,” in Marital Violence, ed. N. Johnson (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), pp. 172–94; R. Emerson Dobash and Russell P. Dobash, Women, Violence and Social Change (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 251–84.

86. Dobash and Dobash, Women, Violence and Social Change, p. 280.

87. Murray A. Straus and Richard R. Gelles, “Societal Change and Change in Family Violence from 1975 to 1985 as Revealed by Two National Surveys,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 48 (1986): 465–79.

88. Tamar Lewin, “Battered Men Sounding Equal-Rights Battle Cry,” New York Times, April 20, 1992, p. A12.

89. Dobash and Dobash, Women, Violence and Social Change, p. 274. For a full analysis of this “peculiar” family violence research, see pp. 251–84. In The War Against Women (New York: Summit, 1992), p. 189, Marilyn French cites this example drawn from Sharon Lamb’s linguistic analysis of Behind Closed Doors by Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz: “The authors describe a brutal scene of a husband beating his wife over the head with a cane and whipping her arms and legs with a hose, then ask, ‘How could a couple inflict such a situation upon one another?’” See Sharon Lamb, “Acts Without Agents: An Analysis of Linguistic Avoidance in Journal Articles on Men Who Batter Women,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 6l, no. 2 (1991): 251.

90. Susan Schechter, “Building Bridges Between Activists, Professionals, and Researchers,” in Yllo and Bograd, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse, p. 310.

91. Ibid.

92. Elliott Currie, Confronting Crime: An American Challenge (New York: Pantheon, 1985), p. 208.

93. David Bird, “Domestic Violence is Termed ‘Insidious Criminal Problem,’” New York Times, Dec. 2, 1983, p. B3.

94. Currie, Confronting Crime, p. 208.

95. Lawrence W. Sherman, “The Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law: Evaluating Arrests for Misdemeanor Domestic Violence,” 83 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1, 16–17, 7–10 (1992).

96. Lawrence W. Sherman and Richard A. Berk, “The Specific Deterrent Effects of Arrest for Domestic Assault,” American Sociological Review 49, no. 2 (1984): 261–72; for a summary see Sherman and Berk, Police Foundation Reports 1.

97. Sherman, “Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law,” 21, 24.

98. Sherman, “Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law,” 25–26. The cost estimate is drawn from Lisa G. Lerman, “The Decontextualization of Domestic Violence,” 83 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 217, 218, n.6 (1992).

99. Sherman, “Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law,” 25.

100. Franklyn W. Dunford, “The Measurement of Recidivism in Cases of Spouse Assault,” 83 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 120, 135–36 (1992).

101. J. David Hirschel and Ira W. Hutchison III, “Female Spouse Abuse and the Police Response: The Charlotte, North Carolina Experiment,” 83 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 73, 119 (1992).

102. Lawrence W. Sherman, Janell D. Schmidt, Dennis P. Rogan, Douglas A. Smith, Patrick R. Gartin, Ellen G. Cohn, Dean J. Collins, and Anthony R. Bacich, “The Variable Effects of Arrest on Criminal Careers: The Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment,” 83 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 137, 168 (1992); Sherman, “Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law,” 32.

103. Sherman et al., “Variable Effects of Arrest on Criminal Careers,” 158–69; Sherman, “Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law,” 32.

104. Cynthia Grant Bowman, “The Arrest Experiments: A Feminist Critique,” 83 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 201 (1992); Lisa A. Frisch, “Research That Succeeds, Policies That Fail,” 83 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 209 (1992); Lisa G. Lerman, “The Decontextualization of Domestic Violence,” 83 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 217 (1992).

105. Sherman, “Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law,” 43.

106. Sherman, Policing Domestic Violence, pp. 254–56, 130.

107. For the theory of “different folks” see Sherman, Policing Domestic Violence, pp. 154–87. One theoretical objection to mandatory arrest for domestic assault is that arrest will fall disproportionately on men of color. The Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project reports that after arrest was mandated there, arrests of men of color markedly increased. Arrests of white men, however, increased far more dramatically, so that the proportion of men of color arrested actually fell to a level corresponding to their proportion of the general male population. One may conclude that mandatory arrest, by overriding the discretionary racism of police, results in more equitable treatment for minority men, not less. For discussion see Caroline Forell, “Stopping the Violence: Mandatory Arrest and Police Tort Liability for Failure to Assist Battered Women,” 6 Berkeley Women’s Law Journal 215 (1990–91).

