Battered Women Doing Time : Injustice in the Criminal Justice System [1 ed.] 9781626372924, 9781935049791

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BATTERED WOMEN DOING TIME

BATTERED WOMEN DOING TIME Injustice in the Criminal Justice System

Rachel Zimmer Schneider

Published in the United States of America in 2014 by FirstForumPress A division of Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.firstforumpress.com www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by FirstForumPress A division of Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2014 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-1-935049-79-1 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. This book was produced from digital files prepared by the author using the FirstForumComposer. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

1

Strength, Resilience, and Survival

2

Life Before Prison

15

3

The Killing and the Aftermath

35

4

Life on the Inside

49

5

Clemency: Denied

65

6

Clemency: Granted

89

7

Deserving or Not?

115

8

Making Sense of It All

125

Appendix A: The Research Process Appendix B: Summary of Women Bibliography Index

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133 141 143 151

Acknowledgments

I am forever grateful for the women who shared their stories for this book. I have learned so much from them and I hope this book provides them a voice. Without them and their willingness to talk to me this book would not have happened. Beyond the women I interviewed, I also am very thankful for the continued guidance and mentorship from my main advisor and mentor, Kathryn Feltey, at the University of Akron. She provided countless hours of encouragement, advice, editing, and expertise throughout this process. She taught me to listen more and see the often invisible niceties of people’s lives (without judging). Thank you for being there for me throughout the many different roads I’ve traveled! I am also immensely grateful for Patricia Gagné at the University of Lousiville for trusting me with all of her data (along with Kathryn Feltey) and allowing me to use what I needed so I could further develop my study. Thank you for the many phone calls and e-mails when I was in the early stages of developing this project and for reviewing it once I completed the book. There were many others who served as mentors and editors throughout this process that deserve recognition. Thank you to those at the University of Akron: Matthew Lee, Gay Kitson, Amy Kroska, Sandra Perosa, and Stacey Nofziger. I also greatly appreciate Gayle Bickle’s work at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections where she helped me navigate the prison research bureaucracy. Thank you to Sammy Dyer who helped locate some of the women granted clemency. Finally, I am forever grateful to Andrew Berzanskis, acquisitions editor at Lynne Rienner Publishers, for providing the opportunity for me to write this book. He provides a great mix of encouragement and patience. His “gentle nudging” helped me to finally finish this book! Needless to say, I would not have been able to complete this book without the steadfast support and love from my family and friends. Thank you to my graduate school friends: Michelle Bemiller, Wendy Grove, Jean-Anne Sutherland, and Vicki Hunter. I treasure the time we spend together and know that without our writing/laughing/wine group

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this book would not have transpired. You provided encouragement and renewed my spirit to keep writing and moving forward. Finally, I am endlessly grateful to my family. Thank you to my mom and dad, Judy Quill and Harold Zimmer, who have loved me unconditionally and never questioned my academic aspirations or my “passion” for prisoners and domestic violence. Thank you for always encouraging me to do what I love. Last, but not least, I am forever thankful for my husband, Lee Schneider, and my two daughters, Olivia and Hannah. I am so lucky to have such a kind, compassionate, caring partner. Lee has been with me every step of the way and I do not know how I would have accomplished all of this without his support. I am grateful for his love, respect, sense of humor, editing skills, and belief in me! Olivia and Hannah entered my life as I was finishing this project. I am thankful for their giggles, which remind me of the significance of all the small wonders of the world. My daughters have also been the inspiration for completing this book; the women in this book are all someone’s daughters and their stories should be heard. I dedicate this book to Olivia and Hannah.

1 Strength, Survival, and Resilience

On a crisp fall day in 2004, I walked into Jackie’s home and waited for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light in the dining room where Jackie was sitting with all the shades drawn. Jackie, a 70-year-old African American woman, has trouble getting around since her days in prison 15 years ago. She suffers from arthritis, high blood pressure, and diabetes which she never had until getting out of prison. Meeting her on the street, no one would have guessed she spent 10 years and 10 months in a penitentiary for killing her husband. Jackie doesn’t have the look of the women featured on such television shows as Lock-Down or Women Behind Bars. Nor does she have any resemblance to actors who have played battered women who killed, such as Jennifer Lopez in Enough, Julia Roberts in Sleeping with the Enemy, or Farrah Fawcett in The Burning Bed. Even though her story is not a featured blockbuster hit, it very well could be. After 25 years of being tied to the bed, burnt with matches, having bottles shoved inside her vagina, and multiple attempts on her life, she reflected back in her interview with me and said she was “tired.” Like other battered women who eventually kill their intimate partners, Jackie’s story is no different. The abuse she described was extreme, frequent, and sadistic. She was young when she married. She viewed the initial abuse as “just jealousy,” and the abuse continued to escalate the longer she was with her husband. This was especially the case after they were married and had children, which made it even more difficult to leave. She explained this saying, “‘cause after we accumulated so much, material things was there, and the kids was there, and I just couldn’t see just walking off, throwing away a whole lifetime of work.” Not only did the abuse escalate, the control tactics her husband used increased as well and furthered her isolation from others. She said,

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Battered Women Doing Time

So then he started locking the doors, taking my car keys, hiring detectives to watch the … investigators to watch the house. I had to keep a log. If I went to the store, I had to write down what time I went to the store, what time I come back, what did I buy.

Like other abused women who kill, Jackie did make multiple attempts to seek help. In fact, most battered women do eventually leaveit usually just takes time (5-7 attempts is the average).1 One of Jackie’s survival techniques was to stash money in the freezer wrapped up in something like a piece of meat so she could eventually escape. She also relied on the police to help her, but this was the 1970s and ’80s and unfortunately the police were still under the impression that intimate partner violence was a private family matter.2 It was domestic. And they [police] said they could not interfere. They said, “but we talked to him. So it would be alright.” And said, “if something happens, he start up again, call us.” I went and got like a … it’s similar to a restraining order … and he tore it up and threw it on the prosecutor’s desk. He said this will not stop me. He said that she’s my wife and she’s going to do what I tell her. He said this is not going to keep me from hitting her.

This is one of the key differences between battered women who kill and those who do not kill—the ability to successfully leave the relationship.3 Battered women who kill are often left with very few options. They usually have sought advice and guidance from others and are often blamed for the abuse they are trying to escape. Even though the encounter Jackie had with the police is not as common today because of changes in law enforcement practices, many women who kill still describe situations in which police did not listen to them, their religious leaders blamed them, their families turned a blind eye, and/or shelters were only temporary fixes. The turning point for Jackie came when her husband began threatening her life and her mother’s life—she truly believed he would kill both of them. Most battered women who kill describe a similar realization, that their lives or the lives of their loved ones (frequently their children) were in danger.4 The idea of “kill or be killed” becomes a reality for them. The events that led up to Jackie killing her husband started with an argument over money on a Friday afternoon. Jackie’s mother, who was present during this fight, stepped in and confronted her son-in-law about the abuse. He then threatened to kill both Jackie and her mother if a certain amount of money wasn’t collected by Monday morning.

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3

Jackie shot her sleeping husband with his gun that Friday evening after his threat. When Jackie was interviewed, right after her release from prison, she recalled the shooting and her breaking point, It’s a thing you go through, just all these years, you sit down and it’s the mental strain, it’s the physical abuse, a lot of it is sexual abuse too. It’s like something in your mind just goes blank and you just tired. You just tired. I guess that’s the best way I can say it because I didn’t even know how many times I had shot him until my trial. All I know is I got the gun and I just kept shooting and shooting and shooting. I do remember he asked: “Why are you doing this? It hurts call an ambulance.” And I remember telling him no, I was tired … I guess really you can’t explain, it’s hard to explain because it’s not something that you would just go and pick up and do. It’s just like you’re mind goes blank and you just don’t care anymore, you just don’t care. The only thing that you care about is this person not being able to hurt you anymore. That’s all you care about.

Women who kill their intimate partners are more likely to kill in self-defense and there tends to be a history of battering. When Lenore Walker interviewed abused women who killed for her book Terrifying Love,5 she found very few actually killed out of jealousy or revenge. Most reported that they killed out of fear for their lives. According to their accounts, they endured emotional, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse before they killed their partners. They explained that if they did not kill their partners, their partners would kill them. Ironically, leaving an abusive relationship tends to be the most dangerous time for women. Abusers are more likely to kill during this time than any other time in the relationship.6 Self-Defense Law and Gender Bias

Jackie, just like the women in Lenore Walker’s book, feared for her life and claimed she shot her husband in self-defense. Unfortunately at her trial she was unable to tell her full story of abuse. In Justifiable Homicide, Cynthia Gillespie7 claims that self-defense law was never constructed to take into account women’s experiences with battering. In order to argue self-defense, a woman must prove that she was in imminent danger at the time of the attack and that this fear of imminent danger was reasonable. The problem arises when we look at what constitutes a reasonable fear. Traditionally, the assessment of reasonableness was based on an objective standard which compared the person’s actions to a white, middle-class man (a reasonable person).8

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Battered Women Doing Time

Yet, not everyone perceives the world in the same way. A person’s skin color, gender, socioeconomic status, age, and sexual orientation all contribute to different sets of experiences and perceptions. A woman in a battering situation may perceive her options to leave quite differently than a man. Another area of self-defense law that disregards women is the assumption that the two people fighting are of equal size, height, weight, and physical build. Excessive force is not necessary to defend oneself. Only if the attacker is armed can a woman use a weapon to defend herself. When applying this to a violent intimate relationship, it does not take into account that a person’s body can be used as a weapon. Lenore Walker and other researchers9 found that weapons had not injured most abused women; instead the injuries had resulted from their partners fists. Many of these women reported being thrown across the room, hit, punched, kicked, stomped on, and choked. For these women, using a gun or a knife was the only way they could successfully defend themselves. The presumptions of self defense law only allowed Jackie to talk about the actual shooting at her trial. She could not disclose the 25 years of battering or the multiple threats against her and her family members. Jackie also could not talk about one of her abuser’s favorite pastimes where he would take her to a park and stand her between trees as he used the trees for target practice. The last time he took her to the park he told her next time the trees would not be his only target. Coupled with this experience and the threats against her mother, Jackie felt her life and her family’s lives were in jeopardy. The story the jury heard was how she shot her sleeping (and defenseless) husband and when he awoke and begged her to stop, she continued shooting until he was dead. Jackie was convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years to life at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. The Battered Woman’s Syndrome and the Law

Throughout the time that Jackie was living her life as an abused wife, the women’s movement was also taking shape. One of the more prominent wings of the movement focused on violence against women. Battered women activists defined intimate partner violence as a social problem requiring a community-level response.10 Battered women’s shelters and crisis centers began popping up throughout the United States and activists turned their attention to helping abused women who killed their violent husbands.

Strength, Survival, and Resilience

5

One way advocates sought change for battered women who killed was through the introduction of the Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) into the legal system. The Battered Woman Syndrome is a subcategory of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and is found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition (DSM IV).11 When a battered woman has PTSD symptoms she is suffering from BWS.12 The DSM IV states that there are four distinct symptoms that must be present for PTSD to occur—you must experience a traumatic stressor, unconsciously refer back to this incident through nightmares, flashbacks, or intrusive thoughts, numb your emotions, and experience a heightened sense of awareness. The BWS also adds two additional symptoms which are distortions related to body image and/or physical ailments and sexual intimacy issues. A diagnosis for the BWS must include all six symptoms and they must occur for at least one month and interfere with daily living. Activists hoped that with the BWS the courts would better understand a battered woman’s frame of mind when she defended herself against her abuser.13 For instance, in this case, when Jackie shot her husband and went to trial, the jury was instructed on the parameters of self-defense law. However, by allowing the BWS into the courtroom, an expert could discuss the dynamics of battering and allow the jury to see how Jackie’s history of battering affected her frame of mind such that shooting her sleeping husband was in response to a reasonable fear of continued abuse and even death. Unfortunately, the legal system was not reasonably convinced this was an acceptable defense for quite some time. In fact, in Ohio where Jackie lived, the courts ruled against allowing expert testimony on the BWS in 1981. Thus, advocates continued to lobby for inclusion of the BWS defense in courtroom testimony, and also began focusing their attention on battered women, like Jackie, who were imprisoned. In 1990, Ohio became the last state to allow expert testimony on the BWS as admissible evidence in self-defense trials. The Battered Women’s Clemency Movement

Abuse advocates sought justice for women like Jackie who had killed and been incarcerated prior to this ruling. With the help of Dagmar Celeste (wife of then Governor of Ohio Richard Celeste), activists in Ohio began a mass clemency review for all incarcerated battered women (the first state to allow this type of review). Clemency can provide either a commutation (reduction of the prison sentence) or a pardon (removal of conviction). Jackie was one of 130 women in the Ohio prison system

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to apply for clemency and one of the lucky 26 to receive it. Jackie had served ten years, ten months before her sentence was commuted. Jackie and ten other women who received clemency in Ohio were interviewed by Patricia Gagné for her book Battered Women’s Justice14 soon after their release from prison. The only other study to date on battered women’s lives after clemency was conducted by Beattie and Shaughnessy for their book Sisters in Pain15, which featured nine battered women in 1995 who were granted clemency in Kentucky. The interviews in both of these books revealed that most of the women had lives marked with childhood abuse (most often sexual) and that this abuse continued into adulthood as they entered intimate relationships. Jackie and the other women who received clemency explained that they felt they had killed in self-defense to end the abuse. The efforts to obtain help prior to the killing were unsuccessful. They feared for their lives and felt they had no options. These women also spoke of great inequities within the criminal justice/legal system during their questioning, arrest, sentencing, and trial. Many were unfamiliar with the court system and were terrified of losing their children (which was often used as a threat by their abusers). They spoke of inadequate representation and attorneys who were not knowledgeable or sensitive to battered women. Since the convictions of the women in both Ohio and Kentucky were commuted and not pardoned, they still had felony convictions on their records.16 This had a huge impact on their lives after clemency as it was difficult for them to find employment, housing (which is why Jackie was living with her daughter), and assistance. Jackie told of a story about attempting to find clothing after prison and how she was sent one place for three shirts and another place for three pairs of pants. She noted, too, that social service agencies did not make it easy for women coming out of prison. Moreover, these women struggled with re-establishing their relationships with their children. On top of that, many of them were fighting depression and anxiety on a daily basis. They often felt their families were a source of strain, while at the same time they commented that without the help of their families they could not have made it on their own. These two studies are the only published research on life for women after clemency.

Strength, Survival, and Resilience

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Lived Experiences of Women Who Applied for Clemency: Denied and Granted

While both of these studies give voice to women granted clemency, to date no one has studied the larger group of women who applied for clemency and were denied. Many questions are left unanswered about these women—questions such as, what makes one abused woman deserving of clemency, while another is not? How did the decision affect the women left to serve out their sentences? What have their lives in prison been like since the clemency decision? How did the clemency decision affect their view of their life circumstances leading up to the killing? While Sisters in Pain17 and Battered Women’s Justice18 provide a picture of life immediately after their release from prison for the women granted clemency, there has been no research on these women over the course of time. Thus, these sources only provide information about short-term adjustment to life on the outside, leaving us to ask what has happened in the ensuing years. What is life like for the women granted clemency sixteen years after their release from prison? What does freedom for these women mean? The goal of this book is to answer these questions by shedding light on the lives of formerly imprisoned battered women who were the subjects of and participants in the clemency movement in Ohio in the early 1990s. This book is based on research I conducted in 2004 and 2005 when I interviewed four Ohio women who were granted clemency in 1990, and twelve imprisoned women who were denied clemency and were still incarcerated in the state of Ohio. In addition to these interviews, I also used two sources of secondary data. The first dataset includes four interviews conducted in 1990 of women applying for clemency in Ohio. The second includes interviews of eleven women granted clemency in Ohio, conducted between 1992 and 1994. Of note, there is some overlap between data sources. There are two women who received clemency who were interviewed at all three points in time (prior to clemency in 1990, right after clemency between 1992-1994, and eleven years later in 2005), and four women who were granted clemency were interviewed at least twice. The first set of interviews included 20 women incarcerated at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in 1990 who were a part of a domestic violence support group in the prison. I selected four of the 20 interviews since these four women received clemency and were later interviewed between 1992-1994 and/or 2004-2005. Out of these four, two women were interviewed during the 1992-1994 time period, and the other two

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women were interviewed at all three points in time (1990, 1992-1994, and 2004-2005). The 1990 interviews were designed to get a picture of the women’s lives prior to prison (i.e., including their experiences with abuse), the crimes they committed that sent them to prison, and about life inside prison. Between 1992 and 1994, 11 of the 26 women who received clemency were interviewed about their experiences with domestic violence and the crimes they committed, the court proceedings, their lives while in prison, the clemency process, their own personal awareness of family violence issues, and how being a battered woman who received clemency has affected their identities in their lives after release from prison (from several months up to four years). These two sets of interviews (Time 1 in 1990; Time 2 between 1992-1994) provided background information about the clemency process, but I was also interested in the long-term adjustment of the women granted clemency, as well as the aftermath of clemency on women who were denied clemency and remained incarcerated. I was left wondering what makes these two groups of women so different that one group was set free from prison, while the other group stayed behind bars. I found the names of these women through newspaper articles during the clemency period and contacted the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) in order to ascertain whereabouts of the women. It was easier to track down the women denied clemency since most were still incarcerated. If the women were no longer under correctional supervision, the ODRC could not forward an address to me. I was able to interview 12 women denied clemency and all but one were still in prison. It was more challenging to find women who were granted clemency. Many people leaving prison find themselves floundering from one living situation to the next because they often have a difficult time finding stable employment and housing. Plus, some of these women may have worked hard to stay “invisible” due to all the hype around the clemencies. I sent letters to battered women’s shelters around the area requesting assistance in finding these women. I found two women (one clemency recipient and one woman denied clemency who was out on parole) this way. This first interview with a clemency recipient led me to another woman granted clemency. These two women had remained friends after leaving prison and were still in contact with each other. Both of these women gave me the name of a volunteer from the prison who conducted domestic violence support groups and helped the women during the clemency process. I contacted her in order to find my third clemency recipient. Finally, the fourth woman I interviewed who had

Strength, Survival, and Resilience

9

been granted clemency was unfortunately back in prison for felonious assault and I was able to find her through the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. See Appendix B: Summary of Women for a review of the women participants. These interviews that I conducted lasted between 1 to 3 ½ hours and were conversational in style. I interviewed the women out of prison at their homes, places of employment, or various restaurants. The interviews with the women in prison took place at four different correctional institutions for women in the state of Ohio. My initial plan was to pay each woman $50 for her participation in this research. I was able to pay three of the clemency recipients and one woman denied clemency who was no longer in prison at the time of the interview; however, the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections would not allow me to compensate the women in prison since compensation could be seen as coercion. In fact, it took some persuasion with the prison staff to allow the women to have water and tissues during the interviews. Two institutions refused to provide these for the women. I began the interviews by telling each woman how I became interested in this topic. I tried to make it clear that I was interested in their stories and wanted to give voice to their experiences. I used the secondary data to guide my interviews with the women who had been interviewed at a previous point in time. I began the interviews for those not interviewed previously by having them briefly talk about their life prior to prison (their childhood, their life with an abusive partner, the incident that led to incarceration). Most of the women seemed comfortable telling me their life stories, which took on a common pattern across interviews. After they provided me with a history of their lives prior to incarceration, we then moved to their lives in prison, applying for clemency, and how the clemency decision affected them. The interviews with the women granted clemency focused on life after prison and readjusting to the free world. The key focus in my interviews with all the women was on their relationships with others (friends, family, and children); mental/physical health; coping mechanisms (spirituality/religion, alcohol/drugs, exercise); and how everything they have been through has affected their sense of self. As the interviews progressed, I added questions about the programs available in prison, spirituality and religion, and their interactions with the prison staff. For more information on the research process, see Appendix A: The Research Process.

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Clemency: A Sense of Freedom?

Once I began talking to the women granted clemency, it became apparent that clemency was only part of the picture for helping previously incarcerated battered women. It did not matter if it was five years or fifteen years after these women were released—they still were not completely free. The women feared commitment in relationships (intimate or friendship). They struggled financially. Guilt took over in their relationships with their children. Despite the negatives, they tried to move on and see the good in life. They viewed themselves as women who were strong, courageous survivors. Living violence free was a common goal for most and they took various means to accomplish this within their lives. Some worked or volunteered at battered women’s shelters, while others took an assertive stance with regard to how they expected others would treat them. Interestingly, the women denied clemency who were still incarcerated had much in common with the women who were granted clemency. These women also endured extreme abuse and killed in selfdefense. However, when comparing the two groups of women, there were a variety of factors that appeared to influence the decision to grant clemency—stereotyped ideas of the “good battered woman,” media coverage, length of relationship, witnesses at trial, and the type of conviction, to name a few. The women denied clemency also had similar issues to contend with, such as health complications due to the prior abuse in their lives and difficult relationships with their children and families, but they remained behind bars. They had to deal with a prison system that seemed determined to strip them of any sense of human decency afforded to people on the outside. For instance, the women described the humiliation of strip searches and the prison rule of “no human touch” as completely demoralizing and destructive to their sense of selves. Many of these women had been incarcerated before the huge increases in the prison population and extensive overcrowding. They had opportunities afforded to them that women coming into prison today do not. For example, these women took part in various types of programs (e.g., educational, spiritual/religious, domestic violence) which contributed to significant changes in how they saw themselves and their lives. Like the women who received clemency, the women who did not noted that they were “survivors.” This identity change and use of the term survivor has garnered a lot of attention and is not always seen as a progressive step for women. This will be discussed later in the book, but it is worth noting here that in order to say one is a survivor, one must first claim the “victim” identity.

