Women's Criminality Disturbs the Social Order
One must tread lightly when attempting to discern the underlying
factors that give rise to the social order in any given place
and time. Throughout history, men have committed more crimes
particularly violent crimes than women, but noteworthy shifts
occur when women commit any crimes, particularly violent ones.
"Women criminals today seem to spark a special fear, fantasy
and overreaction in male society." (Jones 1996, 3 citing
the magazine Oui)
Women have historically been scapegoats. During the Salem witch
trials of 1692, for instance, women (and some men) who were accused
of practicing witchcraft were publicly hanged, drowned, and burned
alive at the stake. People were more afraid of witchcraft than
of the accused witches themselves. They sought to challenge feared
shifts in the social order and loss of male privilege. Group panic
rather than logic drove the populace to scapegoat predominantly
female "witches."
Centuries later, in 1941, a new brand of sociologists, organizing as the American Society of Criminologists, came to the fore in Berkeley, California. They concentrated their efforts on crimes committed by men. These "experts" ignored women's criminality and how gender differences affect crime rates. In 1979, The National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union reported that "Although there clearly is not a 'new breed' of violent women, there is almost certainly a new attitude toward women within the criminal justice system."
An Extraordinary Level of Denial: "Defending Our Lives"
"If you have not been beaten, stalked and abused then
you have been truly blessed. This is an opportunity to thank God
that you have been spared that. But I would argue it means that
you have an even greater responsibility to try to understand and
empathize with those who live with that." Sarah Buell
Feeling abandoned by church and community, and seeing no other
alternatives, an abuse victim may be driven to kill her abuser
to save her own life. The Emmy-award winning documentary "Defending
Our Lives," a film about the magnitude and severity of domestic
violence in this country, opens the door to the lives of five
battered women from Massachusetts who used killing violence to
end their abuse and the aftermath of that choice. A note on the
cover of the videotape reads:
"Every person in this documentary is an expert; each has experienced firsthand the terror of domestic violence. These women were forced to defend their lives, and this documentary captures the cruel irony of putting them behind bars once they have finally escaped their abusers."
The documentarians exemplify each woman's life by juxtaposing a high school graduation picture with a police photo of her bruised body as she is examined by an emergency responder after having been beaten and abused by an intimate partner. The narrator is Sarah Buell, assistant district attorney with the Suffolk County (Massachusetts) Domestic Violence Unit. She herself is a former battered woman. She describes all manner of abuse committed against women and proclaims: "Yes, there is a war against women and children in this country."
Buell recalled growing up in New York City and being warned never
to walk alone in parks and "unsavory places" where a
man might jump out of the bushes to attack her, but she said,
"No one said, 'You need to be careful who you bring home.'
We don't say that to our daughters, our sisters, our brothers.
We engage in an extraordinary level of denial about the extent
of family violence as it occurs in Massachusetts and across this
country." The FBI has said that one of every two women will
be in a violent relationship in their lifetime, "not because
fifty percent of all men are batterers, but because we as a their
community and society fail to hold them accountable."
Excerpts from "Defending Our Lives" offer personal
testimony to the hell battered women endure, the choices they
felt forced to make, and how society answers their cries for justice.
__________
Shannon Booker
Shannon described her life as terror filled. Her husband had
beaten and threatened to kill her numerous times. "This night
was more fearful than ever. When I took Jose's life, a part of
me died too. But I had to defend my life. It was either me or
him. I'm the victim here, and now I'm being victimized by the
system."
__________
Patty Hennesy
"You feel like it's you that is provoking his behavior.
But no matter what you do to make him happy, the abuse continues.
You end up staying because you really want to believe that the
person you love loves you back. Every living human person needs
to believe that they are loved. Because you hate what they're
doing doesn't mean you hate them and you want to believe they
will change. I knew he was going to kill me that day. The police,
the courts should have protected me. It didn't have to be this
way. If a stranger had done this to me , [the police] would have
stopped him. But because he was my husband, they won't help. I
don't understand it."
__________
Meekah Scott
In her speech to a law school class, Meekah Scott said, "Twenty
women dead in eleven months it's crazy. I could have been
one of these statistics but I fought back." Meekah Scott
was sentenced to 8-12 years for killing her abusive husband.
This drama about domestic abuse and women who use killing violence
in Massachusetts should be a wake-up call for Mainers who believe
they are free from such big-city occurrences. The fact is, Maine
is not immune from domestic violence. Bowdoin College or even
Bangor Theological Seminary could make a similar documentary that
tells the story of more than five Maine women who also have stopped
their abuse by killing their abuser.
One of those women who survived her abuse only to be imprisoned for saving her life is Vella Gogan. By valuing and mining her survivor knowledge, the community the church, police, courts will be better equipped to witness and tell the truth of her trauma. It is incumbent on the community not to wring its collective hands in the face of such brokenness and violence, but to activate empathy to imagine a different ending to the story.