108. Sherman, Policing Domestic Violence, p. 258.

109. Sherman, “Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law,” l-5, et passim.

110. Sherman, “Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law,” 37.

111. Bowman, “The Arrest Experiments,” 204–205.

112. Sherman, Policing Domestic Violence, p. 251.

113. Sherman, “Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law,” 37; Sherman, Policing Domestic Violence, pp. 252–60.

114. “Don’t let abusers off the hook,” editorial, Milwaukee Journal, Nov. 11, 1991, p. A22.

115. Bowman, “The Arrest Experiments,” 203. See her essay for a thorough analysis of the male perspective in the arrest studies, 201–208.

116. Sherman, “Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law,” 31–32.

117. Richard A. Berk, Alec Campbell, Ruth Klap, and Bruce Western, “A Bayesian Analysis of the Colorado Springs Spouse Abuse Experiment,” 83 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 170, 173 (1992); Sherman, Policing Domestic Violence, p. 319.

118. Sherman, Policing Domestic Violence, pp. 319–24.

119. Bowman, “The Arrest Experiments,” 205.

120. Sherman, Policing Domestic Violence, p. 213.

121. Ibid.

122. Schechter, “Building Bridges,” in Yllo and Bograd, eds., Feminist Perspectives, p. 310; Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic, 1992), pp. 117–18.

123. Gelles and Straus, Intimate Violence, p. 138.

124. Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, p. 7.

125. “A Bill to Be Bashed,” editorial, Washington Star, Oct. 13, 1980, p. A18. Note the cute headline which trivializes woman “bashing.”

126. Schechter, Women and Male Violence, p. 146.

127. Dobash and Dobash, Women, Violence and Social Change, pp. 140–41. The bill carried an appropriation of $8.3 million for 1985 and 1986, and $8.5 million for 1987 and 1988.

128. Schechter, Women and Male Violence, p. 146.

129. “A Bill to Be Bashed,” Washington Star, Oct. 13, 1980.

130. Roberts, New York Times, April 9, 1987, p. B1; Julie Johnson, “Woman Describes How She Killed Her Husband,” New York Times, Sept. 29, 1987, p. B3.

6. A Woman to Blame

1. Jimmy Breslin, “Below and Beyond the Call of Drugs,” Newsday, Dec. 4, 1988, p. 2.

2. Pete Hamill, New York Post, Dec. 13, 1988, p. 2.

3. “A Tale of Abuse,” Newsweek, Dec. 12, 1988, p. 56.

4. Testimony of Dr. Neil Spiegel, quoted in Erika Munk, “Private Lives, Public Fears,” Village Voice, Nov. 15, 1988, p. 10.

5. Ronald Sullivan, “Witness Says Numerous Injuries to Nussbaum Were Nearly Fatal,” New York Times, Nov. 5, 1988, p. 31.

6. Joyce Johnson, “What Lisa Knew,” Vanity Fair, May 1988, p. 117.

7. Newsweek, Dec. 12, 1988, p. 56.

8. “Opening Up a Catalog of Abuse,” Newsday, Dec. 2, 1988, pp. 5, 27.

9. Timothy Clifford, “Jurors Cringe at Videotape of Bruised, Battered Hedda,” Newsday, Nov. 4, 1988, pp. 5, 22.

10. “Ex-Caseworker Tells of ‘Filth,’” Newsday, Nov. 4, 1988, pp. 5, 22. The trancelike, zombielike, or detached state of consciousness which many observed in Nussbaum indicates severe, prolonged trauma and a coercive process very far advanced. See Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic, 1992), pp. 42–43.

11. Pete Hamill, New York Post, Dec. 13, 1988, p. 2.

12. William Glaberson, “Why Hedda Nussbaum Fascinates: Most Can Identify,” New York Times, Dec. 9, 1988, p. B1.

13. Herman, Trauma, p. 84.

14. Herman, Trauma, p. 60. Herman also notes: “Though highly resilient people have the best chance of surviving relatively unscathed, no personal attribute of the victim is sufficient in itself to offer reliable protection” (pp. 59–60).