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In this sense, the “victim” is powerless, helpless, and unable to change her world, and it is subject to debate if battered women should be described in this manner. Researching battered women who applied for clemency in the state of Ohio makes public the lived experiences of battered women who kill and the clemency process. Their stories shed light on the connection between victimization and criminality. We can learn much from their shared stories. Plan of the Book

Before we can understand the issues surrounding the battered women’s clemency movement, we must first take a look at these women’s lives prior to prison. The next two chapters are divided into two sections. Chapter Two provides an understanding of the extreme abuse these women endured and gives voice to the women’s strength and resilience in the face of such abuse. It highlights: 1) the women’s childhoods, and 2) the women’s lives with their intimate abusers. For some of the women in this book, it was their abusive childhoods that led to their incarcerations (killed battering father/step-father). Other women’s stories begin with their childhoods where a cycle of abuse was established that later led into intimate relationships where the victimization continued. In both cases, I underscore how the women coped and survived in these violent homes. Chapter Three focuses on the killings and the legal proceedings to follow. Most of the women noted that the killings happened after an extremely traumatic event. I analyze these turning points, as well as what happened at the women’s trials. The chapter ends with a summary of the women’s convictions and sentences. I go on to explore the women’s lives once inside prison and what led them to apply for clemency. Chapter Four examines life behind bars for the women and the ways they coped with prison life. I use a gendered framework to understand this incarceration experience. Chapters Five, Six, and Seven focus on life after clemency. Chapter Five covers life after clemency was denied for the women who remained in prison. This chapter looks at “the good about prison” and “the bad about prison.” It discusses how the women denied clemency tried to “transform” themselves into better people. However, even though the women were trying to make the best out of their situations, I show how the prison system is set up to inhibit any sense of true independence and healing. In order to be the “model prisoner,” one must succumb to the

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structure of the prison which promotes a forced dependency on the system, stifles individuality, and revictimizes the women. The lives of the clemency recipients are discussed in Chapter Six. The most important part of this chapter is the understanding that the women’s sentences were commuted and not pardoned. Therefore, even though the women were released from prison early, they still had felony convictions on their records. This affected all aspects of their lives and made it difficult to truly be “free.” Chapter Seven devotes attention to the differences and similarities between the women granted clemency and those who did not receive it. I examine such things as length of relationship; and events at the trial, including witness testimony and character assassination, and media portrayals; and the ideas surrounding what makes a “good” battered woman. Finally, the book concludes with a chapter that discusses the larger sociological issues connected with this study. I discuss how the women in this book have taken their lives and tried to turn “bad into good.” They have challenged the idea that battered women are victims. They also provide testimony for improved gender sensitive programming in prisons, as well as additional insight into post-prison adjustment. It has been twenty-seven years since the movie The Burning Bed first premiered and sparked the debate about battered women who kill. Yet, to this day, when I teach about battered women who kill, many students are dumbfounded as to why a woman does not leave a violent relationship. They are also in awe when presented with research that clearly shows women are not getting away with killing their abusers. Reading this book hopefully will provide some clarity on these issues. For this book, I talked to ordinary women who, because of certain life circumstances, ended up in abusive relationships and who later crossed the line from victim to offender. It has been an insightful and emotional journey hearing their stories and wisdom on this topic. I hope this book provides the same for those who read it. 1

Ferraro, “Battered Woman Survival,” p. 124-140 Miller, Iovanni, and Kelley, “Criminal Justice System Responses,” pp.267-287 3 Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice 4 Browne, When Battere Women Kill; Bush, Finding Their Voices Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice; Leonard, Convicted Survivors; Walker, Terryifing Love 5 Walker, Terryifing Love 6 Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? 2

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7 Gillespie, Justifiable Homicide 8 Scheppele, “The Reasonable Woman,” pp. 456-460 9 Walker, Terryifing Love; Browne, When Battered Women Kill 10 Kurz, “Violence Against Women or Family Violence,” pp. 443-453 11

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American Psychiatric Association, Diagonistic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition 12 Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome, 3rd Edition 13 Gagné, “Identity, Strategy, and Feminist Politics,” pp. 77-93 14 Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice 15 Beattie and Shaughnessy, Sisters in Pain 16 Sheehy, Reinburg and Kirchway, “Commutation for Women Who Defended Themselves” 17 Beattie and Shaughnessy, Sisters in Pain 18 Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice

2 Life Before Prison

I introduced Jackie in Chapter One. Her story provided a glimpse into the life of a battered woman who killed. This chapter highlights battered women’s lives prior to their incarceration. Eleven of the women (out of 23) in this book received clemency and were released from prison. I will start with their stories. Sarah and Carrie were interviewed during their incarcerations (1990) and after their releases from prison in 1994. Both of these women killed their abusive fathers. Sarah is African American and was 43 when she shot her father, who had been sexually abusing her since she was six. Sarah lived with her parents most of her life and dealt with her father’s sexual abuse and her mother’s physical abuse as best she could by dissociating, asking for help, and attempting suicide. On several occasions, she attempted to gain independence from her parents. Yet, because of her own mental health issues and the emotional and verbal abuse from her parents, she always returned home. Sarah shot her father with his own gun two and half months after her mother died of cancer. She took a plea bargain and pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter and use of a firearm. Her sentence was 5 to 15 years; she served 5 years, 9 months and was granted clemency and released from prison. Carrie is a white woman who, at the age of 16, locked her stepfather in his bedroom and set fire to their house. Her mother had left when she was three, and Carrie remained in the house with her stepfather and grandmother. Carrie was sexually and physically abused by her stepfather starting at the age of six. She lived with her mother for a short time, until her mother’s new husband started sexually abusing her. Carrie told her mother about the abuse, but her mother refused to believe her. Carrie was forced to return home to her stepfather who had custody of her. She also attempted to leave multiple times by running away, but always returned, afraid that her stepfather might start abusing her younger sister. She was charged with murder, felonious assault (her

15

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Battered Women Doing Time

grandmother was hurt in the fire), and arson. She took a plea bargain for murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life; she served 7 years, 6 months and then was granted clemency. The other nine women who were granted clemency were involved in killing abusive husbands or boyfriends. Jackie, introduced in Chapter One, is a 70-year-old African American woman who was interviewed during her incarceration in 1990, directly after release from prison in 1992, and then 13 years later in 2005. Jackie was married 25 years to a man who physically, sexually, and verbally abused her. Jackie shot her sleeping husband with his own gun after a fight during which he threatened to kill her and her mother. Jackie was convicted of murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life. She served 10 years, 10 months and was granted clemency. Teresa is an African American woman who was also interviewed during her incarceration (1990), after release from prison in 1993, and 12 years later in 2005. She murdered her boyfriend by stabbing him during a physical confrontation outside of a bar. Teresa was 18 at the time of the stabbing. She had been with her boyfriend for six years after meeting him when she was 12 and he was 21. Teresa experienced multiple types of abuse by her boyfriend, as well as her family of origin. She was convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years to life. Teresa served eight and half years before she was granted clemency. Teresa was back in prison for her 2005 interview and was serving a two-year sentence for felonious assault. Gail, a white woman who was 50 years old at the time of her interview in 1993, had served 2 years, 3 months before she was granted clemency. Gail married her abusive husband when she was 17 after she found out she was pregnant. She was married 32 years before she fatally shot him after finding out he had been sexually abusing her daughter. She intended to kill herself, but first decided to confront her husband about the abuse. She stopped at his girlfriend’s apartment where she had left her purse (with his gun in it) in the car and went to talk to him. During the confrontation, he ran out of the apartment and she followed him. She got in her car and was going to shoot herself in front of him. He reached for the gun and the gun went off three or four times and eventually killed him. She never had her Miranda rights read to her by the police, her first trial was a mistrial, and the second time around, she pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and received a 2-to-10-year sentence. Margaret, an African American woman, was 39 at her interview in 1993 shortly after her release from prison. Margaret had been involved in two abusive relationships. The first abusive relationship lasted 13

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years and, even when she filed for divorce and moved out, he continued to stalk her. Her first abusive husband was extremely violent to her and her children and eventually her children were taken from her. When she finally got her children back, he would threaten her saying he would call Children Services if she reported the abuse. After years of harassment, he finally stopped. Margaret met her second abuser about seven months later. She dated him eight months and on the night of his killing, flashbacked to her time with her husband. She said he was coming at her and she grabbed a gun she had hidden under her bed and shot him. She was convicted of aggravated murder and was sentenced to 18 years to life. She had served one year, four months at the time of her clemency. Michelle, a black woman who was 63 at her interview in 1992, was married to her third husband for almost three years before she shot him six times (emptied the gun) after an extremely brutal beating. Her husband was a security guard who loved his gun. He would often lay it on the table as they ate dinner and he would regularly hit her with it. When the police arrived at her house after the shooting, she said, “Oh my god, did I do that? I must have, ‘cause there ain’t nobody here but me.” Michelle was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to 6.5 years to life. She served 6 years, 10 months at the time of her clemency. Anne, a white woman, interviewed in 1992 after her release from prison, served two years, three months for attempted murder. She was involved with her abusive boyfriend for six years. She met him while she was going through a divorce (her first husband was not abusive and she was paroled to her first husband when released from prison). During Anne’s time with her abusive boyfriend, he stole her car and stripped it so she was completely dependent on him. Anne shot him during a fight when he was making her sign papers for a business she did not want. He screamed at her, “You’re never gonna leave me.” He came towards her and she shot and wounded him. He ran out of the house to a convenience store where an ambulance came for him. She was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 5 to 25 years. When she was released from prison, her abuser was notified because he was the “victim.” Three women, Allison, Emma, and Betsy, were involved in killing their abusive husbands (although they did not do the actual killing). Allison, a 56-year-old African American woman, was married for 21 years. She was interviewed directly after release from prison in 1992 and then thirteen years later in 2005. She was repeatedly, violently assaulted by her husband and in one instance jumped out of a third floor window to get away from him during an attack. She ended up with a broken foot and fractured knee, and was punished even more by her husband for trying to escape. The breaking point for Allison was finding

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Battered Women Doing Time

out that her husband was molesting their 14-year-old daughter. She hired two people to kill him. Unfortunately, the two people who actually killed her husband (the ones Allison hired) testified that she, along with two other people (not the hired killers), killed her husband. She was convicted of aggravated murder for hire and was sentenced to 23 years to life. Allison served four years before she received clemency. Emma is a 52-year-old black woman who started sleeping on the couch to avoid her husband’s sexual abuse. She was also interviewed twice after her release from prison (1992 and 2005). Her 17-year-old son shot his father (with his father’s own gun) when he walked in on his father choking Emma one morning. She and her son panicked and did not call the police right away. When they finally did call the police later that evening, Emma took the blame to protect her son. Her son eventually confessed to the killing and they were both convicted of manslaughter. They each were sentenced to 15 years to life. Emma served one year and four months when she was granted clemency. Her son, however, served 13 years in prison and then was released on parole. Betsy was 58 at the time of her interview in 1993 and is white. She had been married to her abusive husband for 23 years and has five children. She was terrified of leaving him and said in her interview, “… he would have killed us … no matter where we went, he would’ve found us and he would’ve killed us. He always said, ‘If you leave me, I’ll kill ya.’ And he would have.” Finally, after an extremely abusive incident during which her husband held a knife to her son’s throat, she was crying at her neighbor’s house and together they decided to get rid of her husband. Her friend said she would line everything up. Betsy gave her friend $3,000.00, left a key to her house, and called the police and reported the killing as a suicide. When the police were suspicious, she got scared and wrote a 17-page confession. She was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to life. She served 10 years when she was granted clemency and released from prison. The remaining twelve women did not receive clemency and what follows are their stories. Two women out of the 12 who were denied clemency were victimized as children and, after years of abuse, killed a family member. The first woman, Alecia, a white, 36 year old, has been in prison for 18 years for helping to set up the murder of her abusive father. Alecia was physically abused by her father throughout her childhood as well as witnessed her father brutally beat her mother on multiple occasions. Alecia and her mother are both in prison for arranging her father’s murder. She is serving a 20-year-to-life sentence, her mother is serving a 12-to-25-year sentence. The second woman, Natalie, white, was also physically and sexually abused by her father,

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and at the age of 13 ran away from home. She eventually met a boyfriend at 16 and they moved in together. When Natalie was 17, she and her boyfriend decided to break into her parents’ house and steal a gun and a car. Her mother woke up during the robbery and the boyfriend killed Natalie’s mother and two brothers. Natalie’s father is still living, and she is in prison serving a life sentence; her boyfriend is serving a 10-year-to-life sentence. Natalie has been in prison for 25 years. The other 10 women were all involved in killing an abusive intimate partner. Two shot their husbands when they were sleeping. Angie, an adult survivor of incest, shot her sleeping husband after she found out he had been sexually abusing their oldest daughter. Cindy also shot her husband while he was asleep because she felt like she could no longer protect their children from his abuse. She stated that at least this way their children would still be alive. Both Cindy and Angie’s husbands were sexual sadists who violently sexually abused them. Their abusers would do things such as viciously penetrate them with objects and force them to have sex with other people. Both Angie and Cindy are white and in their 40s and are serving 15-years-to-life sentences. At the time of the interview, they had served 15 and 18 years of their sentences, respectively. Three women killed their abusive partners during a physical confrontation. Linda, an African American woman who was 39 at her interview in 2005, served 10 years in prison and has been out for five years. She stabbed her abusive boyfriend of two years during a fight outside a restaurant. Her boyfriend had grabbed her son and was threatening to hurt him. Linda went into a store and bought a knife to scare her boyfriend into letting go of her son. As they were fighting over the knife, Linda stabbed him and he died later that evening in the hospital. Linda was charged with aggravated murder and sentenced to 15 years to life. Pattie, who was also sentenced to 15 years to life, shot her husband during a physical altercation. She was married six years and in the course of their relationship had called the police 72 times. They were fighting in the bedroom one night and she kept saying, “I just can’t take this anymore.” He was waving his gun around. He eventually threatened to shoot her children and was heading out of the bedroom. Pattie grabbed the gun from him and shot him. Pattie has been incarcerated for 16 years, is 50 years old and white. Finally, Martha, a 52-year-old (in 2005) white woman, who is serving a life sentence, shot her husband during a physical fight after living in an abusive marriage with him for three years. Martha has two children; she has not seen or talked to them since she went to prison 23

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Battered Women Doing Time

years ago. Her children were sent to live with their paternal grandparents who felt continued contact with Martha was unhealthy for her children. Martha felt completely demoralized from the abuse and the years apart from her children. Martha stated, “You can only take so much until you break.” Both Katrina and Veronica are black and killed their abusive boyfriends in store parking lots. Katrina, who was 46 in 2005, was sentenced to 15 years to life after she shot her boyfriend in a store parking lot. They had been together off and on for nine years. She had currently ended the relationship and he was stalking her. Katrina was sentenced to 15 years to life for murder. Two days after I interviewed Katrina, she was released from prison after having served 17 years. The second woman, Veronica killed her boyfriend in a similar scenario to Katrina’s. Veronica’s ex-boyfriend (whom she had been with for 3 years) jumped on her in a store parking lot; she ran to her car, grabbed a gun from her glove compartment, and ran after him shooting the gun. She shot him along with two bystanders. Her ex-boyfriend was killed along with one of the bystanders. Veronica is 40 years old and has been in prison for 20 years. She is serving a 23-year-to-life sentence. The last three women all have unique stories that do not fit neatly into a specific category. Karen’s lover shot her abusive husband when he came in to protect her after hearing Karen and her husband fighting. The lover also had just found out that Karen’s husband had been sexually abusing Karen’s daughter. He testified in court that Karen had conspired with him to kill her husband the next time he was abusing her. Karen stated this was not true and that he only testified against her because he was threatened with the death penalty. Karen and her lover were both convicted and sentenced to prison. Karen, a white woman, is serving a 20-year-to-life sentence; her lover is serving a 15-year-to-life sentence. She was 49 at the time she was interviewed and had been in prison for 16 years. The next woman is Lauren. She is a black woman, who was 47 at the time of her interview in 2005, is serving a life sentence for lighting her boyfriend on fire. She had been in prison for twenty years at the time of the interview. She explains her violence against him after 3 months together, saying that she was just sick of him cheating on her and “it was for revenge.” Lastly, Raquel’s abusive husband died of a drug overdose; he had ingested a bottle of her anti-depressants. Raquel was in the midst of divorcing her husband and they were separated. He was visiting their children at her house when he overdosed on the medication. Raquel stated that her husband had committed suicide. However, the police felt she was involved in her husband’s death and they arrested her. Raquel

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proclaimed her innocence throughout her trial, but she was still convicted of aggravated murder. Raquel, a white woman, was sentenced to 20 years to life and has been in prison for 15 years. She was convicted of aggravated murder because the prosecution claimed that she forced her husband to take the pills. Abuse Starts Early

Incarcerated women and women who kill their abusers consistently report prior childhood victimization (the most common being sexual abuse).1 This abuse sets the stage for future dysfunction and violence in their intimate relationships. Some of the women in this book never experienced an adult abusive relationship since they ended their childhood abuse by killing their violent caregivers and entered prison at a very young age. For others, the violence in their childhood was just the beginning of victimization and eventually, they made the jump from victim to offender when they killed their abusive intimate partners. Remarkably, all of these women in this book survived the violence and mastered different ways to cope with the abuse. This chapter describes the women’s lives prior to their incarceration and focuses specifically on the connections between the violence they suffered during childhood and adulthood and how this altered their life course. Interwoven into their stories are also narratives about survival in these violent relationships. “It All Started with…” : Linking Childhood Abuse to Later Life Events

Whether the abuser killed was an intimate partner or a father, the women reported abuse early on in their lives. Natalie commented that she was “physically abused by day,” and “sexually abused by night” by her father. Carrie’s father began fondling her at night and forcing her to have oral sex with him when she was six. Carrie’s sexual abuse slowly escalated into rape and led her to run away from home multiple times. She ran to her mother’s place at 14 where her stepfather attempted to sexually violate her as well. Lauren provides a chilling tale of being raped by a family friend and then, later, how her brother molested her on a regular basis. In her words, So one day I was in the basement playing … And my molester he said, come here, Lauren. He said come here and he kissed me and he pulled my panties down and he told me to bend over and I bent over and he just put it in. And I said “ouch, I’m bleeding.” And he said “You’ll be

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Battered Women Doing Time

all right” and he took a rag and cleaned me off. And I didn’t really realize what had happened until I became a teenager. And as a teenager my brother would always sneak in my room and have sex with me.

And finally Karen and Cindy noted their lives would have been different had they not been sexually molested by family members. Karen said, “It all started with … ” the sexual victimization by her brother. The majority of women in this book grew up with some form of childhood dysfunction. The most common was abuse (physical, sexual, and/or emotional); however, they also described living in families in which parents were alcoholics or drug addicts, often absent from the home, perfectionists, or extremely controlling. For instance, Raquel talked about her parents and their volatile marriage, “Parents married young, stayed married … kind of a hostile relationship between the two of them …. My dad worked all the time, but was an alcoholic. My mother enjoyed prescription medication and had some reason to be taking some of that.” Karen, who was raped by her brother, also described her father, a Pentecostal pastor, as very controlling. Sitting in prison, she made the association between her life with her father and her relationship with her abusive husband whom she eventually killed. It was not unusual to hear these women display a keen sense of awareness about their lives and how events in their childhood drastically altered their life courses. Sociologists and criminologists have been cognizant about the devastating effects of early victimization, finding that victimization is often linked with later criminal involvement, lower educational attainment, and a host of other psychological problems in adulthood.2 Dana DeHart’s3 qualitative study of incarcerated women and victimization found abuse had both direct and indirect links with later criminal offending. The women were likely to suffer from such things as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and suicidal ideation, which impacted their ability to cope with life as they got older. For instance, some of the women in my study felt that the victimization in their childhoods made it difficult to respond effectively to abusive and disrespectful behavior. Angie’s sexual victimization by various family members led her down the road of promiscuity and altered her ideas of what sex and love meant to her. In her eyes, having sex with someone was a way to feel loved and be loved. She also felt rough, violent sex was normal and did not question her husband when he wanted to photograph her having sex with other people (men and women). Even though Veronica was never physically or sexually abused as a child, she struggled with feelings of abandonment. Her biological

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father, as well as her stepfather, did not want a relationship with her. After attending a support group in prison she realized, I became very angry because I longed for that, for that male fatherfigure that I didn’t get with my stepfather. So that, that took me where I felt like I had to, any relationship that I was in, I would have to look for that father figure in that relationship because I didn’t have that and I so long desired that and I didn’t have it. So that led me up to getting to relationships where they were abusive.

Not only did the women see a connection between the childhood dysfunction and later abusive relationships, these women also learned that telling on their abusers often produced more black eyes and bruises. Among incarcerated women, early childhood victimization is frequently cited, but an even greater shared experience among these women is the lack of helpful intervention.4 The women in this book were often either blamed for the abuse or it was ignored. Carrie, who slept with a butcher knife to protect herself from her sadistic father, realized the mental toll the abuse had taken on her and decided to tell a school counselor about it, I knew I needed help and I went to people. I went to the school counselor, and after I finished talking to the school counselor, they called home. I didn’t know this. And I walk in the door … I’m knocked back out the front porch and in the yard. I had to go to the hospital for that.

Some of the women were not beaten when they told about their childhood abuse; instead they were blamed and verbally chastised for their “promiscuous” behavior. Angie talked about being raped by her uncle and her parent’s reactions when they found out about the abuse, I was an abused child, as in sexual abuse from different family members. I think my mother … a lot of people swept things under the rug back then when I was growing up. I had got pregnant …. My uncle raped me when I was fifteen. It was my dad’s twin brother and I had an abortion. It was pretty much swept under the rug. I said something to my dad and he made a statement that I was pouring trash on his porch and therefore nothing was done.

In Sarah’s case, she was ignored when she told about her stepfather sexually abusing her. She eventually told her mother when she was 15 and her mother refused to believe her. Natalie’s mother witnessed some of the abuse, yet still blamed Natalie’s out-of-control behavior on drugs.

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As these women recognized that telling someone about the abuse did not change it, and for some that it created even greater chaos in their lives, they altered their ways of coping. Many emotionally distanced themselves and spoke of out of body experiences. They felt devastated and empty. Sarah started this process after realizing her mother would not leave her abusive stepfather, When mama didn’t leave him when I was 15, I think to myself, that’s when I started going crazy, so to speak. I started being somebody else, like, I mean, I always did do that. When I was a little girl, I used to dream all the time. I think that’s when I started forgetting because I didn’t want to remember it, I didn’t. And I forgot a lot of things because I didn’t want it to be like it was.

Carrie and Teresa also described this same method of dissociating. Teresa said, Mentally, it was all building up to the point, and I was getting crazy. I was having … it’s what I call blackouts where I totally blackout and I don’t know what I’m doing. I was doing things and didn’t know it. I have had blackouts and it’s not just from alcohol. I had these blackouts when I was a younger kid … they just come and go when they want to.

Judith Wuest and Merrilyn Merrit-Gray5 found women go through four steps when leaving an abusive relationship: 1) “counteracting abuse,” 2) “breaking free,” 3) “not going back,” and 4) “moving on.” The first stage, “counteracting the abuse” includes “relinquishing the self” (p. 116). In other words, in order for women to survive in a violent relationship (and eventually break free), they first must give up who they are and this includes being connected to their bodies and self. Dissociation is a common and (sometimes needed) practice to deal with horrific trauma. While it protects women, at the same time it also causes further harm when they have learned to completely shut themselves off from feeling.6 In Diana Russell’s7 (pp. 92-93) graphic article “The Making of a Whore,” Lara, who was repeatedly raped by her grandfather, suggests the ramifications of still being emotionally numb in adulthood, Not feeling is a very big problem for me. Sometimes I think it is going to take something like losing a child to make me feel again. I read off

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what happened to me like a shopping list, without emotion …. But the idea of feeling is also so scary because I also do not know what it would be like.

Criminologists Sampson and Laub8 suggest these early experiences altered the women’s life trajectories and created major turning points in their lives. When battered women are asked to tell their stories, it is not unusual for them to start with their upbringing. Researchers regularly hear stories of abuse (especially sexual abuse) in childhood and how this negatively impacted the women’s lives in adult relationships.9 Some have even called this discussion “painting the whole picture” (p. 571).10 From these narratives comes a deeper understanding of what childhood victimization does to these women’s self-esteem, and also illustrates cultural ideologies that support and condone violence against women. The women in my study learned violence was acceptable in the home, their self-worth was wrapped up in their bodies, outside help was often nonexistent, and disconnecting from their selves was a way to survive the emotional trauma. Thus, it was not difficult for some of the women to make the leap from violent upbringing to abusive intimate partner. The women for the most part were not unique in their entrance into adult violent relationships. “Oh, How Cute, He’s Jealous”: Entrance into Adult Abusive Relationships

Girl’s self-esteem is often centered on the ability to get and keep a man.11 As young girls enter into the world of dating, it is often flattering to hear that your boyfriend wants your undivided attention. This is especially true if you are coming from a background where you have felt invisible (i.e., father abandoning the family, parents involved in alcohol or drugs, isolating oneself because of abuse). In Jody Raphael’s12 book on prostitution, she found girls’ dysfunctional families often led them down one of two paths. One path was replicating the abuse when they entered into their own violent relationships, whereas the other track steered away from intimate relationships and entered the sex trade as a way to “control” what happened to their bodies. Rather than running from possible suitors, the women in this book found comfort in being connected with someone. For most of the women in this study, they met their abusive partners when they were young and vulnerable and framed the jealousy they saw in their partners as “cute.” Teresa, who coped with childhood abuse by blacking out or using drugs, met her boyfriend when she was 12 and he was 21. A lot of the women talked about trying to

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Battered Women Doing Time

escape dysfunctional families, such as Cindy when she “ran away to be with a man who was 20 years older than me.” For some women, it was simply being immature and inexperienced (marrying at 16, 17, and 18 years old). Regardless of their reasons for entering into these relationships, the women all found themselves with men who were abusive. Research on violent men indicates these men are in-tune with victims’ vulnerabilities and often play off them. They tend to be manipulative and to use these women’s vulnerabilities to their advantage.13 Another commonality among these women that drew them deeper into these relationships was the slow escalation of abuse. Sociologists14 have investigated this trend in which the violence slowly develops, starting out as jealousy and worsening in time, often after pregnancies or marriage. Angie told how her physical abuse did not start until after marriage. She explained, “Then I became a piece of property to him or something. I was his and he could do whatever he wanted to me.” Karen described her wedding night, On our wedding night I had to get seventeen stitches and I thought it was because I was a virgin, but there was no foreplay, there was no nothing. And then after I tore he repeated to have sex with me six more times. As I laid there … and I remember crying.

Linda and Katrina found the violence intensified in their relationships shortly after the births of their first children. Emma also talked about the jealousy and control at the beginning of the relationship and how it became more severe over the course of her marriage, And, well, I guess he was just jealous, probably our whole courtship, but I thought, you know, nice to have someone so jealous. And then after the children were born he, he just seemed to just want me all to his self. He didn’t want my family around. He didn’t want me to have friends. I worked, but he, I don’t know if he didn’t want me to work or, when I worked, he wanted me to bring all the money to him. Like he wanted me to work and still be dependent on him.

Not only did the control become ever increasing in these women’s relationships, but the violence grew as well. This escalation greatly impedes a woman’s ability to leave. By the time it gets really bad, they have been involved with their partners for quite some time. Allison described this,

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And the abuse started as, you know any normal abuse would, with it not being so physical, just a few slaps, a push, and then it didn’t happen so often. And as we got older, it escalated to very violent where it was almost on a monthly basis that I was physically bruised where I couldn’t function too well. And I had lots of hospital visits … and you just feel that there is no relief.