15. Herman, Trauma, p. 115. Herman also explains: “Most people have no knowledge or understanding of the psychological changes of captivity. Social judgment of chronically traumatized people therefore tends to be extremely harsh” (p. 115). Judgment also seems to depend upon how the victim sustained the trauma, a factor commonly related to gender. Public and press responded generously to the sometimes inappropriate behavior of candidate William Stockdale during the 1992 vice-presidential debate, sensing that allowances must be made for a man who was a longtime prisoner of war. Would allowances be made for a similar performance by a woman if it were made known that she had been a longtime battered woman?

16. Sam Ehrlich, Lisa, Hedda & Joel: The Steinberg Murder Case (New York: St. Martin’s, 1989), pp. 134–35; Timothy Clifford, “Nussbaum Got Break in Secret Deal,” Newsday, Oct. 21, 1988, p. 4; Clifford, “Web of details clouded probe,” and “Hedda to tell jury of events,” Newsday, Oct. 27, 1988, pp. 5, 23.

17. Gail Collins, “Our values on trial, too,” Daily News, Dec. 2, 1988, p. 33.

18. Judy Mann, “Steinberg’s Excuse Works,” Washington Post, Feb. 1, 1989, p. B3. Emphasis mine.

19. Douglas Martin, “Keeping Watch At a Funeral That Never Ends,” New York Times, Dec. 17, 1988, p. 29.

20. Murray Kempton, “Judging Becomes Hard Job,” Newsday, Jan. 19, 1989, p. 18.

21. Johnson, “What Lisa Knew,” p. 184; talk show discussions included “Oprah Winfrey,” “Metro Week in Review,” “The Eleventh Hour,” and “Nightline.”

22. Susan Brownmiller, “Hedda Nussbaum, Hardly a Heroine …” New York Times, Feb. 2, 1989, p. A25. Brownmiller’s novel is Waverly Place (New York: Grove, 1989).

23. Bob Herbert, “Abusive hands & helping hands,” Daily News, Dec. 6, 1988, p. 4.

24. Mike Capuzzo, “A horror close to home,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 19, 1989, pp. 1K, 8K.

25. See Paula Span, “Women Protest ‘Hedda-Bashing,’” Washington Post, March 13, 1989, pp. B1, B4; Barbara Whitaker, “Feminists: Don’t Blame the Victims,” Newsday, March 25, 1989, p. 10.

26. Glaberson, New York Times, Dec. 9, 1988.

27. Carol Stocker, “The jury’s out on Nussbaum,” Boston Globe, Jan. 24, 1989, pp. 23–24.

28. Mike Santangelo and Stuart Marques, “Steinberg is guilty say alternate jurors,” Daily News, Jan. 24, 1989, p. 3.

29. Jim Nolan and Karen Phillips, “Dismissed Juror: I Would Have Found Joel Guilty,” New York Post, Jan. 24, 1989, p. 4.

30. John Kifner, “Steinberg Jury: Arguing, Laughter and a Verdict,” New York Times, Feb. 1, 1989, p. B4.

31. Ronald Sullivan, “Steinberg Is Guilty of First-Degree Manslaughter,” New York Times, Jan. 31, 1989, pp. 1, B5. In August 1991 the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court upheld Steinberg’s conviction, rejecting his contention that he had been denied a fair trial. “Steinberg Conviction Upheld,” New York Times, Aug. 9, 1991, p. B3.

32. Kifner, New York Times, Feb. 1, 1989, p. B4.

33. Frank Bruni, Esther Pessin, Marilyn Matlick and Ann V. Bollinger, “Jury’s Battle Over Hedda,” New York Post, Jan. 31, 1989, pp. 4, 18.

34. Kifner, New York Times, Feb. 1, 1989, p. B4.

35. “On Trial,” a BBC Television video documentary, filmed in New York City, February 1989.

36. Kifner, New York Times, Feb. 1, 1989, p. B4.

37. Timothy Clifford, “Steinberg Gets Top Term of 8 1/3–25 Years in Prison, Ex-lawyer says, ‘I’m the victim,”’ Newsday, March 25, 1989, pp. 5, 11; Ronald Sullivan, “Steinberg Given Maximum Term of 8 1/3 to 25 Years in Child’s Death,” New York Times, March 25, 1989, pp. 1, 32.

38. Stocker, Boston Globe, Jan. 24, 1989, pp. 23–24.

39. Ken Gross, reporting for People, quoted by Patricia Volk, “The Steinberg Trial: Scenes From A Tragedy,” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 15, 1989, p. 25.

40. Beatrix Campbell, “The Trail of Terror,” The Guardian, Jan. 2, 1989, p. 15.

41. Elaine Hilberman, “Overview: The ‘Wife-Beater’s Wife’ Reconsidered,” American Journal of Psychiatry 137, no. 11 (Nov. 1980), 1341–42.

42. Ibid.

43. Susan Schechter, Ending Violence Against Women and Children in Massachusetts Families: Critical Steps for the Next Five Years, unpublished report (Boston Foundation, 1992), p. 3, citing studies reported in Lenore E. Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome (New York: Springer, 1984); Evan Stark and Anne Flitcraft, “Women and Children at Risk: A Feminist Perspective on Child Abuse,” International Journal of Health Services 18, no. 1 (1988); Linda McKibben et al., “Victimization of Mothers of Abused Children: A Controlled Study,” Pediatrics 84 (September 1989); and a 1989 report of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services.

44. Coercing the victim to violate her own moral principles is the abuser’s final step in bringing her under control; he often accomplishes this step by forcing her to witness or participate in abuse of her children. In Trauma and Recovery, Judith Lewis Herman describes this forced betrayal of “her basic human attachments” as the “most destructive of all coercive techniques.” She writes: “This pattern of betrayal may begin with apparently small concessions but eventually progresses to the point where even the most outrageous physical or sexual abuse of the children is borne in silence. At this point, the demoralization of the battered woman is complete” (p. 83).

45. Judith Lewis Herman describes the powerless and severely traumatized battered woman in a passage in Trauma and Recovery that might have been written with Hedda Nussbaum in mind: “In most cases the victim has not given up. But she has learned that every action will be watched, that most actions will be thwarted, and that she will pay dearly for failure.… She will perceive any exercise of her own initiative as insubordination. Before undertaking any action, she will scan the environment, expecting retaliation.… To the chronically traumatized person, any action has potentially dire consequences. There is no room for mistakes” (p. 91).

46. The end result of the process I’m describing may suggest the concept of “learned helplessness” first applied to battered women by psychologist Lenore Walker. See Lenore Walker, The Battered Woman (New York: Harper and Row, 1979). Since Walker reported in 1979 the findings of her early studies of battered women, researchers and advocates have learned much more about the active strategies women use for coping, fighting back, and getting free. Even severely traumatized women, like Hedda Nussbaum, struggle, though their efforts may be counterproductive, misguided, or so dramatically constricted as to amount to inaction. (See Herman, Trauma, pp. 90–91.) In extreme cases, victims may lose the will to live. What makes one case worse than another is the severity of the trauma itself, and that depends directly upon the batterer’s degree of violence and remorselessness, as Angela Browne found in studying battered women who killed extremely abusive men. See Angela Browne, When Battered Women Kill (New York: Free Press, 1987), pp. 181–86.

47. Ronald Sullivan, “Nussbaum Testifies to Not Hearing Noise,” New York Times, Dec. 13, 1988, p. B3.

48. Ehrlich, Lisa, Hedda & Joel, p. 22; “A Love Betrayed, A Brief Life Lost,” People, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 87.

49. Ehrlich, Lisa, Hedda & Joel, p. 22.

50. Interview with Naomi Weiss, Dec. 10, 1988.

51. Ibid.

52. Ehrlich, Lisa, Hedda & Joel, pp. 24–26.

53. People, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 87.

54. Herman, Trauma, p. 74.

55. Marianne Yen, “Sympathy for Nussbaum Has Limits,” Washington Post, Dec. 9, 1988, p. A4.

56. Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2d edition.