Moreover, because the violence often happens at the time of a commitment, the women feel that they have already invested a lot and it is their duty to stick it out.15 It is also important to consider the fact that, “Violence in a battering relationship is woven through “normal” interactions in a way that may make it difficult for a woman to clearly identify the beginning and end of a violent episode” (pp. 146-147).16 For the most part, a majority of the women also agreed that their relationships followed Lenore Walker’s17 cycle of abuse (tension phase, explosion, and honeymoon). Walker found that battered women often describe their abusers behavior in terms of three distinct time periods. The first wave the women often label as “walking on eggshells.” The second phase commences with the big fight finally followed by a calmer period. Third, the honeymoon time is a key component to keeping a woman in the relationship, providing her hope that things have changed. Angie described this, “ … that honeymoon stage … you want to believe that … I mean he would tear up and cry and you want to believe him. That’s your husband …” For other women in the study, though, they described this cycle, but noted the honeymoon period had disappeared or it had never been a part of their relationships. Some researchers have speculated that relationships with no honeymoon phase are at greater risk for homicide, because violence becomes the primary part of the relationship. There are no lulls and the abused woman is now in danger all the time.18 Other sociologists have also noted it becomes problematic to truly discern the calm period because even if physical violence has stopped, other forms of abuse usually continue.19 Many Broken Bones: Life with the Abusive Partner

As noted in the previous chapter, battered women who kill are no different from those who do not kill. The main divergence arises from the type of abuse they encounter on a day-to-day basis and the community’s response to it. Not unlike other researchers on domestic violence,20 I also found the women’s memories for detail were remarkable. They were able to describe horrific details of violent incidents like it happened yesterday. However, there were some women

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for whom disclosure was too difficult. At those times, I refrained from pressing the women for additional information. For example, it was often challenging to hear Cindy’s words because she was crying so hard throughout her interview. She shared one instance of abuse where her abusive husband shoved a hot curling iron into her vagina. Cindy’s example, unfortunately, was not strange among these women. They described having broken bones and bruises, throwing up due to the pain, being raped and forced to have sex with others, being degraded and putdown, and being isolated from their support networks. Betsy and Pattie said they had a lot of black eyes. Emma’s husband would kick her out of the bed, but would not allow her to leave the bedroom, and she was forced to sleep on the floor. In the middle of the night, he would rape her. He also would perform “pelvic exams” routinely to “make sure that I [Emma] hadn’t been with anybody.” Allison jumped out of a third story window to get away from her husband during a fight. Margaret’s graphic story illustrates the nightmarish lives these women lived. She talks about one night with her abusive husband and says it started with, “Bitch, you gonna die tonight.” He said, “I hate you.” And he, there was a container of Drano that he poured down my throat. And immediately I started throwin‘ up. He said, he threw me on the floor…the floor was concrete. He said, [crying] “You gonna die bitch. You’re gonna pay.” And uh [long pause; crying] and I began to uh throw up blood clots and I begged him to please take me to the hospital. He said, “No. You gonna die. You’ll never see your kids again.” He said, “Because if I take you to the hospital, then you gonna tell them that I did it. I’m not gonna go to jail.” And I said, “No, I promise I won’t.” And uh he continued on beatin’ me and he got a bucket while I was throwin’ up blood clots, he got a bucket. And I just threw up in there. And I had sores all around my mouth and my tongue [sticks tongue out—it’s scarred, as is the inside of her mouth] this is, it will never go away [cries harder]. And um, I had, I had ulcers and I had to get my blood, my gallstone bladder removed because of the lye and my esophagus too, I had to go in to get it stretched.

Margaret’s case proves additional complexities in understanding the ramifications of battering and post-traumatic stress disorder. Margaret was finally able to leave the man who did this to her (after months of stalking). The man Margaret eventually shot and killed was also abusive, but it was flashbacks from this incident that was the primary cause for the killing. These stories are awful to read, but many battered women agree that the emotional abuse is almost worse than the physical torture. The psychological consequences of being called ugly, dirty, fat, worthless,

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whores, and bad mothers have devastating effects on their self-esteem.21 When I worked in a battered women’s shelter, women often told me, “the bruises heal, but the emotional scars are there forever.” Not only were these women beaten and bruised, they often were forced to suffer in silence. For some, their abusers isolated them to the point where they had no social contact. They were unable to get help because they were literally held prisoner inside their homes. One woman reported her husband would nail the windows shut and take the cords to all the phones in the house when he would leave. He would lock the door with a key and the only way to open it from the inside was with a key. Most women were not subjected to this extreme surveillance but, for a lot of them, they had to keep tabs on where they went, how long they were away from the house, and how many minutes it took them to drive to the store and back. Some studies have noted the brainwashing techniques used to torture victims are equivalent to living in an abusive relationship,22 and Amnesty International states that torture produces extreme fear, helplessness, and dependency which are also found in victims of psychological abuse (117-118).23 Because of this fear, as well as feelings of shame the women experienced from thinking they were to blame for the abuse, they often kept quiet about what was happening to them. Linda dealt with the abuse by trying to cover it up. She said she was embarrassed and would try to hide in the house when she had bruises on her body. Karen lived in a well-to-do neighborhood and was afraid what her neighbors would think if they found out she was a battered woman. Susan Weitzman’s24 book on abuse in upscale marriages found an incredible need for upper-class women to keep their family problems private. This impacted the women’s ability to seek outside help for battering because of the shame and embarrassment the women experienced. Furthermore, those on the other end of the social class scale have difficulty reporting too. Sociologists studying the impact of social class on battering found that those of lower socioeconomic status were often reluctant to call police or formal services for fear of losing their housing or other forms of assistance.25 Therefore, vocalizing the abuse is not always the best option for women as it could lead to ostracism in the community or even loss of home. Other women denied the abuse and felt if they just tried a little bit harder, maybe the violence would stop. Emma tried a variety of techniques to quell the abuse in her marriage, If he hit me, anything, his reason to hit me was if I talked back. Okay, so I tried not talking back. You know, I would just sit quietly and just

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let him rant and rave. Then I was ignoring him. So then I would get hit for that. Or if I just left the room to keep from arguing with him, he would jump on me for that, ‘cause I walked out. You know, I couldn’t win. You know, it just got to the point that I just, when he came home, I didn’t know what to expect. And I just braced myself, whenever he was coming. And I accepted that.

Some women, on the other hand, decided to handle the abuse by escaping through the use of alcohol and/or drugs. Cindy would often run to the basement and smoke marijuana to cope with the abuse. Jackie and Angie’s drug of choice was alcohol. As Angie said, I drank a lot back then. I think it kept me numb. I drank a lot when I was with him and it didn’t hurt so bad if he beat me if I was drunk. It was a coping mechanism I think for me, the alcohol at that time.

Passivity is a common misconception about battered women. In fact, Lenore Walker’s early work in 197926 on battered women reinforced the idea of submissiveness which she called “learned helplessness.” However, more recent research by her documents battered women’s resiliency and her demonstrating that one way these women often try to counter their abusers’ violence is to defend themselves.27 In Gail’s case, her petite size (5 foot 4 inches, 150 pounds) only afforded her the ability to scratch her 300-pound husband’s face while he was attacking her. This did curb the abuse for awhile, as his coworkers asked about the marks on his face. Unfortunately, it was only a temporary reprieve. She also pointed out it did nothing to stop his abuse of her children. Allison also fought back in the last years of her marriage. She confronted her husband about the sexual abuse towards her daughter and tried to physically defend herself from his continual blows. Even though these women did use violence against their abusers, it was in self-defense, not as a means to control, humiliate, and degrade their partners. Angela Browne’s When Battered Women Kill28 and Lenore Walker’s Terrifying Love29 both document the use of force by battered women against their partners as a method of self defense. These women were not in “mutually violent” relationships, but instead often resorted to violence as a last resort to protect themselves or their children. Often women stop denying the abuse and start contemplating leaving when there is a change in the abuser’s behavior (the violence escalates, children are now abused, or the impact of the violence becomes more visible on her or her children).30 Leaving is typically a process over time31 and the women in this study survived in the

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relationship by slowly distancing themselves from their abusers. Wuest and Merrit-Gray (p. 117)32 suggest the women were “fortifying defenses.” The women attempted to lessen the effects of the abuse by first denying or minimizing it, fighting back, and sometimes numbing themselves by use of various substances. There were also more concrete ways these women tried to disconnect from their violent lives. Karen had a sexual affair with a man who was kind to her and vowed to protect her from her violent husband, and Emma slept in her daughter’s bedroom to get away from her abuser. She also stayed the night at her mother’s house at times. Jackie, whose story was highlighted in Chapter One, would regularly run to her mother’s house for protection. She would often show up on her mother’s doorstep wearing only a curtain as her husband would have stripped her of her nightgown. Angie and Karen tried relying on faith—they attended church and even talked about the abuse with pastors. Angie’s time at church only added fuel to the fire, as her husband then accused her of having an affair with her preacher. Karen, disappointingly, was hurt more by the church than helped, I went to the church and there was a big prayer meeting and they stuck him [her husband] and I in a circle … they came around us and they all started praying for us … all the elders of the church and all the men. And they prayed that God will help him control his temper, but then they prayed that God would help me set a better tone in the house … that God would help me to be a better wife. By the time they were done I was confident that he was right and I was in the wrong. I felt like it was almost like an exorcism … like I had some evil spirits in me. And it was my fault … So I wasn’t praying enough, I wasn’t fasting enough.

Some women tried to make their violent relationships more public by calling on the police to protect them. Others, though, were afraid to call the police for fear of what their abusers would do to them. There were even some women who did not seek out the police because they were embarrassed, and some felt the police would not help. Unfortunately, the women that did call the police found the police insensitive to domestic violence issues and sometimes quite victim blaming. The women in this study were all incarcerated prior to 1990 and typically, during this time, intimate partner violence was still considered a family problem. The men were told to take a walk around the block and cool off. Many of the women said the police would often say it was a “domestic problem,” which meant they could not or would

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not do anything about it. Pattie called the police quite often and, sadly, they would approach her door asking, “Pattie, what did you do this time?” Karen called the police after her husband stabbed her in the back. When the police arrived they asked Karen, who still had the knife in her back, what happened. Her husband was standing by her side, she was afraid and so she lied and said she fell on the knife. The police turned and walked out the door. Nowadays, this most likely would not happen because of mandatory arrest policies now in place; but, at this point in time, the women reported that calling the police was a waste of time and sometimes would make things worse. Since the 1990s, there have been great gains for police accountability in domestic violence cases. Pro-arrest policies have been implemented in most states. This allows the police officer to arrest even when they have not witnessed an act of violence. If they can determine who the primary aggressor is, an arrest should be made. Furthermore, no-drop prosecution policies have also allowed the courts to move forward without having victim consent. The debate surrounding these policies is not lessening, but, overall, it is a step in holding the criminal justice system and batterers responsible.33 Battered Women Who Kill: Victims or Survivors?

As stated earlier, one of the distinguishing factors between battered women who kill and those who do not has to do with the ability to leave the violent relationship. As crisis centers and battered women shelters become more accessible, the rate for female-perpetrated intimate partner homicide has declined. For example, the Department of Justice found that, between 1976 and 1998, the male intimate homicide rate declined by 60%, whereas the female intimate homicide rate has remained relatively stable.34 This indicates that when battered women have options and they are listened to and not blamed, they are often able to walk away (even if it does take multiple attempts). Unfortunately, there were women in this study who tried to turn their backs on the violence in their homes and it did not work. Katrina and Gail were both separated from their partners at the time of their abusers’ deaths. The women’s stories in this chapter show us that battered women are not meek, but instead are ever ingenious in their ways of survival. Regrettably, for many of these women, the cards were already stacked against them. The abuse in their lives was nothing new; it was instead a way of life. It often started early in childhood and set the stage for a lifetime of victimization. This abuse drastically altered their life courses. Even though the outsider might wonder why a battered woman would

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stay in such a dysfunctional situation, these women thought they were doing their job—holding the family together. Many secretly took educational classes or attempted to work. Sometimes they shared the abuse with family, but some learned from earlier episodes that this was not a successful strategy. Whatever they did, they in no way had developed the classic form of “learned helplessness.” In fact, Lenore Walker35 has revamped her understanding of this concept and no longer feels it accurately depicts battered women’s lives. Even though these women did what they could to survive in their situations, they all realized it was not enough. They saw their lives flash before their eyes and recognized their situations as lethal. In the next chapter, the breaking points for these women will be discussed. What causes a battered woman to kill her abusive intimate partner? 1 DeHart, “Pathways to Prison,” pp. 1362-1381 2

Macmillan, Ross. “Violence and the Life Course,” pp. 1-22; Williams, “Understanding Child Abuse and Violence Against Women,” pp. 441-451 3 DeHart, “Pathways to Prison,” pp. 1362-1381 4 Watterson, Women in Prison 5 Wuest and Merrit-Gray, “Not Going Back,” pp.110-133 6 Russell, “The Making Of A Whore,” pp. 77-98 7 Russell, “The Making Of A Whore,” pp. 77-98 8 Sampson and Laub, Crime in the Making 9 Sleutel, “Women's Experiences of Abuse,” pp.525-539 10 Taylor, Magnussen and Amundson, “The Lived Experience of Battered Women,” pp. 563-585 11 O'Brien, Making It In The Free World 12 Raphael, Listening To Olivia 13 Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? 14 Goetting, Getting Out 15 Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome, 3rd Edition 16 Mahoney, Williams and West, “Violence Against Women,” pp. 143178 17 Walker, The Battered Syndrome, 3rd Edition 18 Ogle and Jacobs, Self-Defense and Battered Women Who Kill 19 Mahoney, Williams and West, “Violence Against Women,” pp. 143-178 20 Goetting, Getting Out; Sleutel, “Women's Experiences of Abuse,” pp.525-539 21 Crawford, Liebling-Kalifani and Hill, “Women’s Understandings of the Effects of Domestic Abuse,” pp. 63-82 22 Smith, Tessaro, and Earp, “Women’s Experience with Battering,” pp. 197-182 23 NiGarthy, Getting Free 24 Weitzman, Not To People Like Us 25 Goodman, “When Crises Collide,” pp. 265-290 26 Walker, The Battered Woman 27 Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice

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28 29 30 31 32 33

Browne, When Battered Women Kill Walker, Terrifying Love Ferraro and Johnson, “How Women Experience Battering,” pp. 325-339 Goetting, Getting Out Wuest and Merrit-Gray, “Not Going Back,” pp.110-133 Miller, Iovanni, and Kelley, “Criminal Justice System Responses,” pp. 267-287 34 United States Department of Justice, “Homicide Trends in the United States” 35 Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome, Third Edition

3 The Killing and the Aftermath

“If it was so bad why didn’t she leave?” is a common question jurors ask when deliberating at trials of battered women who have killed.1 The previous chapter illustrated the intense dynamics involved in battering relationships and how removing oneself from the violence is a complex process that does not always put an end to the abuse. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, since 1993, roughly 70% of victims of intimate partner homicide are women.2 The act of battered women killing their abusers is actually quite rare. Nevertheless, for the few who were unable to walk away, their fear engulfed them and they felt they were left with no other options. This chapter assesses why these battered women killed, how they killed, and what happened directly after the homicide. “You Can Only Take So Much … Until You Break”: Turning Point to Kill

Battered women who kill often come to a point where they feel helpless and hopeless in their relationships. The women in this book felt like they were dead inside from the emotional, physical, and sexual torture in their lives. They saw the effects of the abuse on their children. They attempted to leave and were unsuccessful. They believed they were going to die. This became the turning point in their lives when they felt they could no longer go on living like this and that, for them, the only option was to kill their abusive partners. They realized that it was kill or be killed and recognized their children’s victimization as well. As a catalyst for the killing, the women all reported either a change in their abuser’s behavior, a traumatic beating, a heightened awareness they were totally alone, or witnessing abuse against their children. Karen talked about having a will made out because she knew she was going to die. Martha stated, “He just started laying his hands on me and stuff and

35

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I just … I just got tired. You can only take things so much, you know, until you break.” Margaret recalled being shot at by her husband and the lack of police response. At that point, Margaret realized her life was truly in danger and no one was going to help her. And I guess it’s just by the grace of God that, that particular day when he shot through the windows, me and my little niece was layin’ on the bed. Somethin’ told me to get up out of that room. Had I not gotten up out of that room, you can believe that I would’ve been dead today …. I called the police …. The police said, “You didn’t see him did ya?” I said, “I don’t have to see him. I know he’s here. I have no other enemies … I know it’s him. You’re not gonna arrest him?” “No, we’re not gonna do anything’ til he … And if you don’t calm down, you’ll be [arrested].” You know, I’m like, “If I don’t what! Somebody tell me, you mean you ain’t gonna do nothin’ about it? I wanna speak to the Chief of Police.” “I’m tellin’ you lady, you better calm yourself down now! Before you get taken in.” And that even made me more fearful. It had me like, I can’t do nothin’. I mean what am I gonna do? You know?

Allison, who had jumped out of a third story window to get away from her husband during one of his rages, also saw no way out of her marriage. He’d always say that he wasn’t gonna be out of our life, that if he had to come back and break in the house and kill everybody, that’s what he’d do, you know, and I wouldn’t be able, ‘cause the best thing I gotta do is stay with him, you know, and I could live, because he’d always say, “I’ve planned your death a couple times when you was asleep.”

Along with self-protection, the need to protect their children seemed to be one of the greatest impetuses for the women to kill their abusive husbands or boyfriends. Cindy said something snapped the night she killed her husband. She knew killing her husband would result in a prison sentence, but her children would be safe. Pattie also talked about the need to protect her children. She described the incident that led up to the death of her partner. I made a comment that we just can’t keep doing this. He went to hit me in my face and I covered my face, he had the gun up to my head at some point. He set the gun back down on the bed. I think I repeated this again that I just can’t take this. He started scooting off the bed and said, “Bitch, you ain’t going anywhere, I’ll kill you and your fucking

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kids this time.” And I knew he was going for that door … something inside (crying) me screamed, “Stop.” I picked up the gun and I fired the gun.

Many of the women, who killed to protect their children, knew on a subconscious level their children were being abused for a long time. In Angie’s case, there had been numerous calls and visits from Child Protective Services, but it was only after years of suspicion that she came out of her fog and shot her husband. Due to post-traumatic stress disorder, some women regularly had flashbacks of their violent attacks. In Angie’s case, she routinely flashbacked to her own incestuous experiences, as well as the sexual abuse in her marriage. Something struck a chord when she realized her daughter was going through the same thing she went through as a child. The same was true for Allison and Gail. They both said they knew they no longer could deny their husbands were sexually abusing their daughters. Angela Browne’s3 ground breaking study of 42 battered women who killed or attempted to kill and 205 battered women who had not killed reported key differences between the two groups. The homicide group concluded their lives were in grave danger due to the frequent and severe abuse and constant threats to their lives. As stated in the previous chapter, she also found the isolation and humiliation comparable to the techniques used on prisoners of war. All of the studies4 of battered women who have killed confirm the existence of severe abuse, bizarre and horrific sexual abuse, and an escalation of violence in the relationship. In addition to the abuse the women experienced, victimization of children in the household is also common and can be an indicator the abuser is losing more control. Another noteworthy finding by Gagné5 is the hypervigilance the women experience in their relationships. She found that it is not unusual for a battered woman to become so connected to the abuser for survival that she starts viewing things from the violent partner’s perspective. Because of this, she can become very aware of her abuser’s behavior and state of mind and in tune to abrupt behavior changes that might signal danger to her or her children. Angela Browne6 found this was often the case when battered women killed during a lull in the violence. The women feared another attack was imminent and would result in their own or their children’s death.

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The Actual Killing

Towards the end of their relationships, the seriousness of the situation becomes apparent to many battered women who kill, and they routinely report that they felt they would be the ones to die.7 Like the women in my study, the killings often happened in the midst of an attack or during the tension phase when the women knew that a huge blow-up was on the horizon.8 For the most part, the women in this study did not want their abusers dead; their reason for killing was to stop the violence. The women in this study killed in a variety of ways. For some women, they killed in the midst of an attack. Angela Browne9 found many of the homicides she researched happened in this manner. However, just like in her study, not all of the killings occurred in this fashion, and this is where many of the claims of self-defense become murky. Some of the women shot their sleeping husbands, whereas others set-up the killing of their abusers. These instances, even though they are common among battered women who kill, make it difficult to explain the threat of “imminent danger.” Moreover, some of the women accidentally killed innocent bystanders along with their abusers which further complicate matters. While not all cases (and definitely not the majority in my study) happened during fights, it is important to remember the discussions on battering and the manifestation of posttraumatic stress disorder in Chapters One and Two. Therefore, even if the women did not kill during a confrontation, the claim of self-defense might still be relevant if a more subjective understanding of who constitutes a reasonable person is used.10 For instance, if the courts allowed a discussion about the impact of battering on the abused woman’s state of mind, even if she shot her sleeping husband, her feelings of imminent danger might still be considered “reasonable.” Along the same lines, law scholar Elizabeth Schneider11 noted that the legal system should not ignore the patriarchal influence of society on women’s relationships. In other words, these women’s oppression and lack of power greatly influenced the decisions they made and the resources they saw as available to them. The following stories illustrate the diverse nature of the killings. Linda, who served ten years in prison and had been out for five years at the time of her interview, stabbed her boyfriend outside of a restaurant. Her boyfriend had grabbed her son and was threatening to harm him. Linda went into a store and bought a knife to scare her boyfriend into releasing her son. As they were fighting over the knife, Linda stabbed him and he died later that evening in the hospital. It was not her intention to kill him. Katrina also reiterated this statement, when

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she said, “I shot him. I didn’t mean to kill him, but I turned myself in” after she shot her partner in a Burger King parking lot while they were fighting. Teresa stabbed her boyfriend during a fight at a bar and Martha is serving a life sentence for shooting her husband during an abusive incident. Gail said her goal was actually to commit suicide to stop the pain. However, in the middle of a fight she turned the gun on her husband instead. Finally, Anne shot her boyfriend during a fight whereupon he fled out of the house and was able to get to a gas station. He survived the attack and is still living. Emma’s story is slightly different, but the killing still occurred during a vicious brawl. Emma’s son was the one to shoot his father while his father was attacking his mother and, unfortunately, both mother and son were sentenced to prison. Emma described the incident that ended her husband’s life. … that morning he just came in and he pushed the covers off me and pulled me off the couch and he just started yelling about his lunch, you know? And he started hitting me and kicking me. I mean, I couldn’t even get up off the floor at the time … he pushed me down a flight of steps …. And he just started chokin’ me, to the point that I couldn’t hardly even, my ears started to close up. And then my son came down, and he tried to pull him off of me. And he just kept calling, “Daddy, Daddy leave her alone. Leave her alone.” And he just brushed my son off like he was a baby … And then, that’s when I heard the gun. And my son shot him. And then he turned around and he told my son, and he was gonna kill him. And then my son shot him again. [crying] And that’s when … when he fell dead.