57. Suzanne Daley, “For Nussbaum, Journey To Understanding Is Slow,” New York Times, Dec. 1, 1988, p. B9.

58. Ehrlich, Lisa, Hedda & Joel, p. 27.

59. People, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 88.

60. Ibid.

61. Ehrlich, Lisa, Hedda & Joel, p. 138. This information about Steinberg’s history of violence was presented by Assistant District Attorney John McCusker at a closed bail hearing on June 8, 1988, and was excluded from the trial.

62. Ehrlich, Lisa, Hedda & Joel, p. 31. In press conferences, Adrian DiLuzio, one of Steinberg’s defense attorneys, repeatedly cited Nussbaum’s reference to “the best number of months … in my whole life” as evidence that Nussbaum loved being abused, a clear and probably deliberate distortion of her testimony that the “best times” were periods, sometimes lasting many months, when Steinberg did not physically abuse her.

63. In Trauma and Recovery Judith Lewis Herman describes the traumatic bonding that may occur between a battered woman and her abuser: “The repeated experience of terror and reprieve, especially within the isolated context of a love relationship, may result in a feeling of intense, almost worshipful dependence upon an all-powerful, godlike authority. The victim may live in terror of his wrath, but she may also view him as the source of strength, guidance, and life itself” (p. 92).

64. Dee L. R. Graham, Edna Rawlings, and Nelly Rimini, “Survivors of Terror: Battered Women, Hostages, and the Stockholm Syndrome,” in Yllo and Bograd, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse, p. 221.

65. People, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 88.

66. Ibid., p. 87.

67. Many commentators misread symptoms produced by the situation as pre-existing qualities of Nussbaum’s character and the “cause” of her victimization. Susan Brownmiller, for example, wrote that only an “extreme narcissist” could succumb to this “joint madness” with Steinberg, citing as evidence Nussbaum’s intense preoccupation with self and self-improvement; but this program of renovating the self to suit the controller, undertaken at his insistence to please and pacify him, is a commonplace survival strategy, sometimes mistaken for “narcissism,” yet clearly quite the opposite. See Brownmiller, New York Times, Feb. 2, 1989, p. A25.

68. Herman, Trauma, p. 57, citing B. L. Green, M. C. Grace, J. D. Lindy et al., “Risk Factors for PTSD and Other Diagnoses in a General Sample of Vietnam Veterans,” American Journal of Psychiatry 174 (1990): 729–33.

69. People, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 89.

70. Maury Terry, “Joel Steinberg’s Version,” Vanity Fair, May 1988, p. 122. Nussbaum also told Bellevue doctors that Lisa had been sexually abused by friends with whom the child stayed on Long Island during the previous summer (while Nussbaum herself apparently underwent a “breakdown.”) At Steinberg’s trial, she testified about the incident of sexual abuse, which she believed, rightly or wrongly, to have occurred, and she was widely criticized for her failure to report it earlier. In fact, she had reported it, albeit months after it supposedly took place, to the Bellevue doctors.

71. Ehrlich, Lisa, Hedda & Joel, p. 50.

72. People, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 90.

73. Ronald Sullivan, “Defense Tries to Show Nussbaum Liked Pain,” New York Times, Dec. 9, 1988, p. B2.

74. People, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 90.

75. Sullivan, New York Times, Dec. 9, 1988, p. B2.

76. Graham et al., “Survivors,” p. 222, citing Brooks McClure, “Hostage Survival,” Conflict 1, nos. 1 and 2 (1978): 43.

77. Graham et al., “Survivors,” p. 220, citing Martin Symonds, “Victim’s Responses to Terror: Understanding and Treatment,” in Victims of Terrorism, ed. Frank M. Ochberg and David A. Soskis (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982); Elaine Hilberman, “Overview: The ‘Wife-Beater’s Wife’ Revisited,” American Journal of Psychiatry 137, no. 11 (1980): 1343, citing Martin Symonds, “Victims of Violence: Psychological Effects and After-effects,” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 35 (1975): 19–26, and “The Rape Victim: Psychological Patterns of Response,” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 36 (1976): 27–34.

78. Graham et al., “Survivors,” p. 220.

79. People, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 90.

80. Ibid., emphasis mine.

81. Graham et al., “Survivors,” p. 217.

82. Christine McGuire and Carla Norton, Perfect Victim (New York: Morrow, 1988), pp. 286–88.

83. Sullivan, New York Times, Dec. 9, 1988, p. B2.

84. Marianne Yen, “Former Lover Testifies To Control by Steinberg,” Washington Post, Dec. 3, 1988, p. A3. Emphasis mine.

85. On the need for a new psychiatric diagnosis to distinguish the more complex syndrome that follows upon prolonged, repeated stress from simple post-traumatic stress disorder, see Herman, Trauma pp. 118–122.

86. Ehrlich, Lisa, Hedda & Joel, p. 56.

87. Ibid., pp. 56–57.

88. Patrick Clark and Stuart Marques, “Joel’s 20 rules,” Daily News, Dec. 2, 1988, p. 4; People, Feb. 13, 1989, p. 90.

89. Graham et al., “Survivors,” p. 224.

90. Steven Erlanger, “Neighbors Say Abuse Was Reported,” New York Times, Nov. 4, 1987, p. B4. Steinberg trained Nussbaum to be quiet by hitting her more if she “made noise.”

91. Ibid.

92. Johnson, “What Lisa Knew,” pp. 8, 181.

93. Ellis Henican et al., “Parents Troubled Path,” Newsday, Nov. 10, 1987, p. 3.

94. Erlanger, New York Times, Nov. 4, 1987, p. B2; Patrick Clark and Stuart Marques, “Neighbor tells of Hedda beatings,” Daily News, Dec. 20, 1988, p. 7.

95. Ehrlich, Lisa, Hedda & Joel, p. 190.

96. Ibid., pp. 192–93.

97. Daphne Merkin, “The Couple Next Door,” 7 Days, Dec. 7, 1988, p. 8.

98. Johnson, “What Lisa Knew,” p. 180.

99. Merkin, “The Couple Nexr Door,” p. 8.

100. Johnson, “What Lisa Knew,” p. 178. See also Joyce Johnson, What Lisa Knew: The Truth and Lies of the Steinberg Case (New York: Putnam, 1990).

101. Murray Kempton, “The Truth About Herself That Hedda Fails to See,” Newsday, Dec. 18, 1988, p. 8.

102. Susan Brownmiller, “Madly in Love,” Ms., April 1989, p. 64.

103. “The Fascination of Abomination,” editorial, New York Times, Feb. 1, 1989, p. A24.

104. Timothy Clifford, “Steinberg Gets Top Term of 8 1/3–25 Years in Prison, Ex-lawyer says, ‘I’m the victim,’” Newsday, March 25, 1989, pp. 5, 11. Nussbaum filed a civil suit against Steinberg, alleging in part that he subjected her to brainwashing and torture. Michele Launders and Nicole Smiegel, the birth mothers of Lisa and “Mitchell,” also brought civil actions against Steinberg, Nussbaum, and various city officials. As of September 1993, the Nussbaum and Launders suits were still under litigation, the status of the Smiegel suit unknown.

105. Kenneth Keniston, “Wife Beating and the Rule of Thumb,” New York Times Book Review, May 8, 1988, p. 12, reviewing Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence: Boston 1880–1960.

106. Interview with Naomi Weiss, Dec. 10, 1988.

107. Erianger, New York Times, Nov. 4, 1987, p. B2.

7. What Can We Do?

1. Letter from Marilyn French, June 1992. Such men, incidentally, often abuse their wives most severely during pregnancy, fearful of their impending loss of power, jealous of the child who will compete for all that “wifely devotion” they’ve enjoyed. Such attacks, which may be seen as a kind of child abuse in utero, replicate within the individual family the cultural/historical competition between the privilege of the father and the rights of the child.

2. John J. O’Connor, “Downfall of the American Family,” New York Times, March 24, 1992, p. C16.

3. “Family Income Study,” Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 1992.

4. Joan Zorza, “Woman Battering: A Major Cause of Homelessness,” Clearinghouse Review 25, no. 4 (1991): 421–29.

5. Elisabeth Griffith, In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 102.

6. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years & More: Reminiscences, 1815–1897 (New York: Schocken, 1971), p. 225.

7. Griffith, In Her Own Right, p. 102.

8. Elizabeth Pleck, Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy Against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 101–105.