Finally, Cindy, Jackie, and Angie all shot their husbands when they were sleeping. Even though the killing was not done during an attack, these women also feared for their lives and felt that once their abusers woke up, their lives would be threatened. Similar to the women in Browne’s12 study, one of whom stated in her interview, “I didn’t mean to kill him! I only meant to warn him or stop him from hurting me” (p.160), the women in this study reported parallel sentiments. Jackie, discussed in Chapter One, felt she was in imminent danger after her husband’s threat that he would kill her and her mother by Monday (it was Friday). Cindy and Angie both feared for their children’s lives. Both women’s previous histories of childhood sexual abuse, together with the extreme sadistic sexual violence inflicted by their husbands, and then finally the realization their children were also being sexually traumatized, was the last straw for these women. Lastly, while Michelle’s abusive husband was not sleeping; she shot him after a

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severe beating. She had fled upstairs after the brutal pounding to clean herself up thinking it was just a short reprieve from the violence and that another round of torture was forthcoming. She shot her husband during this “lull.” Some women believed their deaths were looming in their futures, and the ensuing killings were a bit more “planned.” This primarily happened because friends who they had talked to about their abuse became involved in stopping the violence. Once again, it is important to remember the women’s dearth of power and the all-encompassing fear in their lives. The unanswered requests for help from formal agencies left these women feeling like there were no other options. Alecia, whose multiple sclerosis she believes stems from the numerous blows to the neck inflicted by her father, worked with her mother and a friend to “end the abuse.” Not only did her father abuse her, but she also witnessed her mother’s brutal beatings on a daily basis. A friend of hers “took care of the problem.” Allison also had a similar story where she arranged for two hit-men to shoot her abusive husband. Betsy, who at the time of her interview had numerous back surgeries caused by the physical abuse she endured, watched her husband one night beat her son with a chain and the next morning thought, “we just can’t go on livin’ like this. Somethin’ has to be done.” She went to her neighbors and remembers saying, “God just doesn’t intend for people like that to live.” She and a neighbor came up with a plan. She put up the money and her friend arranged for the shooter. She later called the police and said her husband committed suicide. After the truth came out, Betsy and her friend were charged with aggravated murder. Natalie’s attempted escape from the violence in her home ended in a way she had not intended. Natalie’s mother and two brothers died at the hands of her boyfriend when they broke into her parent’s house to steal a car so they could run away together. If anyone was going to die it was suppose to be her abusive father, but the burglary went bad and that did not happen. Karen also had no intention of killing her husband. She was involved with another man who vowed to protect her from her abusive husband. One evening, her lover came over to the house to find Karen and her husband in a heated argument. Karen’s lover intervened and in the end, Karen’s husband died from a gunshot wound. Finally, Veronica was with another man at a local store where her abusive boyfriend saw her. She ended up killing two innocent bystanders in the parking lot when she shot at her boyfriend who eventually died as well. All in all, these women’s stories fit well with previous research on battered women who kill.13 Whereas the modus operandi varied, the primary reason for the killing remained one of fearing for their lives (or

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their children’s lives). Moreover, the psychological ramifications of the battering altered the women’s sense of safety and were a contributing factor to their feelings of “kill or be killed.” Nonetheless, there were a few cases where this fear was not the primary motive or where the killing had nothing to do with abuse. Lauren was one of these women. She described abuse in her three month relationship with her boyfriend, while at the same time never discussing the fear the other women described. In Lauren’s case, she said she was tired of her boyfriend cheating on her and in the end lit him on fire. Raquel’s situation was also a little different. Raquel, a registered nurse and soon to be exbattered wife, claimed her husband died of suicide. He had ingested a bottle of her anti-depressants while visiting his children at her residence as they were in the throes of divorce. She never stated she had anything to do with his death; nevertheless, the prosecution felt she had and she was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to 20 years to life. In both these cases, these women’s stories fit with the rest of the women when it came to descriptions of their childhoods and lives with their violent partners. At the same time, how and why they killed differed from the rest of the women and could be a reason why neither were granted clemency—a topic discussed further in Chapter Seven. After the Killing: Entering the Legal System

Some of the women called the police right away after the killing, such as Pattie, who picked up the phone the minute after she shot her husband and said to the 911 operator, “I accidentally shot my husband.” She even gave CPR to him as she waited for the police. Other women tried to conceal their crime. For instance, Cindy initially attempted to hide her husband’s body in her basement, and Emma, Allison, and Carrie did not promptly report the killings. Some of them waited several days before notifying authorities as they were sure their abusers were not actually dead. While others were scared about what would happen to them and because of this, did not call the police immediately. Even though the women’s experiences with police differed, the commonality among the women was their inability to recall specific events of the killing. One outcome of post-traumatic stress disorder is the numbing of emotions and the ability to dissociate from stressful events. Battered women who kill will often report they cannot remember the killing and some even swear their abusers are not really dead.14 This coping mechanism unfortunately impeded the women’s ability to claim self-defense. The inability to recall how many times a woman shot or stabbed her husband is not viewed by the police as a symptom of shock,

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but instead as an unwillingness to cooperate with an investigation. Battered women who kill usually do not have prior criminal records nor are they familiar with the criminal justice system from an offender standpoint.15 In addition, women of color might be leery of law enforcement if they have already had negative interactions with police.16 Finally, a prominent finding from Elizabeth Dermody Leonard’s17 qualitative interviews with incarcerated battered women was they were reluctant to tell the truth to male police officers (especially when it came to sexual abuse). Yet, this is rarely taken into account when women “hide” details because they are scared. The criminal justice and legal systems often view this behavior as supporting evidence to show the women’s culpability in the killings. A further complication in some of the women’s stories often arose from half-truths they told. While on the surface this may have led some to question the women’s true motivations for the killing, it also can be partially explained by the history of the battering they endured in their relationships. For instance, Linda, whose story is told above, stabbed her husband outside of a restaurant. As she was holding him waiting for the police to arrive, she thought she had just injured him. When the police took her in for questioning, she “watered down” the story: I had no clue it was as bad as it was. And so they never told me he died … so when they questioned me I didn’t feel like I had anything to hide or lie about. In my mind I’m protecting him, thinking if anything watering everything down what happened ‘cause I’m thinking I don’t want to get him in trouble. He’s hurt now, he’s gonna be mad at me now if I tell them that he was attacking me and my son. I don’t want to get him in trouble, so I watered down the story. I had no clue that I’m the one that was in trouble. I had no clue that he died or was dying. It was just really crazy.

Linda’s story illustrates a naivety about the workings of the criminal justice and legal systems and an undeniable fear of her abuser. Sadly, these women often start the legal proceedings one step behind because of their misinterpreted actions directly after the killing. The quest for freedom is challenged further once they are arrested and attempt to seek counsel, make bail, and weigh the pros and cons of a trial versus a plea bargain.

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Legal Representation, Plea Bargaining, and Trial

The women in my study either turned to attorneys who they knew through family or friends or they were given public defenders. Since many women did not know criminal attorneys, most sought help from “any” lawyer with whom they were acquainted. For example, Pattie asked her workman’s comp attorney to represent her, whereas Alecia and Karen were provided public defenders. Unfortunately, both types of counsel were often not experts in criminal law nor were knowledgeable about the battered woman’s syndrome. Even though these lawyers did what they thought best and the women trusted them, in the end, most women felt like they were not adequately represented. This, in and of itself, is not a unique finding. The majority of people in prison feel they did not receive sufficient legal advice.18 However, the fact that most women were forced to rely on individuals who had no expertise in domestic violence or self-defense greatly hampered their defense. The women also reported having attorneys who did not have enough time to spend on their cases. Jackie, who paid $20,000 for her attorney, explained in her interview in 1993 that her lawyer contacted her only two days prior to the start of her trial to go over her case. Raquel also said her attorney had “too many balls in the air” as his main focus was getting another one of his clients off death-row. Moreover, a further confounding factor to these women’s defenses is linked to their past victimization by male perpetrators. Similar to Leonard’s19 findings on women’s reservations with male police officers, the women in my study discussed a general reluctance to disagree with their male attorneys or tell their whole story about abuse. Lauren said she never questioned anything her male attorney put in front of her to sign because she did not feel she could ask questions or challenge him. Other women voiced concern over being completely truthful about all of the abuse in their relationships because they had a difficult time trusting men. Beyond unsatisfactory legal counsel, Leonard20 found further evidence of judicial inequalities for women convicted of these crimes. She uncovered such things as excessive use of anti-depressants and antianxiety medications for the women who were in jail awaiting trials, as well as an overuse of plea bargaining to get women through the system. The overmedication of women in my study seldom happened at this point as most made bail; however, there were some who later noted they felt like “zombies” unable to truly take part in their trials because of the drugs taken while in jail. Similar to the women in Leonard’s research, though, there were some women in this study who felt pressured into

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accepting plea bargains. Even though the majority of the women had jury trials, the reasons for those who took pleas are explored. Sarah recalled intense anxiety over telling her story in public. She felt she could not drag her family’s name through the mud anymore. Lauren, Alecia, and Carrie explained they were “scared.” Carrie and Lauren were both threatened with the death penalty and Alecia credits her young age for the reason why she accepted a plea bargain. She commented: When you’re eighteen years old and nineteen years old you don’t know a hill of beans of what’s really going on, what’s right, what’s wrong … really ignorant to the law. Real, real ignorant to the law, I’ll put it that way. Not knowing if they’re doing the best thing for me or not doing the best thing for my type of situation.

Disappointingly, the women who had their cases go to trial did not fare any better. One primary reason for this had to do with the laws in place at the time. Even if the women’s attorneys knew about the abuse and were versed in self-defense law, they were not allowed to bring the Battered Woman’s Syndrome (BWS) into the trial. It was not until 1990 in Ohio that expert testimony on the BWS was even allowable in the courts. Some lawyers tried, but were not successful such as Katrina’s attorney, who took her case in January of 1986. She said, … my lawyer was going to try Battered Syndrome, but really wasn’t too much on Battered Woman Syndrome except for the burning bed with Farrah Faucet. That was about it, so really people weren’t familiar with domestic violence or anything.

Jackie’s attorney also tried to bring up her battering, but Jackie did not know or understand what the BWS was and she did not identify as a battered woman. Recall from Chapter Two, many women were reluctant to see themselves as battered.21 When Jackie’s lawyer attempted to use the BWS defense, the prosecutor objected and stated she did not fit the criteria: … they testified that I didn’t fit the criteria to go on that … they showed me a picture of a woman who had been beaten up, her eyes was like hanging out, her nose was broke, this was all distorted all over. He [prosecutor] said, “Have you ever looked like this?” I said, “No.” He said, “That’s the battered woman. If you look like this, then you use Battered Women’s Syndrome.” I told the attorney, “that poor woman looks like she’s half dead.”

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The above example broadens the critique of the justice system’s handling of domestic violence cases. Researchers have routinely found stereotyped ideas about what a “real battered woman” looks like in our legal institutions which hinders the help abused women could receive (p. 235).22 Margaret’s trial initially resulted in a hung jury after hearing about the abuse she experienced. Yet, after her judge refused to allow this, the jury finally agreed upon a guilty verdict. According to Margaret, the reason they blamed her was that she did not leave. She said: The jury could not understand that after everything I’ve been through, you know, you went right back into an abusive relationship, and, you know, it’s like, did you know it was comin’? To me it’s not like they didn’t believe it. It’s that why did you stay there? You should’ve left and never came back.

What makes matters worse is how battered women often do not fit these labels and therefore, do not see themselves as truly abused women. Kathleen Ferraro23 documented the contradiction of labeling women as victims in her book Neither Angels nor Demons. She found many women refused the label of battered woman because it signified the women as victims. This became difficult if women viewed themselves as active agents rather than passive victims in their lives. In addition to the unsuccessful attempts of the BWS defense in some of the women’s trials, there were a couple women in my study who went to trial right after the legal ruling allowing the BWS into the courts. Angie and Linda were among the first to use the BWS in their trials in Ohio. Yet, even for these cases, the women stated no one really understood how it was to be used and applied in court. Angie stated: I had hospital records, doctor reports, police reports. He had two warrants out of his arrest. I had pictures of my face beat up. I had children services testify to what he had done to Kaitlin. Kaitlin testified at six years old in my trial about what Rudy had done to her and then some of the abuse that she had seen him do to me. The state’s expert agreed I was a battered woman. However, he felt that I killed out of anger and rage instead of fear. Whereas my expert said I killed out of fear. The expert that we have now says is basically saying that it was numerous emotions and she’s correct. You know you can’t just pinpoint—it’s anger, it’s fear … it’s not … it’s everything … it’s all of that put together … anxiety … everything.

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Linda also had a similar story: Dr. S. testified in my trial as the expert witness, but they hacked her up. It was like it was a brand new defense. We used it in my trial, but it was to no avail. No one understood it. And as a matter of fact, it made things worse because no one understood it. The judge didn’t understand it. The way Dr. S explained it, but with the prosecutor doing their thing and hacking it up, no one understood how it fit in or how you could tie it to self-defense.

Not only did the women report that the BWS, if admitted, did not help them at the time, some found the mention of the abuse actually hurt them. Pattie and Karen both noted that it implied they had motive to kill. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the courts fell in line with stereotypical thinking about battered women. The women on trial were not ideal victims because they fought back. They were often pictured as whores, drug users, and incompetent mothers. Researchers who analyzed court manuscripts of self-defense cases found supporting evidence that battered women self-defense cases were treated in a much different manner than regular self-defense cases. The most noteworthy difference was the use of character attacks for cases involving abused women who defended themselves. Additionally, if the women used verbal aggression or were characterized as “bad mothers”, they were more likely to be found guilty.24 Chapter Seven looks more closely at this issue, as it became one of the defining factors between the women who received clemency and those who did not. Angie’s story exemplifies this. Her husband forced her to have sex with another woman and took pictures of it. Later at her trial, those pictures resurfaced and were entered into court in order to question Angie’s moral fiber. Yeah, my trial was a character assassination trial. It was pretty brutal. Maybe if I put her character in I can get a conviction. And that’s exactly what happened. My attorney … any attorney I’ve had since then has basically said you came to prison because of your lifestyle, not for killing your husband. And that’s hard to swallow.

As a final point, in these women’s trials, self-defense was not considered a viable option in some of the cases. Parrish’s25 work quoted in Kathleen Ferraro’s26 article on the Battered Women’s Syndrome in the courts found that only four states have refused expert testimony on BWS for third party murder for hire cases. However, Allison, who paid people to kill her husband, contended that she was asleep at the time of

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the murder, and therefore pled not guilty. So in her case, there was no attempt to use the BWS. Emma’s court date was after the 1990 ruling allowing expert testimony on the BWS. Nonetheless, she was unable to discuss the battering because it was her son who shot her husband. The other women who had killed their husbands or boyfriends in a manner inconsistent with basic self-defense law (during a fight) were usually unable to use the BWS in their trials as well. Therefore, the nature of the crime, how it happened, and who was involved affected whether or not the women were allowed to discuss their previous victimization. Convicted Offenders

In short, the circumstances surrounding any of the killings, the initial notification of the death to the police, or the use of public versus private defenders did not seem to matter. The women in this book all were convicted and served (or are still serving) time in prison. Several reasons for this similarity are the dismissal of the BWS as a credible defense, ignorance surrounding the BWS, and a lack of power and voice for battered women who kill. Unfortunately, as Gagné27 stated in her book Battered Women’s Justice, these women were victimized again through their interactions with the judicial system. Many said they felt let down and no longer felt our criminal justice and legal institutions were just. Angie who was serving a life sentence at her interview in 2005 told me: I felt betrayed by the judicial system a lot since I’ve been locked up. I had a lot of respect for the judicial system. I wanted to be an attorney since I was a kid. When I met other people who have walked in my shoes and have received the kind of time that I did for protecting themselves and their children, it blows me away. There’s a lot of things that need to change. I feel let down from something I believed in. I feel let down by my country too, to a certain degree. I was a soldier in the army and my job was soldier. That was my occupation. I was told how to defend myself from my enemy and when I done that they gave me life in prison. I feel let down.

All of the women in this book spoke of this sad realization. The reality of these inequities becomes glaringly apparent in the next chapter as life in prison is examined. The women report a lack of genderresponsive programming and a prison system that fosters further abusive behavior. At the same time, however, for some of the women, prison became a place of safety and healing.

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1 Walker, Terryifing Love 2 United States Department of Justice, “Trends in Homicide” 3 Browne, When Battered Women Kill 4

Leonard, Convicted Survivors; Beattie and Shaughnessy, Sisters in Pain; Browne When Battered Women Kill; Walker, Terrifying Love; Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice) 5 Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice 6 Browne, When Battered Women Kill 7 Browne, When Battered Women Kill; Beattie and Shaughnessy, Sisters in Pain; Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice; Leonard, Convicted Survivors; Walker, Terrifying Love 8 Browne, When Battered Women Kill; Walker, Terrifying Love; Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice 9 Browne, When Battered Women Kill 10 Scheppele, “The Reasonable Woman,” pp. 456-460 11 Schneider, Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking 12 Browne, When Battered Women Kill 13 Browne, When Battered Women Kill; Walker, Terrifying Love; Leonard, Convicted Survivors; Ferraro, “The Words Change But The Melody Lingers,” pp. 110-129 14 Beattie and Shaughnessy, Sisters in Pain 15 Browne, When Battered Women Kill; Leonard, Convicted Survivors 16 Leonard, Convicted Survivors; Richie, Compelled to Crime 17 Leonard, Convicted Survivors 18 Blumberg, “The Practice of Law as Confidence Game” 19 Leonard, Convicted Survivors 20 Leonard, Convicted Survivors 21 Leonard, Convicted Survivors; Wuest and Merrit-Gray, “Not Going Back,” pp.110-133 22 Osthoff, “When Victims Become Defendants” 23 Ferraro, Neither Angels nor Demons 24 Follingstad, Brondino and Kleinfelter, “Reputation and Behavior of Battered Women Who Kill,” pp. 251-267 25 Parish, “Trend Analysis” 26 Ferraro, “The Words Change But the Melody Lingers,” pp. 110-129 27 Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice

4 Life on the Inside

“I was fine until I rode up to that gate and I just started crying, and I was like, wow, this is a reality.” Alecia and the other women were in shock as they realized their lives were now under the constant surveillance of the state of Ohio—separated from their children, family, and friends. For most, this was their first experience as incarcerated women who now bore the labels of offender, felon, and murderer. Some of the women felt this was just an extension of the complete control their abusers had over them during their time outside the prison walls. Ironically, for others, prison became a place of refuge where they finally felt free. This chapter explores this contradiction, as well as the survival mechanisms women employ to make it in prison. One such mode of survival that will be discussed was the women’s attendance at support groups—mainly focused around domestic violence. These groups were often the catalyst for their healing and also provided the women the chance to challenge the existing self-defense laws. Finally, a discussion about the battered women’s clemency movement and the women’s involvement in it is also examined. Initial Reaction to Prison: “Scared”

As the women entered prison for the first time, they were naïve, scared, and emotionally numb. They reported that when they first came to prison, they were experiencing nightmares and night sweats, constant hypervigilance, and out-of-balance feelings stemming from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To make matters worse, they often did not understand these symptoms as PTSD and blamed themselves for their awkward, inconsistent behavior and moods. Sarah said she was afraid to sleep at night because of her nightmares:

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And when I first went to prison, I was so afraid, ‘cause I’d never been in an environment like that or anything. And I remember so many nights we were, like at admissions, it was like this dormitory, and the cots are like only this far [two feet] apart and I used to lay there at night and I was would lay awake just about all night. I would keep myself awake as long as possible and if I drifted off to sleep or something, I’d wake right back up. You know why? Because I didn’t want the other women to get mad at me, because I was scared I was still gonna have the nightmares, and if I woke everybody up, then they would be mad with me and maybe somebody would beat me up. And so I would lay awake at night.

The women were also unprepared for the degradation of prison. They had never experienced the belittlement of a strip search or the humiliation of being shackled (at least by a state institution). Margaret said: You have to take off your clothes in front of a bunch of women. That was the downgradingest, hurtingest. I lost something there. I said, “Why do I have to take off my clothes in front of all these women?” It’s the rules and the regulations. You drop your clothes and squat in front of them.

For security purposes, all prisons perform some form of a strip search, and most incarcerated women have reported these experiences as incredibly shaming.1 A more recent type of strip search called the “labia lift” was conducted at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility until 2010. After which, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against them for cruel and unusual punishment and unreasonable search and seizure. The ACLU prisoners were “required to hold open their labia as correctional officers, ‘sometimes using a flashlight, sometimes positioning their faces only inches away from a prisoner’s genitals, conduct an inspection. Reports even indicate that some prisoners have been forced to pull back the skin of their clitorises.”2 Such policies only prove to further victimize women, especially considering the sexual abuse many of the women in my study experienced (and over half of the general female prison population as well3). In Freeing Tammy, Jody Raphael4 discussed that strip searches were regularly used as a form of punishment, and that some staff felt women wanted them since it was “the only male contact they get” (p. 74). So, while prisons often rationalize such procedures as needed security measures, corrections scholars find these extreme actions abusive.5

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Gail also disclosed the trauma of her initial interaction with the prison system. Before women enter into the main penal population, they are usually introduced to prison through the “reception” phase where they are segregated until prison officials determine the women’s security risk (i. e., minimum, medium, and maximum). Violent offenders are viewed as high risk for escape and future violence and are typically placed under maximum surveillance.6 While this classification system may work well for violent men, it does not adequately address risk for women who kill. Battered women who kill are less likely than other women in the prison population to incite fights or attempt to flee from prison.7 Yet, as Gail notes, she was eventually sent to the Ohio Reformatory for Women under maximum security surveillance. She was first placed at the Justice Center before they moved her to the main reformatory. The Justice Center (like many other jails, detention centers, and prisons today) was extremely overcrowded. She literally had to carry her bedding with her all day because she was a “floater,” which meant the unit she was assigned to did not have enough beds. She remained in that unit all day with her bedding close at her side. When it was time for “lights out,” they would shuffle her over to another unit to sleep. Gail also found the drive to the main women’s prison in Marysville embarrassing when, after arrival, they would not let them off the bus, and one of the other women transfers, unable to use the bathroom, was forced to pee on herself. Sociologist Erving Goffman8 refers to these rituals as status degradation ceremonies to signify the stamp of a label now put upon the offender. These rituals also serve as a method to break down the inmate in order to eventually resocialize them into “better” people. This prison resocialization (i.e., rehabilitation) has been a source of great debate. The women in this book would argue that prison definitely broke them. However, they would dispute whether their incarcerations led to their “rebuilding.” This will be discussed throughout the next chapters. After the initial strip searches and introductions, the women had to figure out how to “live” in prison. Most of the women had, at some point, spent time in solitary confinement due to rule breaking. Katrina noted that when she first arrived she was classified as “high risk” because of her sentence and conviction. She was placed in a unit nicknamed “Little Vietnam”—where the women did what they wanted to do with little thought to the ramifications of their bad behavior. She landed in the hole (solitary confinement) multiple times for various infractions. Natalie’s youthful naivety sent her to the hole since she struggled to figure out how to stand up for herself in a nonaggressive manner. Finally, some women ended up in solitary confinement because

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they were unfamiliar with prison rules. For example, Karen gave someone her cookie at lunch, unfortunately this was a violation. Prison policy at the Ohio Reformatory for Women (and many other women’s prisons as well)9 does not allow any exchanges or gifts between inmates. In summary, what these women still had to learn was how to be proper prison inmates. They were not yet socialized into prison culture. After they learned how to “play the game,” their time behind bars became a little easier. Kathryn Watterson10 has studied women’s prisons for over thirty years and found many prison rules are quite arbitrary. In fact, the women interviewed at a Texas prison often referred to the prison rule book as the “joke book.” Inconsistency in prisons is rampant. A lot of times it is dependent on the officer if a rule will actually be enforced. Moreover, the nature of the rules concerned trivial things such as to “clean your plate” or “brush your hair.”11 A prison’s rules serve to continue to control the women, and a lot of times reinforce notions of acceptable ladylike behavior.12 Becoming Socialized: “Playing the Game” and Learning to Cope in Prison

The prison socialization process took place through a variety of venues, but the most significant socializing agents were the other women in prison, a commonality found among prison researchers.13 Katrina, mentioned above, told me the medium for her adaptation to prison life was another inmate living in “Little Vietnam.” She said another prisoner sat her down and said: I got eight numbers [eight trips to the penitentiary]. And I might have another one because I booze when I get out. But when I come in here I got a year and six months. I can do what I want to do. I can go to the hole. I’m going home regardless. You have to see a board. The people you’re cussing out you’re gonna need to vouch for your character. Make your time comfortable. Do what you need to do to get out of that hell hole down there.

It was unusual for this type of advice to come from someone with a fixed sentence; the rest of the women noted that “lifers” (those serving life sentences) often provided unlimited counsel on how to survive in prison. One of the major points was to stay away from those serving fixed sentences because of their “I don’t care attitude.” Natalie found that most of her friends were those serving life sentences because she

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felt they were the only ones she could really trust. In her words, she said, “Lifers don’t care. They killed somebody. Nobody’s any worse or better ….” She, along with other women in this study, referred to the lifers in familial terms. They talked about each other as family, using terms such as “sister lifer,” “baby lifer,” and “grandma lifer.” Teresa, in her interview in 1994 said, “They [the lifers] was a life to me. They were very inspirational to me because they was like mother figures to me.” Betsy described activities the lifers would do around the holidays— similar to what families do on the outside: Like New Years Eve we had a formal party and we wore long nightgowns … we always did somethin’ at Christmastime. We were just like a big family … we helped kinda ease the hurt of not bein’ at home.

The development of pseudo-like families in women’s prisons has been a consistent research finding, one that differs from men’s experiences in prison.14 However, Barbara Owen’s ethnographic research in one of California’s largest female correctional facilities found these pseudo-like families, but also noted a move away from them.15 Women were no longer surviving incarceration by forming families; instead their goal seemed to be to do their time by staying out of relationships. Owen also noted, though, the changing nature of the prison system in recent years, with more and more women coming in with fixed sentences. This could explain the move away from prison families, in view of the fact that according to my study, this seems to be a phenomenon limited to lifers. Even with the possibility of friends, a lot of women were guarded in letting anyone get close to them initially. Some women were loners, trying to eat and sleep their way through prison. Raquel acknowledged: I did get really fat at one time. I thought that I guess if I could eat enough … maybe I could fill the emptiness and ballooned clear up to 273 which is about 100 pounds more than I weigh today. Then one morning I got up and said okay, now you’re fat … you can’t sit, walk, stand, or lay down … you’re miserable. And the kids still aren’t coming.

Karen also found food to be a comfort and when the prison finally put her on high blood pressure medication because of her weight, she refused to take it in hopes of having a heart attack. Raquel and Karen’s use of food to soothe themselves is not hard to do in prison. Prisons are notorious for serving high carbohydrate, high fat diets, and it often

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becomes an easy way to escape the reality of incarceration. Furthermore, Karen’s rejection of heart medication in hopes of dying is also similar to Teresa’s method of coping. In Teresa’s 2005 interview, she reflected on her incarceration, “I tried to smoke myself to death when I was incarcerated. That was something unknown. Nobody knew that, but me. I couldn’t hang myself on the light hook, so I tried to chain smoke back to back to back to back.” Along with eating or smoking, sleeping was another way to help the days fade into each other. Linda said, “Sleeping was a drug for me. I liked to sleep. I’d make myself go to sleep so it could hurry up and be the next day. I thought I could do my time like Ripe Van Winkle…wake me when it’s over.” Researchers have found an increased suicide risk for female inmates as compared to male inmates. While none of the women above tried conventional methods of committing suicide (i.e., hanging, drug overdoses, or slitting of wrists), they nonetheless could have been categorized as suicidal. A study of incarcerated women at Bedford Hills Correctional Institution in New York reported women were more apt to turn their aggression inward and harm themselves rather than act out violently towards others.16 When an incarcerated woman is classified as “high risk” for self-harm, she usually is sent to solitary confinement. Ironically, isolation actually increases the risk for suicide.17 Eventually though, these women would begin to realize that no amount of sleeping, eating, or crying was getting them out of prison any more quickly. Some women began to break out of their shells—would start playing cards, crocheting (with plastic hooks), or talking with other women. Through informal conversations with inmates, they began to see they were not alone. To further their healing, some women also had access to counseling. Sarah was one of the lucky ones who had a counselor who taught her to value herself. She recalled a conversation she had with this counselor: She said first of all, what happened to you was not your fault … she showed me really exactly how I was … how I had been trained to be … how I had been so dominated all my life. That’s how I started talking to her and was uh, she’s the one who first started helping me ‘cause she’s the first person who had ever in my life told me that I was a worthy human being. Nobody had ever told me that before … nobody had told me before that I didn’t deserve to be treated like that, that they didn’t have a RIGHT to treat me like that.

Sarah was deeply empowered by working with this counselor. Contrary to some public opinion, Sarah’s experience in prison was unique. First, she actually received counseling. Second, the type of

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counseling she received was stellar. This is the exception, not the rule for prison counseling. Raquel, on the other hand, found the prison mental health services comparable to a “band-aid approach.” She reported: I actually see a counselor now as part of my mental health treatment thing, but his office happens to be in the living unit that I live … and he’ll walk up to me about once every couple weeks and he’ll see me in the dayroom when I’m zipping and zooming and heading out to work or whatever for the day. And he’ll say, “Well, I see you’re up and you’re dressed today, are you doing alright?” He says, “Okay, I’ll mark you down as okay.” That’s really their kind of approach. It’s a lot of people who are homicidal and/or suicidal and I understand that they have to deal with crisis type things instead.

Moreover, just like outside the prison walls, some counselors are better than others. Regrettably, for the women in prison, it was the luck of the draw, and they had to deal with whoever was there for a given period of time. They could not “shop around” for a better fit. The reaction to the services provided was mixed. About half said it was great, the other half said that it was lacking. Kathryn Watterson18 noted in her research on women’s correctional facilities that one problem with the mental health treatment in prison is the lack of time and money devoted to it. According to her, many prison psychiatrists are not only serving the needs of prisoners, but also providing on-site counseling to employees who might need emotional help. This, rendered with the increases in the prison population, has often left counselors with only enough time for surface-level conversations. The mental health services available in Ohio have changed over the last ten years due to a lawsuit against the state (Dunn vs. Voinovich) for improper mental health services within the state’s corrections system. Prior to 1995, psychiatric services were provided by the Department of Mental Health (DMH) and the mental health programs were provided by the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ORD). As of 1995, ORD enacted a community health model which includes teams that service up to five correctional institutions at a time. These teams are made up of psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, activity therapists, correctional officers, unit managers, and case managers. All of the mental health staff receives training at the Corrections Training Academy for three weeks prior to working in any of the correctional institutions. ORD is now responsible for providing prison mental health services and DMH makes sure ORD meets established standards of care for mental health treatment in the state.19 The women who later received

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clemency and were released from prison never benefited from these changes, and the women still incarcerated never commented whether or not they perceived an improvement in mental health services. Even as these changes may be a step in the right direction, an inspection report conducted at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in May 2011 found an overwhelming mental health caseload. The staff voiced concern over their ability to provide adequate mental health treatment due to the number of women needing their services. At this point, there were 39 mental health positions, but of those positions, there were only five staff psychologists to meet the needs of 2,600 women. An additional foreseeable problem was caused by the closing of the main psychiatric correctional facility in the upcoming year, which forced all of the women to the Ohio Reformatory for Women with no additional psychiatric staff to serve them.20 These continued problems of insufficient mental health care at prisons around the United States are a genuine, cause for concern. The American Civil Liberties Union has ongoing lawsuits against various correctional institutions for inferior health practices. In 2006, a class action lawsuit was filed against correctional facilities in Wisconsin for unequal medical services (mental and physical), with men receiving far better treatment than women.21 Specifically, in the report it was noted that men in prison received inpatient psychiatric care; and that women were only provided with solitary confinement for suicide watch. Support Groups: Healing and Empowerment

Rather than rely on the limited counseling in prison, the majority of the women in this book received emotional nurturance and healing through support groups. Unfortunately, at the time of these women’s incarcerations, prison programming was limited to those without life sentences. The rationale for policy is the need to rehabilitate and prepare incarcerated women for life on the outside. Thus, the prison felt no need to resocialize the lifer because of the extremely small chance they would ever walk away from prison. In spite of this, the prison warden at the time started a “Life Group.” Allison describes the group: It was made up of all women that were doing life and it was sort of like a big support system within itself, because … when you’re doing life, you had nothing there. All the programs are made for people with short time. You know it’s always about getting you educated or whatever, ‘cause you’re moving on to society. And we were not going back. And she [the warden] felt that people who were doing life were

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very mature. They could adjust better. They had better work habits. And so she started this group.

The women used the following words to describe the group: “supportive,” “uplifting,” “a place to go to keep my sanity.” The Life Group also recognized the unfortunate commonality of abuse among the women, and it became a place for the women to share their pasts in a nonjudgmental environment. The women realized, though, that they needed additional guidance when it came to victimization issues and they worked to put together a domestic violence support group. These women, along with the warden at the time, were able to get volunteers to come into the prison and facilitate support groups for victims of domestic abuse. These support groups were the mechanism for change in the women’s perceptions of what it meant to be battered. It is interesting to note that, prior to these support groups, many of the women did not think of themselves as abused. Just as Jackie felt that she was not a “true battered woman” because she had never been beaten to the point where she looked “half-dead,” many of the other women felt the same way. Emma talked about the abuse in her marriage, “I just thought it was part of being married. You know, I really, really did. I just thought that he was the man and you was his wife and he hit you or whatever, and it was part of being married.” When Emma was interviewed in 2005, she reflected back on what she had learned during her time in prison while attending the domestic violence support groups: Like I didn’t know I was being battered. I didn’t realize it because I always thought of battered women as being passive or very, very, very poor and not having these material things, and actually that’s the way I thought of them. I didn’t know it could be career women, women that worked like I did all the time. I was still a battered woman and I didn’t realize it. Yet, it [the support group] has put a large awareness.

Consequently, the domestic violence support groups provided pertinent information to the women about abuse. For many, it was incredibly eye-opening to have this newfound knowledge to guide how they viewed their relationships. Likewise, the women began to understand they were not to blame for the abuse and they saw themselves differently. Other studies have found that when abused women are able to discuss their victimization in a safe, comforting environment, it can be empowering.22 Leonard23 noted that, when interviewing incarcerated battered women, it was crucial for their wellbeing to be able to name and identify what had happened to them. Without naming it, it was invisible—it never occurred. Not only did

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Emma view herself as a battered woman, but she also began to see herself and the other women as strong survivors: You know, you think yours is bad, then you listen to someone else and, I, peoples don’t think it, but instead of bein’ weak, I think we are really strong because we put up with so much.

Cindy also described this transformation when she said, “You were starting to feel like you were a worthwhile person when you started taking the domestic violence support groups.” Not only did these groups transform how they felt about themselves, but in Anne’s case she also realized the potential to assist others with her new awareness about domestic violence. She said she continued the meetings past her timeline because, “I felt that if I did, maybe I would help someone along the line as I’m helping myself.” The women were able to take away a lot from the support groups and counseling because they were finally in an environment where they felt safe talking about their feelings. Surprisingly, some of the women commented that they felt freer and safer in prison than they did in their own homes with their abusers. A consistent finding in prison research is the connection between women’s prior victimization and their feelings of safety and freedom in prison. The greater the degree of victimization before prison for women the more feelings of security in prison they reported.24 Throughout her time in prison, as well as after release, Jackie consistently stated that she felt more liberated in prison. While in prison Jackie stated, It’s bad to say, but being in here, I feel more freer than [when] I was married. Especially in my last years. And in a way, I have more freedom in here than I had with him. But I don’t like it in here. I don’t like it you know. But comparing this to him ….

After Jackie was released from prison, she stated, “ … I have not regretted one day at all the time I was in [prison], it was a peace of mind. It truly was and that’s been 12 or 13 years ago. I still feel free.” Betsy reiterated this feeling when she said, “As bad it was, it just seemed like it wasn’t as bad as bein’ at home, livin’ in hell. I mean it was sad that you were away from your kids and that it took goin’ to prison to be safe.” Sarah commented that one of her counselors in prison told her that the reason she was having flashbacks was because she was finally in a place where she felt secure enough to explore these hidden

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memories. Even though not all of the women viewed prison as a refuge (some felt prison was the equivalent to life with their abusers), it was freeing when the women were able to talk openly about their oppression. As Katrina revealed: Prison for me was no different from my life because I was kept. I was told what to do…this is no different. I’ve had cavity searches, strip searches, I went through that. So this was not … it was not a shock for me. And it was really sad, one day I sat up and thought that damn, this is kinda like my life. I was in prison at home.

The psychologist Philip Zimbardo25 realized the destructive nature of penal systems when he randomly assigned undergraduate students to play the part of either prisoner or prison guard in his mock prison experiment at Stanford University in the 1970s. The prison guards became abusive and sadistic, while the prisoners turned into submissive, demure inmates completely dependent on the system. His study forced researchers to look deeply at corrections institutions and consider the correlates to abusive relationships. Watterson26 even compared the prison experience to life with an abusive parent. Other research (including this study) has noted ongoing emotional, physical, and sexual abuse rampant in prisons.27 Furthermore, our prisons foster ongoing dependence where individualism, demand for respect, honesty, and fairness are not considered ideal attributes of the model prisoner. 28 These issues will be explored further in the concluding chapter. For now, it is noteworthy that even within this abusive, corrosive environment, most of the women in my study found prison a better place to be than in their own violent homes. These feelings of freedom and security were heightened by the conversations the women had while in their support groups or just socializing with other women who were like themselves. One of the key tenets of feminism is empowering individuals through knowledge, which then leads to activism.29 This is exactly what happened with the women in this book. As they began to learn about their own victimization, they started to become empowered, and began to change how they felt about themselves. The domestic violence group provided a turning point for the women where they started to see themselves as survivors rather than victims. As they took on this new survivor self, it became important to give back to others and help other women inside and outside the prison. Allison, who later was granted clemency, and the other women in the Life Group, put together informational packets on domestic violence

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and distributed them to other inmates. Allison said they managed to override prison rules and illegally Xeroxed stuff. They would quietly hand material to other women saying, “Read this, you know this is good reading.” The warden at the time often turned a blind eye to such minor infractions by the Life Group, especially since she was the one that started both the Life Group and developed the domestic violence programming for it. Michelle, who was eventually granted clemency, was very complimentary of the warden and the way she interacted with the women, “She was a sweetheart…she treated us swell.” Allison described this warden as someone who could “run the whole institution herself. [She] was very aggressive and assertive. She talked up to staff. Even the staff don’t mess with her.” Consequently, the warden became a major supporter for the women and helped with the clemency process. It was through the Life Group that the women were told about how and why to apply for clemency. Allison explained that a domestic violence volunteer told the women about the laws pertaining to the battered woman syndrome. He described self-defense and the BWS and informed them about the bill that was introduced to allow expert testimony on the BWS in the courts. The Life Group received a copy of the bill and dissected every part of it. As the women figured out what all the legal jargon meant, they applied it to their lives. Like with the information they were given on domestic violence, they shared this new knowledge with as many people as possible. “We were sending out articles and just, you know, sitting and reading the stuff and we would share it.” This prompted many women to start the application process. As noted above, the warden also helped expedite this. In fact, she encouraged many women to apply for clemency, even when they did not want to do it. Sarah said she felt “forced” to submit an application because she initially did not want to apply, “because it was just so difficult. I had a hard time accepting the fact that I was a victim of domestic abuse.” Teresa also said the process was not easy. She said she never would have applied had it not been for her roommate. Her roommate sat her down and said, “You write everything from the time you met this man until, until the abuse and all that, you know, just write it down.” And she replied, “Well I’m all mixed up.” Yet, her roommate would not give up and continued encouraging her until she told her story. Not only was the application process difficult because of the emotional turmoil it created for the women, it was also quite time consuming. The women had to complete lengthy packets which detailed the abuse and any corroborating documentation about the abuse (hospital records, police reports). Because it is common for battered

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women to minimize and deny the abuse, as well as blame themselves,30 some of the documentation did not exist. Many had been reluctant to call the police and others found that when they searched for police records, the documents were often missing. Battered women who kill frequently experience unsupportive people in their help seeking efforts.31 The women discussed churches, hospitals, friends, and family who refused to assist them. For example, Linda’s mother had told her, “You made your bed, now lie in it.” The lack of support for their histories of abuse in the form of records or witnesses made it difficult for some to effectively apply for clemency. Finally, the women had to meet with the parole board and discuss their case as part of the clemency process. This was even more frustrating for the women as they felt they were not given enough time to fully tell their stories. What the women did not know is that the final say came from Governor Celeste. The parole board would make recommendations, but Governor Celeste could (and would in some cases) override the parole board’s decision and still grant someone clemency. Even though the application process was challenging, the women noted it was the other women inmates who truly supported them and made it happen, who helped the women push forward and complete their clemency packets. Several sources within the prison system helped empower the women to apply for clemency: first, was the acknowledgement they were battered via the domestic violence support group; second, the women themselves helped each other out; and finally, the warden at the time advocated for the women. All in all, 130 women applied for clemency. The Clemency Decision: “Cries of Joy or Sorrow?”

On a rainy day towards the end of December, the women were called to gather in two rooms—the gymnasium or the weight room. As the women walked together, they were ushered into these separate rooms. They knew what was about to take place—the women would find out about their applications for clemency. What they did not know, however, was if they would be told they received clemency or were denied it. Allison, who awaited her fate in the weight room, said it was like “death warmed over in this room.” She said people were praying, crying, and hugging. They could hear cries coming from the gymnasium and they assumed it was cries of joy—that the women were told they were going home. Finally, a prison official walked into the weight room and declared, “Everyone in this room has been granted their freedom.” Emma whispered, “She can’t even describe the feeling.” Margaret said,

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“I just started shakin’ like I did at the trial. That, you know, my teeth were just shakin’, and I was just like goin’ into a shock.” There were six women who were told they were going home that day; the rest of the women still had to serve some time. (One stipulation of the clemency was a minimum of two years served prior to release.) After hearing this news, the women were then led back to their living quarters and those who had to, served the rest of their sentences in the general population with the other women. The women granted clemency received mixed responses from the women who did not get it. As some would expect, there was a lot of anger, disappointment, and resentment from the other women. Emma said there were some women who walked around saying, “Well, maybe I should go and kill somebody, then I can get out of prison.” Whereas, other women tried their best to support the women granted clemency. Betsy said as soon as she returned to her room there were a lot of women who came and talked to her and seemed genuinely happy for her. Nonetheless, many women said they had to stifle their exhilaration. As Anne remarked, “I should’ve been, at that point, ecstatic, and I couldn’t be. I had to maintain my deepest, greatest excitement to, you know, low keel.” Emma, though, struggled with the decision of why her and not others. I felt bad for them. I just felt like we all should’ve gotten something. You know, I uh, I don’t know how they arrived at their decisions, but I mean a battered woman is a battered woman, you know, and I think that even if they hadn’t been given complete freedom, that something should’ve come out of it, you know, eventually.

Out of 130 women who applied for clemency, 26 (one later after the mass clemency) received it and 104 were denied it. Not only was the clemency process difficult for the women, but a political debate played out in the local media as well. Many individuals were very concerned with the freeing of these women. Prosecutors speculated that this could result in an “open season on men” and provide women “a license to kill.”32 Chapter Six looks at how these women fared after release from prison. Before that discussion, Chapter Five examines what happened to the women who were denied clemency. 1 Watterson, Women in Prison; Raphael, Freeing Tammy 2

Ito, “American Civil Liberties Union Blog,” http://www.aclu.org/blog.prisoners-rights-womens-rights/colorado-womensprisons-ends-labia-lift-search-policy 3 Pollock, Women, Prison, and Crime, 2nd Edition 4 Raphael, Freeing Tammy

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5 Watterson, Women in Prison; Britton, At Work in the Iron Cage 6 Watterson, Women in Prison 7 Owen, In the Mix 8 Goffman, Asylums 9 Watterson, Women in Prison 10 Watterson, Women in Prison 11

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McClellan, “Disparity in the Discipline of Male and Female Inmates,” pp. 71-97 12 Strickland, Correctional Institutions for Women in the U.S. 13 Watterson, Women in Prison; Britton, At Work in the Iron Cage; Raphael, Freeing Tammy 14 Pollock, Women Prison and Crime, 2nd Edition 15 Owen, In the Mix 16 Fox, Women in Crisis 17 Scott, Hannum and Gilchrist, “Assessment of Depression Among Incarcerated Females,” pp. 372-379 18 Watterson, Women in Prison 19 Correctional Institution Inspection, “Summary of Reports on Mental Health,” 20 Jackson, “Correctional Institution Inspection Committee Report Ohio Reformatory for Women,” pp. 1-126 21 American Civil Liberties Union Blog of Rights, [email protected] 22 Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice; Leonard, Convicted Survivors 23 Leonard, Convicted Survivors 24 Bradley and Davino, “Women’s Perceptions of the Prison Environment,” pp. 351-359 25 Zimbardo, “Standford Prison Experiment,” http://www.prisonexp.org 26 Watterson, Women in Prison 27 VanNatta, “Conceptualizing and Stopping State Sexual Violence,” pp. 27-52 28 Clark, “The Impact of the Prison Environment on Mothers,” pp. 306-329 29 Fonow and Cook, “Back to the Future,” pp. 1-15 30 Leonard, Convicted Survivors; Wuest and Merrit-Gray, “Not Going Back,” pp.110-133 31 Beattie and Shaughnessy, Sisters in Pain 32 Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice

5 Clemency: Denied

“I was broken basically,” Alecia said after finding out she was not going home. Other women were dumbstruck that people just like themselves were exonerated while they were not. As discussed in the previous chapters, the women denied clemency differed little in their backgrounds from the women who were granted it. These women were also victims of childhood abuse and dysfunction which had continued into their adult intimate relationships. Most had believed they would be lying in a casket soon, and their killings were a result of this and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. They felt silenced throughout their lives when it came to the abuse and now, once again, they were standing before people who could help them and felt they were again ignored. Some of the women had applied for clemency before this and were denied (you can apply every two years). However, this time the women felt it was different. This time they applied with a large group of women who had become their friends and confidantes. Through the life group and the domestic violence group, the women knew each other’s stories, and knew they were not very different from the women who received clemency. This added to the devastation they felt. The words the women used to describe their initial reactions of being denied were: “angered,” “depressed,” “disappointed,” “jealous,” and “hurt.” “The wind was knocked out of me,” Cindy said. Moreover, many of the women felt as if their abusers had won again because their attempts at freedom had failed. Natalie expressed a sense of injury and frustration: My feelings were hurt mostly because … the fact that they believed me and they did know about the abuse … there was no questioning that. That much they believed, for sure. It was obvious … My feelings were hurt because I don’t think I’m a bad person.

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During the grieving process the women found themselves crying a lot and withdrawing from activities. Slowly, as they reached the acceptance stage, they realized they could make prison a better place by being active participants in their lives. The remainder of this chapter focuses on this “remaking” of these women and the contradiction this placed on them as they could not be truly liberated. Transformation: “Programming Queens”

As the women realized they were trapped in prison, they began to change their outlook and went on a mission, as Pattie stated, to “remake” themselves. Pattie expressed this when she said: I wouldn’t be who I am today if they let me out. I would have been right back in an abusive relationship. I came in here in November ’89, and towards the beginning of ’90 they did this … So I had next to no programming. You would have actually been putting me back out on the street being the same person I was when I came in. That wouldn’t have been good at all, at all …. That kicked me off … in ’90 it kicked me off to go on a mission to completely change who I was. I was about to re-make [myself] and that’s what I did. I did a lot of programming … endless programming, endless programming.

The programming that Pattie was referring to is any type of self-help or educational group the prison offers (e.g., educational classes on parenting styles, substance abuse, coping, and GED preparation courses). Cindy had a similar response to the clemency decision; she started focusing on what she could do to better herself and started finding any and every group to be a part of in the prison. During the interviews, numerous women showed me documentation (i.e., copies from their files that indicated the courses they had completed) of the multiple groups they had become involved in after the clemency decision. The more programming the women partook in, the more empowered they became. The programming provided the women with knowledge about themselves, healthy relationships, and coping with life stressors, and, as a result, the women started to feel a sense of control over their lives. The women did not use the term empowerment, but as they described their experiences it resembled what other feminist scholars would define as this.1 For instance, the women changed from blaming themselves to saying they were not at fault for the abuse. They also began to talk about themselves as survivors rather than victims. Finally, they began adopting behaviors that reinforced giving back and helping

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others. They developed their own groups that had not been available before in the prison. For example, prior to prison, Natalie practiced yoga and Veronica did aerobics. In prison, they started yoga and aerobics classes. Veronica also started teaching sign language classes. Linda started a choir group. Karen started a fundraising group as well as a quilting group to help local charities in the community where the prison is located. Not only did these women become involved in prison programming, but they became the “movers and shakers” of the groups. They obtained approval for the programs, got them started, and led them. They felt they made a difference in the lives of women inside as well as outside the prison. When I asked if they were involved in any programming, many responded with, “They call me the programming queen.” Initially, the women started the groups to better themselves, but as they healed their wounds and came to terms with their past victimization, they began to see a need to assist others. As Alecia stated: … like when we do community projects, fund raisers and things like that to actually give back to people around you, as well as people out there, and making better choices, and just to say I walked this institution around and around to raise money to bring a counselor in here and to help raise money for lights that are in here … things like that in general. So even though you’re here, you’re still doing something to try to help others out there.

Identity Change: “I Am Not a Victim”

Early feminists in the women’s movement felt the key to social change was through consciousness raising groups. In these groups, women would share their stories and see commonalities in them, and were inspired to create changes.2 In prison, the women in a similar fashion became part of consciousness raising groups as well. The women learned about their victimization, realized they were not alone, and worked towards change in themselves and in the prison structure by sharing their experiences with each other. This transformation is apparent in Angie’s story who was a childhood victim of incest. She spoke about how the incest survivors group helped her: After I took the incest survivors group. It helped me see myself in a different light. And that’s what helped me see myself as a survivor. And then when Dr. F. was going over a lot of things with me, that helped me see myself as a survivor more. And then I started thinking outside the box, because I was in a box. I was a victim and I was in a

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box and I could not think outside that victim role. Today I am not a victim. And I do not sabotage anything in my life because I deserve good things in my life just like any person on this earth does.