9. Stanton, Eighty Years & More, p. 233.

10. For a full critique of the highly publicized Weitzman study which found divorced women and their children destined for “impoverishment,” see Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown, 1991), pp. 19–27.

11. Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, p. 102.

12. “Love Story Ends in Hate,” Newsday, March 27, 1990, pp. 5, 28. Gonzalez was convicted in 1991 of all 176 charges against him, including 87 counts of felony murder and murder with depraved indifference; he was imprisoned for 25 years to life (Facts on File, 1991).

13. Ibid.

14. Jimmy Breslin, “Too Great A Deed For a Weak Man,” Newsday, March 27, 1990, p. 4.

15. Annette Fuentes, “Let’s Get Lidia,” Village Voice, April 10, 1990, p. 16.

16. Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Vintage, 1989), p. 555.

17. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869; rpt. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1970), p. 3.

18. Ibid., p. 50.

19. Ibid., p. 19.

20. Representative Patricia Schroeder, Commencement Address at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, May 24, 1992. Feminists around the world seek to have nations and international tribunals, such as the United Nations, declare gender violence a violation of human rights. See Women, Violence And Human Rights, Report of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (New Brunswick, N.J.: Douglass College, Rutgers University, 1992).

21. Interview with Sarah, New York City, October 3, 1987.

22. “Promising Practices: Improving the Criminal Justice Response to Violence Against Women” is available from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (800-851-3420), Reference Number NCJ-1772217.

23. Pamela Loprest, Families Who Left Welfare: Who Are They and How Are They Doing (The Urban Institute, 1999).

24. In 1997, “extreme poverty” fell below an income of $6,401 for a family of three, or $8,200 for a family of four. Deborah Weinstein, director of the Children’s Defense Fund’s Family Income Division, describes the losses suffered by children in poverty—“stunted growth, lower academic test scores, and lower earnings years later”—as “lifelong losses.” News Release, Children’s Defense Fund, August 22, 1999.

25. R. Emerson Dobash and Russell P. Dobash, Women, Violence and Social Change (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 73–76.

26. Susan Schechter, “Ending Violence Against Women and Children in Massachusetts Families: Critical Steps for the Next Five Years” (Boston: Massachusetts Coalition of Battered Women Service Groups, November 1992), p. 14.

27. Ibid., p. 28.

28. Interview with Coral McDonnell, training coordinator, Domestic Abuse Intervention Project, November 9, 1999.

29. Anne H. Flitcraft, “Violence, Values, and Gender,” JAMA: The journal of the American Medical Association 267 (June 17, 1992): 3194, citing P.M. Marzuk, K. Tardiff, and C.S. Hirsch, “The Epidemiology of Murder-Suicide,” JAMA 267 (1992): 3179–83. The common motivation cited is the batterer’s fear of the “infidelity” or departure of his wife or girlfriend.

30. Schechter, “Ending Violence Against Women,” p. 63. Reviewing studies of how children are affected by witnessing battery, Susan Schechter sums up: “Batterers place their children at risk in many ways. Marital violence is associated with low self-esteem in girls, aggression and behavior problems in boys and girls, reduced social competence, depression and anxiety.” Ibid., p. 17. Another review of case studies found only one variable to be strongly associated with men’s use of violence against female partners, and that was having witnessed parental violence in childhood. See Gerald T. Hotaling and David B. Sugarman, “An Analysis of Risk Markers in Husband to Wife Violence: The Current State of Knowledge,” Violence and Victims 1, no. 2 (1986): 101–124.

31. A few women are imprisoned for long terms for killing a female intimate partner; their cases should also be reexamined for a history of battery.

32. One example: in 1985, then-governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts moved to bring police, prosecutors, court clerks, and judges into compliance with the Commonwealth’s 1978 abuse prevention statute after a task force found they disregarded the law.

33. Elizabeth M. Schneider, “Legal Reform Efforts to Assist Battered Women: Past, Present and Future,” unpublished report (Ford Foundation, July 1990), p. 51.