Katrina also viewed herself as a survivor, “Oh wow. I would say I am a domestic violence survivor, first and foremost. I’m artistic, confident, motivated, just like I said, a leader. I walk my walk.” Likewise, Linda described this identity change: I look at myself as a survivor. I cannot afford to look at myself or still consider myself as a victim because I think that embracing that mentality you don’t grow. You stay in that victimization and I absolutely consider myself a survivor.

Not only did the women view themselves as survivors, but they also saw themselves as capable individuals who were lovable, friendly, outgoing, caring, funny, and amazing. Raquel described herself in these words, “I am a mature, humorous, amazing person who has survived the unsurvivable [and] in spite of all that, still manages to find some joy.” Alecia felt she was a “worthwhile person.” Angie also had a remarkable self perception: I’m a woman with great compassion for people, humanity. I … I’m full of love. I’m a very strong woman. I have a lot of strength. I’m very courageous. I’m very assertive. And I think … I can see my beauty today where I didn’t at one time in my life … beauty within and on the outside. At one time in my life, I thought I was a very ugly person that’s because of how I felt on the inside ‘cause I took on the shame and guilt that the man should have took that violated me. And it made me feel ugly. So it took me … oh, it was only like three years ago where I could look in the mirror and see that I was pretty. But I think my beauty lies within. And mostly for humanity. I have a great deal of love for people and for their safety and soul.

Karen too viewed herself in a very positive light: I think I’m honestly a good person. I think I have good morals. I think I have good values. I would like me as a friend. And I’m intelligent … I don’t see myself as an inmate. I don’t see myself as a convict cause I’m not like … I know you’re not suppose to say that to the parole board, but I don’t feel I’m like three-fourths of the women here. I’m not like ‘em. And I think I’ve maintained … when I walked in here I said I will either leave here dead (what I really planned on) or I will

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come out a better person … and I think I’ve done that because I haven’t lost my values and I’ve actually learned what ones are mine and not someone else’s.

Goffman (p. 4-5)3 considers the label of felon as a “blemish of character.” Those with this type of stigma are judged based on their “differentness” from others. The stigmatized individual is seen as less than human. When “normal” people find out these women have felony convictions, they react to them differently and perceive them to be nontrustworthy and defective. Interestingly, most of the women denied clemency did not view themselves as felons or criminals. Recalling Natalie’s quote when she found out she was denied clemency, she was hurt because she did not view herself as a “bad person.” The women tended to equate criminal/felon/inmate with bad evil people and they did not envision themselves in this manner. They did this by surrounding themselves with people who shared their stigmatized identity (other incarcerated battered women) and they found support from others inside the prison (volunteers and domestic violence advocates) and their family and friends who could see beyond the label. In line with Goffman’s4 findings, Teresa Severance found incarcerated women’s well-being rested heavily on being able to be around others like themselves. In her words, it alleviated women’s “shame and embarrassment” knowing other women had similar life experiences (p.20).5 In her research she found that, even if women did not have structured support groups, they still came together to comfort and listen to one another’s stories. These findings show the positives of fostering an environment where incarcerated women are allowed to congregate. Unfortunately, the prison system is often reluctant to allow a lot of fraternizing among inmates for fear prisoners will become too powerful.6 Michelle (who did not participate in the life group or the domestic violence group) felt prison taught her how to be a better criminal. Pattie (one of the “programming queens”), on the other hand, disagreed and suggested that she is a healthier person because of her time spent in groups while incarcerated. If women partake in supportive groups, this could positively impact their health and well-being while locked-up. The significance of sharing one’s trauma is important for healing, but according to psychologists Tedeschi and Calhoun (2004), so is the act of giving back to society. They suggested that in order for people to move past pain they must see their suffering as a significant catalyst for change. Over the years, there were two observed trends: 1) prison populations swelling, and 2) reductions to rehabilitation programming in

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prisons.7 This is greatly hampering incarcerated women’s ability to succeed in and out of prison. As evidenced by my study, the women took it upon themselves to form the groups they needed and to help each other. If this form of help-seeking behavior is encouraged, this could be a win-win for prison administrators who are strapped for cash. Additionally, prisons could consider how previously incarcerated women might also be a source of guidance and strength for the women. Many prisons place limits on continued contacts with former inmates. However, Patricia O’Brien8 in her interviews with formerly incarcerated women found sustained connections with the women in prison aided both the women on the inside and the ones released. Looking Up: Spiritual Healing in Prison

One of the most intriguing findings from my interviews with the women denied clemency was their deep reliance on spirituality to get them through their time in prison. Even though the women who received clemency did talk about a strong belief in God, they did not express the same conviction the denied clemency women did. The dependence on a higher power seemed crucial for the women still living in prison. One possible reason for this disparity is the lack of alternative supports in prison as well as access to more in-depth spiritual transformation programs while incarcerated. The women’s spiritual connections also served as a catalyst for change; however, this took some time. Initially, when the women in this chapter entered prison, as well as when they were denied clemency, they disconnected from God. Pattie felt she was “beaten one more time,” and Karen said she felt betrayed by God. Linda, whose faith had served as a strong foundation for her throughout her life, questioned if God really existed. But as time went on and the women became more empowered through their support groups, they began to describe a shift in their spirituality from a fearful God to a loving God. The women who had no relationship with God prior to prison also opened themselves up to the idea of a spiritual connection with a higher power. All the women denounced the patriarchal notion of God and shifted to a more egalitarian view of God. Karen was raised in a home where her father was the preacher of a Pentecostal church. Throughout her marriage, she sought out her church and her family for support against her abuse and both continued to blame her for the violence in her home. Karen talked about how her view of God changed once she came to prison, “ … spirituality is my relationship with God. I used to serve Him because I was scared of hell and now I serve him because I love him. He’s my friend.”

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Pattie also talked about her spiritual transformation: My spirituality has been since I’ve been here. I used to pray for God to take me off the earth every day. I would say the same prayer. Take me off this earth. I can’t take this anymore. And this became the whole solution … this is not what I asked for. At that point, I felt like I was about beat to death and I kind of felt when I stepped in here that I was beaten one more time. I was raised Episcopal and I was raised in a very ritualistic type of religion and God is a punishing God. I mean God is all powerful, but their perspective in a man’s organized religion … you were raised with a fear of God and you saw God as a wrathful God, not as a loving God that he is … [since prison] I stay with the God I know now today that’s really a loving God, not a punishing God.

The women also expressed clear cut differences between religion and spirituality. Many felt they were spiritual people, but not necessarily religious people. They felt religion was connected to going to church, learning about different denominations, and understanding church organization. Spirituality, on the other hand, was their connection with God. Angie talked about the difference between spirituality and religion: I consider myself a very spiritual person. How do you define the difference? Religion to me is learning about Hinduism, Islamic, Christianity and stuff like that. That to me is religion. Spirituality is, I feel, bein’ in tune with your own self … your own spirit because we all have a spirit.

Additionally, Natalie spoke of a difference between religion and spirituality, “I don’t think you have to claim a certain religion to be spiritual, because for a long time I didn’t have any type of religion, but I was very spiritual. I was always looking, always reading, always meditating, or praying, or something.” Not only did the women see a difference between spirituality and religion, but they did not want to participate in those things that were considered religious. For instance, some of the women did not attend church services at the prison (which most thought of as religious not spiritual). Pattie described church as a “man’s world” and stated, “I get more from that [my own spirituality] than I do going over to sit through a church service that almost kind of reminds me of man’s organized religion … I will never be a part of that.”Alecia talked about her decision not to attend religious services in the prison as well:

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The main reason I really haven’t [gone to church] in the longest time … because a lot of people … you only call them Sunday only Christians … and as soon as you walk out that door, okay I’m not perfect I’m not going to say I am … I can’t sit there and say I’m Christian. I say I’m spiritual. I’m spiritually connected to the things around me. ‘Cause I look at everything … every living thing has a spirit. And I look at the sky and I look at all the beauty that’s around me … and to me is more church filled than what I can get over there. I look at (points to her heart) and this is my church right here.

Conversely, not all of the women I interviewed felt this way about the church services. Some of the women attended because they found comfort in the ritual. They described church as a place where they could go and worship and sing and be a part of a community of people who thought like they did. However, while they did attend church, they too were conflicted about the same issues described above. More so than church, the group called Kairos was the most significant source of spiritual comfort and healing for these women. This 30-year-old program offers ministry to incarcerated men and women, to the families of incarcerated individuals, and to juvenile offenders. The Kairos prison ministry includes a three-day course that teaches inmates the principles of Christianity and helps to encourage the formation of Christian community within prison. During the three-day program, Kairos volunteers pray, share the teachings of Jesus Christ, share meals, and talk one-on-one with the inmates. The three-day weekend is set up as an initiation period organized in stages with the manifest goal of conversion to or revitalization in the Christian faith. After the three-day intensive spiritual weekend, the Kairos volunteers continue monthly half-day visits with the inmates for one year.9 All of the women were aware of this group and many had taken part in it. They described Kairos as a spiritual weekend filled with unconditional love, healing, and forgiveness to the women. The women learned to love God, rather than fear him. Karen described one of the activities she did in Kairos and how she learned to forgive herself: Well, finally in ’95 I went through Kairos, and Kairos was a very healing experience. They had us take a piece of paper and it was a dissolvable piece of paper and you wrote down all the people you were mad at and I put down God because I was very mad at God because I prayed and fasted. I was a Sunday school teacher. Where were you? So I had to forgive God because I was so angry at God and I would tell him regularly … I put my parent’s names down, the church, my husband. And when the paper dissolved … I even put myself because I was mad at myself for not leaving even if I would have had to go

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undercover or whatever … I owed it to my kids … if I didn’t have enough strength in myself … I owed it to my children to not let them see that.

Alecia also talked about learning how to forgive her mother who testified against her in exchange for a lesser sentence for setting up the death of Alecia’s abusive father: It was the whole three-day walk that we had. And the forgiveness. They kept talking about the forgiveness. And the love these people had for us and they didn’t even know us. And we got this big bag of mail from little kids that we didn’t even know and this whole big thing of everybody that was praying for us that didn’t even know us. And to think that no matter what has been done wrong can always be re-done right by forgiving and letting go and being able to grow. And knowing that holding in that anger and that hatred stops you from growing. That whole thing. That journey was a big turning point.

Moreover, Pattie described Kairos as a turning point for herself, “It is literally a spiritual journey. It’s a weekend … It was just wonderful. It was absolutely amazing. And it gave me a different perspective. It really gave me a different perspective on God.” The forgiveness and healing these women talked about had more to do with forgiving themselves than anyone else. Research on abuse victims found that feelings of shame are prevalent amongst this group.10 All of the women denied clemency blamed themselves (at some point) for the abuse and felt some sense of responsibility for the abuse they experienced. In the book Shame and Grace: Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve,11 the author found that people who experienced shame were afraid of rejection and felt something was wrong with them. As the women participated in Kairos, they were surrounded by people who were not rejecting—another example of “sympathetic others.”12 Furthermore, they shared in activities that helped them recognize they were not to blame for the abuse and instead began to focus their anger on the injustice of their situation (rather than inward on themselves). Forgiveness came when they were able to see their own humanness as well as that of others.13 Paradox of Prison: Learning to Bloom, But Not Being Able to Grow

Prison provided the opportunity for these women to feel free and safe from violence, to become empowered survivors, and to develop a

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relationship with a higher power. Because of these changes in themselves, some have also become activists for battered and incarcerated women. They wanted to use their experiences to help others. Most agreed to talk to me for this reason—to aid other battered women. The women regained their selves and vowed never to be invisible again. Alecia described the silencing from abuse and then finding her voice through her participation in the domestic violence groups: And then I did … living without violence, and we started up a panel of survivors. And we talked to the girls in admissions that was coming in. And when I first started you couldn’t hear me. I talked so softly you really had to strain your ears to hear me. I’m soft spoken as it is, but back then you really couldn’t hear me. And then it was a few years later [one of the counselors] was having a group and she asked me to talk to the girls and I did. And she stopped me in mid … she says, “Wait a minute is this the same person?” And then she would tell them, “You would not believe what I went through with her … I couldn’t hear her … you wouldn’t have been able to hear her a few years ago.” I said “Hey, now I’ve just got more voice.” I basically had to find who I was.

Yet, as the women recaptured their voices, their survivor selves clashed with the structure of the prison. They were frustrated with the dehumanization they experienced as “inmates” and felt their basic human needs (i.e., the women were not allowed any form of human affection in the prison) were not being met. They felt their growth was constantly stifled. For instance the women talked about learning to respect themselves, which also meant requiring others to respect them. Nonetheless, the prison staff was frequently discourteous to them. The women found they could only stand up to the prison staff to a point before they would get in trouble. Prison teacher and advocate Lora Bex Lempert described the complexity of prison structure to her students who were incarcerated. 14 She advised that they must keep class material “in their heads,” that when they left the classroom it could cause them serious harm if they talked about the injustices they just learned about and now recognized as part of prison culture. This, of course, created incredible tension and feelings of inauthenticity, since the women were continually fighting against showing their “true” selves. In fact, Jody Raphael’s book about incarcerated women indicated one way to survive prison was to put on your “jailface”—no feeling, no emotion—you are zombie like (p. 66). Women in prison do this as a protection when the trials of incarceration

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become difficult and they feel challenging the system would be too risky. One reason for this inconsistency from what they learn in their support groups and the actual reality of prison life is due to the rigid structure and boundaries of our penal system. Dana Britton15 interviewed correctional officers working in men’s and women’s prisons and described how a dividing line is regularly drawn between inmates and staff. The officer’s training provides their initial socialization into the officer subculture where they are taught to distrust inmates and never get too close to them because they are a dangerous group of criminals. The prison does a good job of removing the “humanness” from the inmates; therefore, when incarcerated people are labeled as “inmates,” “criminals,” or “felons,” it becomes easier to victimize them. Their stigmatized identity marks them so that they are seen as undesirable and deserving of different (discriminatory) treatment.16 Natalie mentioned that in her 25 years of incarceration she has encountered a few caring, sensitive individuals who worked in the prison; however, they did not stay very long. She said that the few “good ones” burnt out fast when they realized they could not change the structure of the prison. She also said that the ridicule from other prison staff made it difficult for the “good ones.” For example, a woman who worked at the commissary would make sure she always had her books up to date so the women had their money, and the other prison staff referred to her as an “inmate lover.” A literature review of 43 articles on job stress and burnout among correctional officers found that work in prison settings is highly stressful.17 Correctional officers reported such things as withdrawal behavior, psychosomatic illnesses, negative attitudes, and burnout. One of the major problems reported by the young, inexperienced correctional officers was a disconnection between their initial expectations and the actual reality of working inside a prison. The contradictory job roles of “custodial care” and “rehabilitation” were often incompatible. The high recidivism rate of inmates created even more cynicism about their “rehabilitation” capabilities. The job offered little autonomy and was plagued by rifts between officers and supervisors. Lastly, the relatively low pay and prestige led to high turnover rates. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the correctional officer job, it was often a rare occurrence for correctional officers to show respect and concern for the inmates. The women in this study were not immune to the insensitivity of the prison workforce. They recognized that staff and others saw them as “criminal people” and that, for many prison employees, disconnection

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from inmates was considered the only way to survive on the job.18 Thus, it was not uncommon for staff to take advantage of the women’s work done in prison. For example, Karen talked about her frustration with the quilting group. She said they started out making and sending quilts to charities, but then some of the employees requested quilts. And I really hated doing it for the staff. I mean like the Governor’s wife, she had me make like eight quilts for her. And another staff person from the Department of Corrections had me making…I make like quilt wall hangings and I design them … had us make eight for him. I was staying up working eighteen hours a day for them …. Well like the CO’s (correctional officers) have a CO day. We had to do them for a CO day so they could give them to their kids and I’m like I don’t even like most of them. And they had jobs. So at that point I resigned my position.

Male Correctional Staff

A large percentage of male officers are currently working in female prisons and this number is continually growing. 19 Just like the women mentioning the difficulties of male attorneys and police officers, this also created a dilemma for some of the women in this book due to their prior victimization by males. The women who struggled with this stated it was difficult because they were afraid of men. They also suggested that the men did not understand this fear, and mistook it as hatred. Angie told of a situation where she had sought out mental health treatment and the male psychiatrist gave her the MMPI (Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality Inventory). He looked over the results and told her that according to this, “you hate men.” She then stated, “No, I have a son, a father … I don’t hate men, I’m scared of men.” And yet, this psychiatrist refused to listen to her and continued to state, “No, according to this, you hate men.” Corrections scholars20 have noted some of this ignorance stems from the narrow training prison staff receive which focuses mainly on handling male prisoners. Prisons were never constructed with women in mind and the training and set-up of many corrections institutions reflect this myopic vision. Therefore, even though droves of women have walked through prison gates recently, people working inside our penitentiaries (both males and females) are still not equipped to handle the issues female inmates present (e.g., lengthy histories of prior abuse). Besides the lack of adequate training, there is the continued debate about whether male staff should supervise female inmates. One of the ongoing issues has dealt with the level of supervision male correctional

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officers can have over women inmates. Amnesty International’s report from 199921 recommended limiting the kind of interaction male prison workers can have with female inmates for several reasons. First, the high incidence of prior sexual abuse of women inmates increased the chances of women suffering intense emotional trauma if male staff patted them down, searched them, or watched them in the shower. Second, a large number of women are continually sexually harassed or assaulted while in prison at the hands of male correctional officers. A 2003 report titled “The Sexual Abuse of Female Inmates in Ohio,” found blatant sexual abuse against female inmates at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, OH.22 Three whistle-blowing staff along with previously incarcerated inmates and a former employee described ongoing sexual misconduct happening between male staff and female inmates with few repercussions for this type of behavior. Unfortunately, sexual harassment and abuse of female prisoners is not limited to just Ohio prisons. Since the passage of the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act, research conducted yearly on prison rape by the Bureau of Justice Statistics routinely finds high levels of sexual abuse perpetrated against women inmates.23 In line with these findings, Anne, a clemency recipient interviewed in my study, recalled that while she was incarcerated she witnessed the sexual molestation of another fellow inmate by one of the male correctional officers. After a lot of arguing, she and two other women agreed to testify against the male staff member who had assaulted this woman. Despite the fact it ended with the prison worker losing his job, the women encountered a lot of resistance from both other women inmates as well as staff. Anne discussed that, during this time, her food box was “lost” and she also had a visitor, but was not notified until the visitation time was almost over. Thus, for major changes to occur in our prisons, we must consider issues at all levels that help or hinder women from coming forward with this type of information. On the other hand, some women reported very positive outcomes from their interactions with male staff. Pattie, and some others, said the male staff person in charge of some of the specialized training programs was patient and kind, and showed the women they were capable and intelligent. The women talked about how there were some men in the prison who had been caring and had not taken advantage of them, and that in those rare instances when a man was nice to them, it helped build up their faith in men. They found positive interactions with male staff renewed their sense of trust in men. These kinds of affirming experiences could occur more regularly if proper gendered training happened. Gender responsive training could provide more sensitive

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workers in tune with the abuse histories of the majority of female inmates. Furthermore, stricter penalties for sexual misconduct, along with prison administrators taking a more proactive approach to this type of behavior, is essential. Finally, some advocate more severe segregation of male officers and female inmates, citing there could still be some cross-gender supervision, but the overall management of incarcerated women should be in the hands of female staff.24 Healthcare: Many Problems

The severe abuse in these women’s pasts had left many of them in frail health. Regrettably, prisons are notorious for inadequate healthcare and a visit to the American Civil Liberties Union website25 provides substantial cases documenting this. The first challenge for many of the women came when they realized their many ailments were a result of the abuse. For example, Alecia was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1991 and the prison doctors suggested a possible cause was due to the physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. I found out I had M.S. (multiple sclerosis). And that was in ’91. So I couldn’t really walk and they was trying to say it was all in my mind. Well, tell me why my foot is dropping like a horse’s hoof? So if it hadn’t been for the nurse’s there … they got me off to see Dr. S and the first thing he asked me was had I been in a severe car accident. And I said no. And the next question out of his mouth was have you been abused. I lost it. To think you’re dead and you’re still haunting me from the grave. That was a hard pill to swallow. To think that this could be caused from chronic blows to my brain and to my spine. Now they’re like saying that it is genes…like a gene hereditary or whatever, like cancer cells like what you do can trigger it. So my trigger was the abuse (crying).

Almost all of the women I talked to described certain physical ailments that were directly related to the abuse. Angie talked about a condition called osteopenia, where her bones started to rapidly deteriorate as a result of the abuse. She said her doctor told her she has the bones of a 61 year old and she is only 41. Her pupils in her eyes also do not dilate because of all the blows to her head. Cindy had to have surgery on her breasts due to her husband squeezing her breasts as one form of abuse. Karen described having a severed small intestine and damaged nerves to her back from where her husband had stabbed her. She also has a brain tumor from the scar tissue from where he beat her on her head. Katrina has problems with her jaw from the beatings to her face. Linda has

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trouble with her neck from where her boyfriend hit her in the throat. Finally, Natalie mentioned having a hysterectomy two years ago because of clusters of tumors which doctors feel are a result of the sexual abuse she endured from her father. These women struggled with the fact that their abusers caused all of this physical discomfort long after they were dead. Furthermore, they often blamed themselves for their ailments, as they felt these could have been avoided had they left the relationship. Most of the women talked about their mental health as being “up and down.” Some days were better than others for the majority of the women. Understandably, the physical health problems related to the abuse often had a negative effect on the women’s emotional wellbeing. The women mentioned struggling with depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). At the time of the interview, five of the women denied clemency were on anti-depressants. However, the rest of the women (except Natalie and Veronica) discussed that even if they were not currently taking any type of medication, they had taken antidepressants at an earlier time. When I interviewed Linda (who had been released from prison), we met at a local restaurant. About 40 minutes into the interview, her face turned ghostly white, and she told me to turn off the tape-recorder. In a second or so of silence, she began to breathe again and told me she thought her first boyfriend who was also abusive, Max (not the one she killed) had walked into the restaurant. Even though Max lives in another state, she thought a man with his back to her was him. Linda had been out of prison for five years and had some initial counseling, but she was still haunted by those who have victimized her. As discussed in Chapter Four, the mental health services in prison resemble a “band-aid approach.” Kathryn Watterson26 reported one of the main problems was the patient-doctor ratio as well as lack of good quality doctors (for both mental and physical health). The second major challenge for the women was receiving good, quality healthcare. All of the women (granted clemency and denied clemency) said it was hard to get in to see doctors; they felt you had to be on your deathbed before someone would take you seriously. The problem for the women denied clemency is they are still incarcerated, dealing with both the health complications from their abuse and the deficient healthcare found inside prisons. Social scientists Ammar and Weaver27 interviewed incarcerated women about their health concerns. Revisiting the recent conversation about gender sensitive training, these scholars also concluded that female centered health services in prison were almost nonexistent. The words of these women signified they felt healthcare in the prisons was

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deficient because of a lack of caring staff, an absence of “femaleorientated” healthcare, and an underrepresentation of women providers (p. 85). This is just another illustration of how women have been “left out” of prison life. Overall, incarcerated women’s health is considerably worse than men’s. Yet, men tend to receive far superior healthcare while in prison.28 Finally, much of the healthcare offered in prisons separates out the individual and treats only part of the person. Watterson29 advocated a more holistic model of health and, based on the stories in my study, this would be beneficial. The women I interviewed were unable to disconnect their physical health ailments from their psyches and so, without proper care for both, many suffered. Loss of Children and Family: “Scars on My Soul for Life”

Despite the fact these women were in prison, they tried to stay connected with their families. Overall, their families (and friends from before) were supportive. All of the women had at least one person who visited on a regular basis. Nonetheless, the women also noted the difficulties of staying connected with family members. Most prisons are located in rural areas with limited access to public transportation, and visiting hours are usually limited to only a few times a week.30 The majority of the mothers had their children live with other family members (sisters, parents, grandparents). This tends to be the most common arrangement when mothers are incarcerated.31 However, in the few cases where the first choice was a family member and it did not work out, the second and last choice seemed to be the state—foster homes or group homes. This occurs for about ten percent of children with incarcerated mothers.32 Two of the women had children in state care. The only children who lived with the victim’s family were Martha’s two boys. Children were more likely to stay in touch with their mothers (call, write, and visit) if they lived with maternal relatives. This was the case for the following women: Karen, Pattie, Angie, Katrina, Lauren, and Linda. Nevertheless, the women felt they had little say in how their children were being raised. This was really hard for Karen and Katrina when their own daughters became involved in abusive relationships. Some of the women blamed themselves for what they put their children through, especially now when they could see the effect it had on their children. Pattie talked about her youngest son getting into fights all the time and having a big problem with authority. Angie said her son become involved with drugs. Linda, even though she’s out of prison, recognized what her incarceration did to her son. She said:

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…there are scars on my soul for life, scars on my family’s soul, scars on my son’s soul, because in a sense part of him was incarcerated too and some of those relationships, there’s irreversible damage …. I can never go back no matter how many times the parole board did say they felt that I should not have been incarcerated for this amount of time … it doesn’t change the fact that I was, and my son grew up without the benefit of having his mother raise him and I wanted to. I loved being his mom and I can never get that back. I can never get that back. So that is a huge … that is a huge thing that I will never get over. And even today it makes me cry, from time to time.