34. Elizabeth M. Schneider, “The Violence of Privacy,” 23 Connecticut Law Review 1991: 973, 991.

35. Michael A. Rodriguez, Heidi M. Bauer, Elizabeth McLoughlin, Kevin Grumbach, “Screening and Intervention for Intimate Partner Abuse: Practices and Attitudes of Primary Care Physicians,” JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 282 (August 4, 1999): 468–74.

36. “Violence Against Women: Relevance for Medical Practitioners,” JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 267 (June 17, 1992): 3189.

37. Jeffrey L. Edleson, “The Overlap Between Child Maltreatment and Woman Abuse,” VAWnet: National Electronic Network on Violence Against Woman (1997, rev. 1999).

38. “Family Violence: Emerging Programs for Battered Mothers and Their Children,” Family Violence Department of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (1998), pp. 15–19.

39. Private communication from Anne Menard, former director of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, December 2, 1999.

40. Tess Catalano, “Solve center’s real problem,” letter to the editor, Iowa City Press Citizen, Feb. 24, 1992, p. 5A.

41. Schneider, “Legal Reform Efforts to Assist Battered Women,” p. 80.

42. Interview with Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, November 9, 1999.

43. Anne Menard, former director of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, Address to the Alaska Governor’s Domestic Violence Summit, December 10, 1997.

44. “Family Violence: Emerging Programs for Battered Mothers and Their Children,” pp. 47–51.

45. Interview with a woman in Massachusetts who requested anonymity, March 17, 1992.

46. Lee H. Bowker, “Publishing Feminist Research: A Personal Note by Lee Bowker,” in Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse, ed. Kersti Yllo and Michele Bograd (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1988), pp. 170–73.

47. James Ptacek, “Why Do Men Batter Their Wives?” in Yllo and Bograd, eds., Feminist Perspectives, pp. 152–53. Ptacek notes that both clinical literature and the criminal justice system accept the most common excuse of the batterer (that he “lost control”) and his most common justification (that he was “provoked” by the woman). Ptacek concludes: “Clinical and criminal justice responses to battering are revealed as ideological in the light of their collusion with batterers rationalizations” (pp. 152, 155).

48. David Adams, Jann Jackson, and Mary Lauby, “Family Violence Research: Aid or Obstacle to the Battered Women’s Movement?” Response 2, no. 3 (1988): 14–16.

49. Interview with Karen Artichoker, director of Shelter Administration and the Sacred Circle, Cangleska, Inc., Pine Ridge, SD, November 10, 1999.

50. “Ending Domestic Violence: Report From the Global Frontlines,” ed. Leni Marin, Helen Zia, and Esta Soler (San Francisco: Family Violence Prevention Fund, n.d.), p. 60.

51. Interview with Esta Soler, executive director, Family Violence Prevention Fund, November 8, 1999.

52. Interview with Cynthia Newcomer, director of public education, National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, December 1, 1999.

53. “NDVH Facts,” National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1999.

54. Betsy Groves, “The Child Witness to Violence Project,” Discharge Planning Update (March–April, 1994): 17; see also Betsy McAlister Groves and Sally Mazur, “Shelter from the Storm: Using the Classroom to Help Children Cope with Violence” Exchange (March 1995): 47–49.

55. Groves, “The Child Witness to Violence Project,” p. 15, citing J. Davidson and R. Smith, “Traumatic Experiences in Psychiatric Outpatients,” Journal of Traumatic Stress Studies 3, no. 3 (July 1990): 459–75.

56. “Violence Against Women: Relevance for Medical Practitioners,” JAMA 267 (June 17, 1992): 3187.

57. Dobash and Dobash, Women, Violence and Social Change, p. 269.

58. That violence is mainly a male problem is illustrated by the immense gender gap in the incidence of violent crime. According to statistics compiled for the years 1993–1997 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are almost 2.1 million violent female offenders annually in the U.S., about 14 percent of all violent offenders. Three out of four violent female offenders commit simple assaults on other women. There are about 13.1 million male offenders annually, about 86 percent of all violent offenders; and like women, they usually victimize their own sex—seven out of ten times. Only 29 percent of violent offenders choose a victim of the opposite sex; significantly nine out of ten of these offenders are males with female victims. AP, “Deep Troubles Seen Amid Plenty,” Boston Globe, December 6, 1999, p. 1, 3.