The Sentencing Project33 reported because women tend to be the primary caregivers of children, when mothers are incarcerated children tend to have a more difficult time. While children of incarcerated fathers are more likely to remain with their mothers, children whose mothers are locked up find themselves uprooted from their homes.34 Additionally, the environments children end up in are rife with family abuse, community violence, poverty, and general dysfunction.35 Even when the women in this study knew their children were with family, based on their own abusive childhoods, they voiced a general concern for the wellbeing of their children. Despite the fact that these mothers maintained contact with their children, they found it difficult to continue parenting from the confines of prison. The prison rules stipulated no incoming calls and all out-going calls must be collect. Many of the women worried about the cost of the calls on family members or grown children, and children were often frustrated they could not call their moms at their convenience. Moreover, there were set time limits on phone calls, which caused further aggravation when issues were not sufficiently addressed during the predetermined minutes. As difficult as phone calls could be, visitation was even more challenging. Karen and Angie’s children lived out of state and rarely visited. Even for those living in state, the drive to the prison could be four hours one way. Some of the women recognized their ideas of mothering had to change since they were unable to physically care for their children or offer material support to them. This is consistent with sociologist Vicki Hunter’s36 research on previously incarcerated mothers. The women redefined their mothering role in ways where having physical custody of their children was not as important. For some, they became their children’s friend, whereas others over-parented. Angie talked about her relationship with her children and noted that it was more like a friendship than a typical mother-child relationship. Karen also mentioned that even though she could not see her daughter as

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much as she would like, she could still “mother her” by giving her advice (even when her daughter does not ask for it). Not all of the women had contact with their children. According to Raquel, her children’s foster parents felt she was a bad influence and did not allow visits or phone calls. Once her children turned 21, her sons Alan and Carl have come to visit, but her daughter, Susie, has yet to see her. Carl lives in another state which makes visitation difficult and Alan now lives with her daughter Susie who still does not have any communication with her. Cindy said she speaks with her oldest child who is in the military, but she has not seen her other two children since her incarceration. Martha had three children prior to her incarceration that died from sickness and accidents. She has two living children who went to live with their paternal grandparent and she has not seen them in her 24 years of incarceration: His family had ‘em. My mother had ‘em and they came and took ‘em from my mother. So, my family wasn’t allowed to see ‘em. They told my family that if they came on his property they’d have ‘em thrown in jail. And they were my mother’s grandchildren. But she wasn’t allowed to see ‘em. Nobody in my family’s been allowed to see ‘em. Therefore, I couldn’t get pictures. I couldn’t get nothing.

I then responded with, “So you’ve already lost three kids and now basically you’ve lost two more?” Martha continued, “Well I don’t know now if they’re married, if they’re in the service … I don’t know what’s going on with them cause I have no contact. I don’t even know where they’re at. I could have grandchildren. I don’t know.” The mothers who have not seen their children during their incarceration have tried to cope with this in a number of ways. Raquel, who used food to soothe herself, when asked how she dealt with this, stated, “I don’t know. I probably don’t, very well. But what choice do I have? I mean I could hurt myself, but that doesn’t solve the problem.” Martha said she just stays to herself and does not interact much with anyone. I wrote in my field notes after my interview with Martha: I had to probe her a lot with the questions and she seemed reluctant to talk. She has put up an incredible wall around her in order to protect herself because everyone she has gotten close to has either hurt her or left her. She talked about having three of her children die, her first husband murdered, her second husband she shot, her parents and sister passed away while she was in prison, and her two living children she has not seen since she came to prison.

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I noted something similar in my field notes on Cindy: Cindy walked into the room and she had a hardness about her. She looked like she had had a rough life. She didn’t smile too much and seemed somewhat distant unlike the others who were quite friendly and easy to talk to. She sat down and began to tell her story and within minutes started to cry. She cried throughout the entire interview and in some places was crying so hard she had a difficult time talking. She seemed to be in a lot of pain discussing her past.

Raquel, on the other hand, used humor to deal with the hurt. She admitted to this and even stated that she would be more willing to crack a joke than to cry. Regardless of how these women coped, they all were in a lot of emotional pain. The fact that they have not seen their children in years is something that they will struggle with for the rest of their lives (in and out of prison). Parole Board: Forgiving? Or Just More Abuse?

Most of the women in this chapter had an indeterminate sentence (i.e., 15 to Life). This means the women are eligible for parole after they serve the minimum. Additionally, as noted earlier, the women can apply for clemency every two years. In both instances, they meet with the parole board to discuss their cases, show remorse, and prove they have bettered themselves. Based on the programming the women participated in (and started) and the identity transformation that happened, one would think this would be an easy, painless, and exhilarating meeting. They would be able to tell the parole board all they have told me about the “worthwhile survivors” they have become. Unfortunately, this is a rare occurrence for the women with life sentences. The women described this process as torturous. During their time in prison, the women became survivors. Yet, when they meet with the parole board, the parole board continually takes them back to being a victim. Angie talked about her last board hearing: I think had I went in there with that victim mentality it probably would have been better with the last parole board people, I think. Because I think that I was too confident. I think that my self-confidence and my self-esteem hurt me in that parole board hearing ‘cause I’m not the same person I was then. So they see this person and they’re probably like … I don’t see it. But this is who I am today. I have rehabilitated

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myself. And that intimidated them or something. I’ve healed a lot and maybe that hurts me when I go before the parole board because I’m not as emotional anymore when it comes to that because I’ve healed from so much of that. I’ve finally forgaven myself for that.

Karen also struggled with this: “If you go in there and mentioned that you were abused, you’re not taking responsibility. You’re not taking … accepting your own guilt. Whatever way you go … so do you say you deserve it?” Pattie expressed frustration over this conflict as well: You always wake up every day knowing what you did. They try to teach you here you’re justified, you’re justified, you’re justified. But then you go to the parole board and they blow that all out of the water. You get strong … you feel like, hey, okay I’m doing alright and it is kind of hard reaching as a survivor to express a lot of remorse. Which is something that they look for too. You can’t just walk into your hearing and say, “Are you seeing what he did up until this point … now are you seeing this?” ’Cause I’m not getting the impression you are. And you want me to express remorse. I am remorseful. I took a human life. If I take the face off that life, I feel my guilt and feel my remorse …. I’m not going to be that (victim). I’m not going to be that person again. I’m not going to play or portray that. And that’s what they honestly expect you to do. They can’t look at you as a strong person … you’re standing up for yourself, so I can’t understand how you could have been this person sixteen, seventeen years ago.

The women described their experiences with the parole board as abusive, claiming that the prison had taken over the role of abuser. The women often prepared for their boards by isolating themselves away from others. In fact, initially Natalie declined my interview because of the stress associated with her board hearing that was scheduled the day after our meeting. The women claimed that the members of the parole board were ignorant about domestic violence issues. The governor appoints the nine members to the parole board. These nine members all have bachelor’s degrees (with most holding advanced degrees) and previous work history with the criminal justice system (public defenders, executive directors of drug and alcohol treatment centers, victim advocates, and wardens of state correctional institutions).37 Nevertheless, I was unable to find any documentation on instruction the parole board receives about domestic violence issues. The women reported they questioned the parole board about the type of training they were given on domestic violence and were told it was a two-hour seminar. Regardless of the amount of training the parole board members receive on family violence, there obviously is a need for

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more. Many of the women said they would just have to “play the game” and “tell them what they want to hear,” which made them feel very inauthentic. Is Prison Rehabiliative? “Absolutely Not”

Throughout this chapter you have seen how prison is a paradox for these women. They were able to find themselves, heal, gain a spiritual connection, and give back to the other incarcerated women. At the same time, the prison structure was organized around disrespect, inequality, and a lack of compassion for those residing there. Even if individuals employed in the prison were thoughtful and considerate, the organizational configuration did not allow for this kindness to occur frequently. Because the ultimate goal of prisons is to maintain order, policies, such as extending visits with family or allowing touch between inmates, threatened this security and were not allowed. As the women negotiated between these two worlds, they found it was difficult if not impossible to “rehabilitate” in this contradictory environment. When asked if prison was rehabilitative, all of the women stated “absolutely not.” Natalie expressed her frustration about what happens inside the prison: Prison is a warehouse. I think it can be (rehabilitative) if you want it to be, but right now the way things are … you’re not doing enough time to get any programming, the waiting lists are too long … I mean two weeks before they go home, they stick them in a GED class. You can’t get your GED in two weeks when you come in at the 7th grade level. And it’s just taking up space for someone who really does want to be in GED class that has more time. Either you have too much time and they want you in for, or you don’t have enough time …. So either way, there’s just a lot of paperwork to make things look good, so they can say we’re doing this. I bet the warden has a big rap sheet as for what this place is doing for people. It’s not doing anything unless the women individually want it to do something. And that’s a choice.

Pattie described some of the cutbacks in programming and how this has affected the women’s lives: In the beginning it was (easy to get into programming). As the years go and our populations increase it got harder and harder. Plus, they cut many programs. They have lost an outrageous amount of programming here. Which I think is the worst thing you could do because you are turning it into a great big warehouse. That’s not what it should be.

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Education has been cut. You no longer have any degree programs here. You can still get your GED and certifications, but no degrees.

Interestingly, the correctional officer who took me on the tour of the prison listed all kinds programming available to the women. When I asked him about cutbacks, he suggested there have been no programs cut. However, all of the women I talked to had been in prison a minimum of 15 years and had a longer history with the prison then he had. Furthermore, the passage of the Violent Crime Control Act of 1994 meant that state and federal inmates were no longer eligible for Pell grants. A study conducted three years after the implementation of the Violent Crime Control Act found that fewer programs were available for prisoners and many of the options for any type of higher education opportunities were cut.38 With the elimination of Pell grants, correctional institutions also decreased the opportunities available to earn certificates, associates degrees, and bachelor’s degrees. This same study also found that the number of correctional institutions offering associate degrees decreased from 71 percent in 1994-95 to 37.3 percent in 1997-98. The same was found with bachelor’s degrees, which in 1994-95, 48 percent of prisons offered this educational opportunity, while only 19.6 percent offered this in 1997-98. Additionally, the variety of programs available also decreased. With this in mind, the findings from this chapter may be unique. Over the last 10-20 years, the incredible increases in women’s incarceration has led to an overtaxing of the system and penal institutions. The programming these women talk about is disappearing quickly in a time of overcrowding and tax cuts. The privatization of prisons exacerbates this problem since programming is seen as a luxury and not a necessity in these types of corporately owned prisons. The next chapter follows the lives of eleven women who were granted clemency and released from prison. Even though the women denied clemency were quite envious of the women released, the women freed had many of their own struggles. Their freedom came with a felony record which was a constant reminder of their incarceration and impacted their lives greatly. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Busch and Valentine, “Empowerment Practice,” pp. 82-95 Fonow and Cook, “Back to the Future,” pp. 1-15 Goffman, Stigma Goffman, Stigma Severance, “You Know Who You Can Go To,” pp. 343-367 Britton, At Work in the Iron Cage O'Brien, Making It In The ‘Free World’

Clemency: Denied

8 O'Brien, Making It In the ‘Free World’ 9 Kairos Prison Ministry, http://www.kairosprisonministry.org 10 Casey, “Surviving Abuse,” pp. 223-231 11 Smedes, Shame and Grace 12 Goffman, Stigma 13 Casey, “Surviving Abuse,” pp. 223-231 14 Lempert, “Teaching in Prison” 15 Britton, At Work in the Iron Cage 16 Goffman, Stigma 17

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Schaufeli and Peeters “Job Stress and Burnout Among Correctional Officers,” pp. 19-48 18 Britton, At Work in the Iron Cage 19 Pollock, Women, Prison, and Crime, 2nd Edition 20 Britton, At Work in the Iron Cage 21 Amnesty International, “Not Part Of My Sentence” 22 Stop Prisoner Rape, “The Sexual Abuse of Female Inmates in Ohio” 23 Beck and Harrison, “Sexual Victimization in State and Federal Prisons” 24 Flesher, “Cross-Gender Supervision in Prisons,” pp. 841-866 25 American Civil Liberties Union, http://www.aclu.org 26 Watterson, Women in Prison 27 Ammar and Weaver, “Restrained Voices,” pp. 67-89 28 Chesney-Lind, “Patriarchy, Prison, and Jails,” pp.51-67 29 Watterson, Women in Prison 30 Watterson, Women in Prison 31 Sharp and Marcus-Mendoza, “It’s A Family Affair,” pp. 21-49 32 Schirmer, Nellis and Mauer, “Incarcerated Parents And Their Children” 33 Schirmer, Nellis and Mauer, “Incarcerated Parents And Their Children” 34 Sharp and Marcus-Mendoza, “It’s A Family Affair,” pp. 21-49 35 Golden, War on the Family 36 Hunter, Transitions In Mothering 37 Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, http:www.drc.state.oh.web.parboard.htm 38 Tewksbury, Erikson and Taylor, “Opportunities Lost”

6 Clemency: Granted

For many battered women advocates, clemency is not the ideal solution when abused women kill. Preferably, there should be changes in our judicial system so incarceration rarely happens for battered women who kill in self-defense. But, even prior to that, a complete overhaul of the way society (including our criminal justice system) handles domestic violence is needed. Unfortunately, for the women in this chapter, changes occurred only at the last stage, after they had killed and were imprisoned. The women were thankful for this second chance at freedom, while at the same time angered. For some, they felt like their lives were never truly “given back to them.” This contradiction is the result of their having spent considerable time (sometimes 8 to 10 years) behind bars, as well as having a permanent felony conviction on their records. As discussed in Chapter One, clemency allowed the governor to commute or pardon the women’s sentences. Pardons provide a complete erasure of the crime and time served, whereas commutations abrogate the remainder of the sentences and, while allowing the women to leave, they were regrettably accorded the “scarlet letter” of felony attached to them. According to sociologist Erving Goffman1 who studied stigmatized identities, the women were constantly reminded they were different because of the public acknowledgement of their time in prison. Jackie, who was featured in Chapter One, said she did not understand how even though the governor “saw fit” to commute her sentence, that the public still “hinders you.” Moreover, Teresa spent eight years in prison and felt she was “not the same little girl that went away. By the time he [Governor Celeste] got to me, I felt that he just waited too long. I’m all messed up now.” Finally, in an ironic twist, Anne’s abuser did not die, and was notified when Anne was released because he was considered the “victim.” She said, “I’m very cautious … I’m always looking. My eyes never stop roaming,” and thus questioned her freedom as well.

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Nevertheless, the women were “freed” in the sense that they were no longer sitting in prison. They may have felt the free world was quite different now than prior to their incarceration, but they were all grateful for their release. Furthermore, the stamp of approval from the governor did give the women a sense that they were justified in their actions. The governor forgave them, thus making it easier to defend their behavior to themselves and others. This chapter focuses on this dilemma for the women—freed, but not always feeling liberated, while at the same time charting the women’s incredible strength and showing how the women survived and changed in positive ways. Just like the women denied clemency and still in prison, these women took it upon themselves to “transform” themselves. While their transformations were more subtle than those of the incarcerated women, these women granted clemency moved from always feeling victimized to having some control over their lives as well. As Patricia O’Brien2 suggested in her book on women leaving prison, the first and most crucial step is finding a place to call home. Intertwined with this is the search for employment, dealing with parole and/or clemency stipulations, reconnecting with loved ones, and making new friends. Dreading the Question: “Where Have You Been?”

The women encountered a world they were not quite prepared for as they walked out the prison doors. They reported that resume writing and how to find a place of residence was the only pre-release training they received. The housing situation was strictly a formality. The women agreed with O’Brien’s3 findings that the prison staff did not check if the place they were going to was sufficient, safe, or desirable. It was only an address the women had to write down. The staff also did not prepare the women for all of the newness of life on the outside. The women found themselves constantly looking over their shoulders, hoping and praying no one would know they had just left prison. Sarah found just going to McDonalds created intense anxiety for her: Only a few stores had those scanners [prior to prison]. I had forgotten about those scanner things. When I got out, they’re everywhere; I didn’t know anything about them. I didn’t know how to go in McDonald’s and order food. I had to stand back and watch other people. To see what they did, to see where they put their trays. Did they leave ‘em on the table or did they empty them or something like

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that, because I didn’t want to seem stupid and I was always dreading the question, “Well, where have you been?”

Other women were not ready for the fast-paced life of society. They talked about prison days being monotonous and slow. Allison struggled with this difference: “Life is so fast moving, and your plans get throwed away because you’re back into society and society doesn’t function normal, and they’re fast movers, so now you gotta figure out how do you fit in.” This constant on-the-go and noise overwhelmed some of the women. Anne became really “hyper” because of her fears (hypervigilance is one symptom of PTSD).4 Emma, Allison, and Jackie needed time-outs. Jackie’s family originally took her in, but she found the environment too loud and said she needed to get away from it all. She decided to stay with a friend in a secluded area because she felt she was having a nervous breakdown. “I was a little paranoid. I thought people were looking at me and knew where I had been and I knew they didn’t … So it all boiled down to I just needed to be by myself for two to three months for me to think.” Emma also felt conflicted—she wanted to be with family after her time away, but needed time to herself. “Then after I got home, my mother she, she just wanted everybody around me all the time, but and I just couldn’t make her understand that I needed to be by myself.” Interestingly, Allison still values her alone time. Fifteen years out of prison and she said she still goes out of her way to spend time by herself, only has a few close friends, and lives in a place where she prefers not to know her neighbors. Not only were the women anxious around other people, they found themselves doing things they never did prior to prison. For instance, Betsy and Sarah were terrified of running out of food or toilet paper since both of these were rationed in prison. Betsy said this has led to a compulsion to buy excessive amounts of toilet paper: In prison you always have to worry about toilet paper. Worryin’ about runnin’ out of toilet paper … and on the weekend especially, and you’d have to hide this toilet paper, so you wouldn’t run out. Well now every time I go to the store, I have to buy toilet paper. I have so much toilet paper. And the kids’ll look and say, “Oh, Mom, you think these 48 rolls of toilet paper’ll be enough’ til you can go back to the store?” I say, “I don’t know.” I even have to take a roll to work with me.

Sarah’s fear is similar to Betsy’s: I will all but panic if I run out of something. I try not to run out of anything. In the kitchen, if I open a can of peas, when I go the store, I

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replace that can of peas so that I’m never out … I always used to say there [in prison], “Lord, if you let me out of here, I never be hungry again and I’ll never be cold again.” So I keep plenty of food and I pay my gas bill on time … they can shut the phone off, they can turn the cable off. Hey, I don’t care about that.

When Sarah was told about Betsy’s story with the toilet paper, she also confirmed that she always had an abundance of toilet paper on hand, and that it had to be the soft, white kind of toilet tissue. Both of these examples illustrate the long-lasting effects of prison on the women’s lives. Toilet paper and cans of food may seem insignificant, but they reveal the deprivation felt during incarceration and how those feelings did not dissipate after the women were released from prison. Finding a Home: “If It Hadn’t Been For My Family”

Although some of the women found family too enmeshed in their lives, almost all who had help from family realized this support was crucial for their survival. Two women—Carrie and Sarah—were unable to rely on family. Both of these women were incarcerated at young ages after killing their abusive fathers/stepfathers. The extended families of these two women blamed them for the deaths of their loved ones and refused to help them. They relied on public assistance and resided at half-way houses after release from prison. The remainder of the women had some form of help from their families, and most found it was necessary since the prison offered little assistance once they were released. In fact, Emma told me the women received $75.00 and food stamps as they walked out of prison. Surely, this is not substantial enough to get back on one’s feet. To make matters worse, this money is often provided in the form of a check whereupon the women had to figure out how to cash it. The two women in my study without family support, Carrie and Sarah, experienced the unpredictability of half-way houses. Carrie felt the half-way house was an excellent transition from prison life and helped her with employment, counseling, and even extended her stay an extra 30 days. Sarah reported a drastically different experience and was very frustrated with the lack of help she received from the halfway house where she stayed: It is not structured to deal with women who have been locked up a number of years. It’s not designed for that because they don’t have any kind of program to help. When a woman gets out of prison and she has been locked up for years, things change and she needs to be told, she

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needs to be shown and told, especially if you go to another town and you don’t know anybody. And you don’t have anybody to tell you any of these things.

O’Brien’s5 study confirmed the complexity of transitional homes. The women in her study reported conflicting feelings similar to Sarah and Carrie’s. Overall, the women in O’Brien’s study found the half-way houses a better alternative to the street; however, they felt disenfranchised by the rules and that there was a lack of understanding by some of the staff members. The rest of the women were able to fall back on family for help after they were released. The assistance most of the women received from their families was considerable. For example, Emma’s sister paid her mortgage and moved into her home to care for her daughter while she was in prison. When Emma returned, the house was still hers. Betsy’s family did a similar thing and rented out her home to cover the costs. When she arrived home she realized she could not deal with the memories of that house and sold it. She used that money to buy another house in which she now resides. Allison stayed with a variety of family members until she could save enough money to buy her own place. Anne was paroled to her ex-husband (who was not abusive) and currently lives with him in a house—she lives upstairs, he lives downstairs, and they share a kitchen. The only woman who found family help not beneficial was Teresa. Teresa was incarcerated as a teenager for stabbing her abusive boyfriend who was nine years older than her. Teresa’s involvement with her boyfriend stemmed from her need to get away from her own abusive family. Thus, the family support available to her once out of prison still presented a multitude of problems. Rather than helping her move on, she found their constant disparaging comments kept her locked in the past. Eventually, she moved out, but it took her eight years of fighting with public housing to secure a residence of her own. Public housing is often not an option for previously incarcerated people since they usually do not rent to persons who have felony records. Beth Richie’s6 interviews with recently released women underscored this problem. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (Welfare to Work) implemented stringent guidelines for securing governmental assistance. This greatly impacted those with felony records because of a lifetime ban on welfare benefits to those convicted of a felony drug charge and a ban on section 8 housing for anyone with a felony record.7 Luckily for Teresa, she was somehow able to bypass the regulations to receive section 8 housing.

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Unfortunately, Teresa’s family never came around, and in 2005 Teresa commented about the apparent dysfunction in her family: Any contact with my family is enough to make you smoke crack and I don’t smoke crack by the grace of God. But dealing with them, I always make the statement you’re lucky I’m not smoking crack with a family like mine. They not crack users or nothing like that, but they can take a mental drain on you.

This lack of family support inhibited some of the women from leading crime-free lives. This will be discussed later in the chapter. But first, one of the governor’s stipulations for release was for the women to complete 200 hours of mandatory community service at their local battered women’s shelter once out of prison. Furthermore, the women whose sentences were commuted by the parole board had parole conditions to meet. Besides securing housing, this was a crucial hurdle they had to tackle, and for some, it was the first time they saw the grim realities of shelter life. Community Service Hours: The Good and the Bad

The community service hours at the domestic violence shelters was supposed to offer the women an opportunity to give back, as well as an informal means by which they could heal and grow among battered women advocates. Regrettably, there were only a few women who stated their community service hours were beneficial. The majority of the women encountered a bureaucratized shelter system absent of any true consciousness raising activities for the women. Angela Moe,8 in her observational studies of battered women’s shelters, has equated shelters to a type of prison. She also found today’s shelters reminiscent of the lives the women were used to living with their abusers. The increasing numbers of shelters receiving funding through government grants has been accompanied with an influx in rules that residents have to follow in order to maintain funding. Often the workers have to ensure that all residing at the shelter are “true” abuse victims. Emma said she spent time answering phone calls on the hotline and she would have to confirm with shelter staff whether a woman was truly being abused. She was really disheartened when staff would turn down a woman: Well, actually I always think they all should be in the shelter … but I guess I have to go along with what they say. It hurts me. I really am kind of depressed. ‘Cause I mean, I feel like you know, no one know,

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you know, what that person is really, I mean you’re just talking to them over the phone … so you can’t really see into them to see if it’s true or not. And I just feel that they should take them.

Along with turning women away, the constant regulations about what the women can and should be doing were the two most common complaints among the women doing their community service hours. Other areas of disgruntlement arose out of the lack of structure for their 200 hours. The type of service the women provided varied. Some shelters provided opportunities for the women to talk with the abused women coming into the shelter, or provided training to answer calls on their crisis hotlines, while other shelters assigned women to clean basements or sort through donations. And still others were not given any specific duties and their time was spent not knowing for sure where they should be or what they should be doing. Disappointingly, all three scenarios had their drawbacks. Betsy felt she had no structure to her hours. She described what she did: Talked. Just talk. Played cards, what did we do? We played cards, sat in the office and played. I didn’t do a daggone thing. It was a waste of time. I begged my parole officer to let me go to a rest home and feed people … I would’ve felt like I was doin’ somethin’ worthwhile.

At the same time, though, in Betsy’s interview she also commented that the shelter said she could sort through donations, but that was a “shitty job that nobody wanted to do that.” Additionally, she was given the opportunity to talk to the women residing at the shelter, but she found that hard because many of the women did not want to talk or closed themselves up in their rooms. Therefore, even in her case, where the shelter provided options, Betsy perceived a lack of guidance from the shelter. For some of the women, it may have been very daunting to make decisions and think on their own coming from the ultra-structured environment of prison.9 On the other hand, Emma, Margaret, and Allison all found their time at the shelter rewarding. Margaret found herself reflecting on her own relationships and said, “I feel good about myself now, knowin’ that I don’t have to depend on someone else’s need, you know, and it’s okay that, if I don’t do somethin’ right or if I don’t wanna comb my hair today, if I don’t want to fix myself up, then I’m okay.” Fortunately, Allison’s time led to an employment opportunity. Before she could finish her 200 hours, the shelter she was at asked her to be a permanent employee. Emma, as she stated above, felt good about giving back, but

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also felt it was too soon, as she was still grieving the loss of her own relationship. When she was interviewed in 1994, she was asked if she was “over it [the relationship, the killing]”. She replied, “No. I am not over it. I have a long way to go.” She said she did a lot of pretending (hiding her true emotions) to make it through the day. This pretending included putting a constant smile on her face and making it seem like everything was okay when in reality she was frequently on the verge of tears. Thus, the final drawback to the community service hours was many of the women were not mentally equipped to enter into such an environment yet because of their forced dependency on the structure of the prison system, and, additionally, most were not prepared for the emotion work. Teresa found herself at three different shelters (one battered women’s shelter, two women’s homeless shelters) in order to complete her hours, because she would often just sit in the corner and cry. Consequently, the women who reported positive feelings were at times conflicted since they were still dealing with their own issues. Along with the community service hours, if the women’s recommendations for release came from the parole board, this also meant they had parole stipulations. For most women, this centered on finding employment or some form of assistance. Even for those women without parole guidelines, being able to support themselves became a critical step in feeling free. Alas, this also was the greatest challenge because of their felony records. Employment With a Stigmatized Identity

Along with having a safe, healthy place to live, an additional requirement for staying out of prison was the ability to be self-sufficient. Recent research on recidivism rates and re-entry back into prison found that almost half of the offenders return to prison within three years.10 Even though these individuals have served their time, the negative associations remain with them and felon often becomes their master status. The Sentencing Project11 referred to this as “collateral consequences” and some states are looking more seriously at this by making it illegal for employers to deny employment to those with criminal convictions. Unfortunately, this is a recent phenomenon and most of the women found their felonies restricted their employment opportunities and, for a couple of them, reeled them into a life of crime. Angela Browne’s12 seminal work on battered women who kill found few of these women had previous criminal records. More recent research13 on this group of women has continued to confirm this finding

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and this holds true for the women in this study as well. Yet, most of the women encountered prospective employers who were leery of hiring them because of the felony. Nearly all of the women were truthful in their disclosure for fear that if they were hired they could lose the job if their employer found out they had lied. Finally, Gagné14 who interviewed Ohio clemency recipients found none of the women were able to return to their previous employers’ right after their release and my follow-up interviews with these women confirmed this finding as well. Every one of the women had at least some form of work experience—either prior to prison or while in prison. Moreover, they all had at least a high school degree or a GED. Allison’s passion prior to prison was working with children as a nursery school teacher. She returned from prison, met with her former employer who said, “Definitely I wouldn’t have any problem with hiring you … but I think, don’t you remember about the state licensing code? People who commit ….” Allison remembered and felt too drained to contest it. In the end, she turned to the battered women’s shelter where she was doing her community service hours and, as of 2005, was still employed with them. In Allison’s most recent interview, she talked about her work as very rewarding, but also how her life is consumed by it, “I work seven days a week all domestic violence focused. I am one of those people who don’t know what regular hours are. I am beyond 40 hours a week for sure and I do evenings, overnights, and all of those.” She was very emphatic about the satisfying nature of the work and why she gives so much time to it. Nevertheless, she did disclose, “Right now I am doomed because I cannot even find another job. I have to stay in this field because of the felony.” At which point, she also mentioned the loss she felt by not being able to work with children anymore. Numerous women told similar stories of narrowed employment options because of their prison history. All of the women applied to various places and were turned away. The jobs they ended up in were ones where people did not seem to care as much about their criminal history. Betsy cared for an ailing, elderly woman, Margaret worked in housekeeping, Carrie’s first job was at a Taco Bell, Jackie worked on and off with a battered women’s shelter, and Emma worked at temporary jobs for her first years out of prison. Emma explained her frustrations: I’ve been at this job for five years. I started off as a temp and then they hired me in. But before then, it was hard because with me having a prison record. And people they don’t bother to know why you have a

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prison record. They can’t understand what happened or what led up to that. This is a one-time thing for you. They just think you are a habitual criminal. And so that was the reason it was so hard. By the time I got out in ‘91 up until 2000, I just worked temporary jobs because no one wanted to hire me.

As luck would have it, Emma was hired by one of the temporary agencies, but in 2005 after new management took over, her job was in jeopardy. She had to write a letter and interview with the president explaining her felony conviction, “I was on pins and needles for two months wondering if I was going to have a job, even though I had been there for five years. So it’s rough. People just don’t understand.” Interestingly, Emma felt being a woman and felon hindered her even more. In her eyes, she was demonized all the more because she was a female criminal. Emma’s suspicions have been acknowledged by feminist criminologists15 for quite some time. Typically, women who kill receive much longer, more severe sentences compared to men who kill and are treated more harshly at all levels of the criminal justice system.16 Another example of the felony negatively affecting work options years after being out of prison came from Jackie. Jackie’s work history had been sporadic because of her time in prison as well. She spent time working at a senior citizen’s home, but after they fingerprinted her, they told her she could no longer work there and she said, “I told them this happened to me in 1981, this is 2004, so what is it that they want?” One woman who was successful in gaining employment was Sarah. Sarah was living at a halfway house and she said they encouraged her to look for work at various fast food restaurants. Sarah had previous secretarial experience and felt this could offer her more money. She used her personal contacts to secure work in this sector. Sarah hooked up with her old therapist who hired her to do secretarial work. Then, after her therapist’s office closed, her landlord offered her an office job. The use of personal contacts to find work is a consistent finding in the prison reentry literature.17 The only woman whose struggle for legitimate employment landed her in the midst of criminal activity was Carrie. As noted by Sarah, employment mentors at the halfway house where both women resided often pushed women towards fast food restaurants to find easy employment. Carrie got her first job at Taco Bell, which fell short of what she needed to pay all of her bills. Likewise, Carrie’s young age led her to mismanage the money she did have, “I didn’t know how to manage money. I was still livin’ like I was 16. That was the only

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problem growin’ up in jail. I didn’t know what it was like to grow up and be an adult.” She eventually met a guy and moved in with him. Regrettably he was into selling drugs and pretty soon Carrie was going down the same path. The introduction of using and selling drugs by boyfriends is often the case for women who enter into the drug trade.18 Her selling turned into her using and before long she was in a world of hurt. The impetus for change came when she found out she was pregnant. The YWCA took her in, provided her drug counseling, and a place to sleep. As of 1994, she felt it was only through their help and the support of other substance abuse rehabilitation programs that she was clean and was a positive role model for her children. Coping: Substance Abuse and Criminal Offending

Carrie was not the only one that dealt with substance abuse issues. Emma disclosed her overuse of alcohol in her early days of being home after release from prison, but soon realized the unhealthiness of this coping mechanism. Teresa, on the other hand, still struggled with addiction fifteen years after being granted clemency. Teresa has been diagnosed with a multitude of mental health issues: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, bi-polar, and a “memory disorder” (she also said there were some diagnoses she could not remember). Additionally, she described “blacking out” a lot. Whereas, Carrie’s criminal offending resulted from inadequate financial resources and support, Teresa’s involvement with the criminal justice system stemmed from violence due to her mental illnesses. She stated in her 2005 interview (incarcerated for felonious assault) that when she gets scared she becomes violent: But anyway, I just got a fear of people. If they make me scared, then I become dangerous. I realize that. If you make me scared, then I become dangerous. Like I said if somebody scared me or hurt me, I lash out. And I don’t know why. I guess because I’m scared and it’s the only thing I have for protection. I’ve got about three felonious assault charges. Two of those for the same person. I’m so scared. I’m hurting people. And that’s not how I was before. If you make me scared, I’m dangerous. And it doesn’t take much to scare me.

Moreover, she revealed that the only time she consistently took her medication was when she was in prison and it was forced upon her. While out of prison, she spent a great deal of time at bars selfmedicating with alcohol. Because of insufficient family support, her over-reliance on alcohol, her young age when she was incarcerated, and

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her writing off of formal support systems, people took advantage of her vulnerability. In her 2005 interview, she claimed she had been raped five different times since her initial release from prison. From her perspective, when she called police, she was written off as a “crazy, drunk person.” Therefore, the continued silence of the criminal justice system was reminiscent of her attempts for help when she was being abused by her family and then later by her boyfriend. The only way she learned to protect herself from further victimization was to fight back violently. It seemed that Teresa’s childhood victimization set the stage for her multiple mental health and drug addiction problems and her continued victimization. In my field notes, I noted: Teresa seemed to fixate on things. The interview was frustrating because she kept going back to the same thing over and over again. I would ask a question and her first sentence might attempt to answer the question and then she would be back to how everyone else is victimizing her. I don’t doubt that she was abused or had a horrific childhood, however, it seems her abusive childhood, coupled with mental problems, keeps her stuck and makes it so she is unable to grow and go forward in life. I also think that because of all her mental health problems, she has been written off by society, so it seems like a vicious cycle. People look at her and call her crazy and the more they do that, the crazier she becomes. The biggest difference I saw between her and the other women I interviewed was the lack of ownership of her actions and her life. Most of the other women seemed to have a pretty good grip on the idea of responsibility without blaming themselves. Teresa was unable to see this and refused to accept responsibility for anything in her life. It was always everybody else’s fault.

When comparing Teresa and Carrie to the rest of the women, any of the women in this study could have ended up in a situation like theirs. Fortunately, for the rest of the women, they either had family support or adequate social and financial support from other sources. However, Teresa’s story seemed to be the outlier when compared to the other women interviewed. Teresa’s mental health problems go far beyond any of the other women granted clemency. Unfortunately, without adequate mental health treatment and intensive counseling, there seems to be a strong probability that Teresa’s life will consist of continued victimization and offending. Teresa’s lifecourse is a familiar one to incarcerated women with drug addiction problems. Jody Raphael’s books Freeing Tammy19 and Listening to Olivia20 noted the consistent theme of victimization and the use of drugs to numb the women’s pain. When the women’s addictions

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spiraled out of control, they found themselves engulfed in a life of crime. As they fell deeper into criminal activity, their chances for further victimization increased, and because of their offender status, the criminal justice system rarely offered a helping hand. While Teresa’s life does not resemble that of most of the women granted clemency, she falls very much in line with other women offenders. Mental and Physical Health Problems: Remnants of Abuse

Just as the women denied clemency had to deal with health issues stemming from years of abuse, the women granted clemency grappled with these same issues. On top of the many physical aches and pains, all of the women described adjustment problems once out of prison which further diminished their mental state. Finally, the physical ailments also made it difficult for some to get a job or continue working. Emma and Sarah both submitted claims for Social Security Disability because of their disabling back pain; Emma eventually had back surgery and was able to go back to work (after two years). In both cases, the back problems were a result of the continued beatings they had endured. Betsy has slowly been losing her eye sight and has had surgery twice, and she also has hearing problems—both from severe blows to the head. When Carrie was asked about health problems she said: He like to beat me with steel toed boots, bust my head open … I still have migraines because of that. I’ve had problems with cervical cancer, I’ve got gall stones and they said it could stem from all the beatings … I might not be able to have another child. I went in labor at six months [labor was eventually stopped and she went full term], my body’s been too traumatized and they don’t think … if I try to have another one it might cause a lot of problems.

Margaret, who was forced to drink Drano, had her gallbladder removed and her esophagus stretched. Similar to Emma, Sarah, and Carrie, she also contends with back problems and migraines. Finally, Allison and Jackie, who were both interviewed again in 2005, have high blood pressure and diabetes. It is not certain whether these two issues are linked to the abuse from their partners; nonetheless, both are diseases connected with stress and overeating (commonly used as a coping mechanism to deal with stress). Along with the physical damage to their bodies, all of the women struggled with depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Some of the women

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sought medical help and were given medication, but chose not to take it. Others took medication for a minimal amount of time until they could get their feet back on the ground. The only woman interviewed in 2005 that was still on medication was Teresa and she was under correctional supervision. Re-establishing Relationships with Children: “There’s So Much Pain In Their Eyes”

One of the reasons for the up and down mental state of many of the women was the mixed emotions they had with reconnecting with their families and children. In her study of previously incarcerated mothers, Hunter21 found that re-establishing relationships with children was extremely challenging, and this was the case for the women in this chapter as well. The hurt the children felt manifested itself in different ways: anger and acting out, involvement in abusive relationships, drug and alcohol problems, and a variety of other unhealthy ways to cope, such as overeating and self-mutilation. Margaret, after her release from prison in the 1990s, cried during her interview when asked about her children: I’m still hurtin’ because I took my kids through so much pain. And there’s times when I look at ‘em and there’s so much pain in their eyes. And now I’m tryin’ to be this mother that’s tryin’ to have it all together, because I’m tryin’ to make up for the time that I wasn’t there. But I also wanna be myself. And it’s kinda hard to be yourself and try to be this perfect mom.

Many women while incarcerated dreamt of a “happy reunion” with their children once released. Unfortunately, just because mom was now home did not equate to all problems solved. Unlike a lot of women going to prison (most have children under age 10),22 the majority of the mothers granted clemency had children somewhat older at the time of their incarceration (in their 20s and 30s). This meant that, for children under 18, older siblings often cared for them and there was no need to find alternative housing for many of the women’s kids. That being said, sometimes these environments were rife with chaos as children were forced to grow up fast. Most of the women were able to see their children while in prison, but these visits were usually difficult. The children asked questions the mothers could not answer, cried through visitation, and even though they were older frequently, they could not grasp why their moms could not come home. Even though visitation is

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painful, studies have documented its benefits for both mothers and their kids. When children and their mothers are able to keep a connection, it generally makes the transition from prison to home a bit less tumultuous.23 Notwithstanding, for the women granted clemency in this study, release dates came and when they returned home they found their children in turmoil. A review of the literature on incarcerated mothers and their children strongly indicates that when mothers go to prison, their children suffer irreparable damage. Depending on the age of the children, varied problems occurred—inadequate attachment and bonding during infancy, behavioral problems in school, juvenile delinquency, increased fighting, drug use, promiscuous behavior, and criminal involvement. Children with incarcerated mothers have a far greater chance of ending up in the criminal justice system and repeating the cycle.24 One of the most devastating findings for the women was that many of their daughters were (or had been) involved with abusive men. Gail, Allison, Jackie, Margaret, and Emma all discussed their daughter’s domestic violence relationships. These women were able to recognize abuse beyond physical violence and noted some of their daughters’ relationships were not necessarily physically abusive, but this did not mean they were not being abused. They, for the most part, tried to support their daughters and encouraged them to get out of their situations. A few of the women had their daughters living with them for a time in order to help them get away from the violence, while others, such as Gail, provided a house key for her daughter when things got bad. All of the women gave their daughters an abundance of domestic violence literature to read. Moreover, these women were not afraid to voice their opposition to the violent offenders. Gail made it clear to her daughter’s abuser that they knew what he was doing and Jackie told her daughter’s husband, “You can’t rape em’ and you’re not going to hit on em’ and you will leave here.” Jackie’s interview in 2005 took place at her daughter’s residence where she had moved in to help out after her daughter had kicked out her abusive husband. Even though it was distressing to see their daughters in such chaos, they felt they had an obligation to help stop the cycle of violence. Consequently, the information garnered during their stays in prison, did in the end, help them. The women cited that the domestic violence support groups allowed them to gain the courage to speak their minds and stand up for themselves and others in abusive situations. These discussions of domestic violence also centered on what their own relationships had been like and why they ended up killing. Some of the children blamed their mothers because, ironically, the women had

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tried to keep the abuse hidden from them. Obviously in most cases, the children intellectually knew about the violence, yet, emotionally they struggled with understanding it. Jackie took great care to cover her bruises: It was hard for them … they knew he had a temper … they knew all this, but they never did see him beat me. They only heard him. It was hard to accept that he would fight me like he did because my face was never bruised, my arms wasn’t … but underneath my clothes was. This was something they didn’t see, even then.

Because of this protection, her children were very angry when she later sold the family home. For Jackie, it was source of pain, but for her children it was their childhood home. Allison also found some of her children in deep denial about their father’s sexual perpetration against one of her daughters. They refused to see their father in this light. Initially, when the women returned, some of their children were engulfed in drug addictions as well. Allison came home to two of her children dealing with drug problems, and while Gail was incarcerated, her son became involved with drugs and ran away from home. At her last interview in 1994, he was 32 and still had a major addiction to crack cocaine. He recently had contacted her for money and she refused, knowing that, in this case, the money would only enable her son’s drug dependence. While not all the children became involved in violent relationships or drugs, they all were affected in some manner. Emma’s daughter, rather than showing her anger outward, became extremely withdrawn: She’s really closed in, she doesn’t talk about what happened. She doesn’t really talk about anything. She uh, she’ll come home, she goes up to her room. But she’s just really withdrawn …. It’s like she’s just trying to forget everything that ever happened. You know I uh, she’s thrown away all the pictures of her father and she doesn’t even like his name mentioned. If you mention his name, she walks out the door.

In Emma’s case, not only did her daughter lose her mother, but her brother was also sent to prison. Even though Emma was granted clemency, her son was still incarcerated (since he was the one that actually did the shooting). In 2005, when Emma was interviewed again her son was finally released (after serving 13 years) and she said both her son and daughter seemed to be doing much better, however, she still was concerned about her daughter, “She’s got a hardness about her. I guess after seeing the things that we went through, she doesn’t trust. She

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kind of has an attitude of ‘I don’t care.’ She tries not to really show emotion.” Other women found their children with debilitating mental health issues. Margaret’s son was hospitalized in a mental institution after she went to prison and was on medication for psychosis and her daughter tried to commit suicide. After her release, they still struggled, but having their mother home did seem to help. When the women came home, it provided a sense of comfort and security so the children and the women could begin to move on. At times, however, this was easier said than done since the women were also struggling with their own issues and sometimes, were not exactly sure how to “parent” their children. Very few prisons offer adequate preparation on this front and, in fact, impede this process by making it difficult for women to stay in contact with their children while incarcerated.25 Even though the initial homecoming for the women was rocky, for the most part, they all reported healing over time. When Emma, Jackie, and Allison were interviewed in 2005, they all described good relationships with their children. Allison said, “It’s [her relationship with her children] good. I’m still their mother and they call me when something’s wrong or they want to know something.” Additionally, Emma said she talks a lot more with both her son and daughter. Jackie said her one daughter finally understood, “she came out [and said] about four years [ago] and she said you know I don’t know what would have happened if it had been you and not him. She said I’m glad it wasn’t you.” Over time these same women also found their parenting styles changed a bit. In Freeing Tammy, Jody Raphael26 described extreme parenting as common immediately after release. This type of parenting would include being overbearing, overprotective, and treating their children as if they are a lot younger than their true ages. Eventually, though, this “overparenting” subsided and a more realistic view of mothering occurred. This intense parenting happened for the women in my study, but I believe for a slightly different reason. Raphael’s book focused on drug users and how they tried to make up for lost time with their children once home. In this sense, this frame of thought is similar to the women in this book. Their withdrawal from their children prior to prison was because of the abusive relationships, but it still felt like they had not been there for their children. At the same time, the reason for more aggressive parenting from these women also stemmed from the knowledge they had gained from the domestic violence groups. It was not just the information that changed their thoughts on parenting, but the shared ideas of what it

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means to live violence free. For instance, they began to stand up to their children and reinforced the message that they would no longer tolerate abuse in their households. This was also seen by some of the women who were interviewed directly after release from prison; however, it became much more pronounced the longer the women were out. This new assertiveness sometimes conflicted with how their children thought their mothers should act. The women had no qualms providing an opinion on an issue, such as who they felt their children should date or how their kids should discipline their own children. Allison described her new way of dealing with people and how sometimes her family did not look favorably on this: And I am very … if I want to know something I’ll ask. You know with my work [at a battered woman’s shelter] you don’t beat around the bush. And I have a family who does that. They talk around stuff. And I’m like wait a minute. I ask the questions. So I am very different. And they all look at me, like oh God, here she comes if anybody is hiding something she’s gonna find out ‘cause she’s gonna ask. You know, I am very confrontive. And I look for solutions. And I don’t blame people.

Paradoxically, the women also parented on the other side of the spectrum where they would bend over backwards to give their children whatever they needed. This was a common scenario for women in both Patricia O’Brien27 and Jennifer Gonnerman’s28 books on life after incarceration in which the mothers tried anything to alleviate their guilt for leaving their children. Interestingly, this over compensating did not dwindle the longer the women were out. The women still felt an intense need to provide for their children because they were continually aware of all their children had endured. This sense of “abandoning their children” created a lot of guilt for the women. As noted above, Jackie moved in with her daughter to help out (and sold her home in order to do this). Betsy also had her adult son living with her. Finally, the most obvious case of this was with Allison, who bought a “family house.” She has her own apartment that she stays at, but also has this “family house” for adult children: So I always tell my son, “This is your house, but you could never marry and live in this house. You get married you have to move.” This is a family house. I’m just very protective over my children and they’re all adults, but their life as they came up was so hard and I never want anyone to be without a place to sleep. So this is why I bought it. And I pay all the bills.

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Conversations about children are sacred inside prison walls,29 and this continued once women were released.30 Just like most mothers, these women try their best, want their children to flourish, and cry when they see their children hurt. And just like other mothers, they feel guilt when they do not think they measure up to society’s standards. For some of the children, their scars are still visible, while for others, they are moving past them, although this often continues to be a long, hard journey. Intimate Partners: “I’m Still Very Untrusting of Men”

Beyond reconnecting with their children, the women contemplated future involvement with an intimate partner. They were all leery of commitment and most still had unresolved trust issues with men. All of the women at some point after the killings stated they were reluctant to get involved in another relationship because of their fear of men and their lack of faith that a relationship could be non-abusive. While Carrie was in prison, she said even the sight of male correctional officers or her male therapist made her uncomfortable. Teresa, after her release in 1994, said she could not connect with men on an intimate level, “I don’t get sexually aroused, you know, in my relationships. It’s more like a tom boy with a man. I’ll cook dinner for you and I’ll clean up and we can sleep together but don’t touch me.” Other women found all of the domestic violence education interfered with their ability to have a relationship. For these women, as Allison noted, “red flags” go off that signal potential danger and the women were out the door quickly. For instance, Margaret said if a man has been divorced three or four times there was something wrong. Jackie said as soon as a man started “giving me orders,” she was gone. She said that years ago she would have laughed and said okay, but not today. Overall, the majority of the women stayed out of violent relationships and most remained single. Their singleness seemed connected to continued trust issues and the resolve that they were fine without a relationship. The women’s potential for re-offending was a common concern during the clemency period. The overall recidivism rate for violent female offenders is twenty-three percent. The clemency recipients’ recidivism rate for a felony murder was zero percent.31 Additionally, most of the women shied away from relationships that hinted at danger. Nonetheless, there were three women (Gail, Teresa, and Carrie) who did become involved with abusive men (although Gail never officially said this).

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In Gail’s case, her husband had not wanted her to give an interview, was present during the interview, and it was noted she often seemed to alter what she might say because of his presence. This type of controlling behavior could be seen as a precursor to abusive behavior. The other two women, Teresa and Carrie, were quite forthcoming about their violent relationships in their interviews. Carrie and Teresa were both incarcerated young and were also sexually abused during their childhoods. Teresa’s sexual victimization started at the age of nine when she was raped by a childhood friend. This friend then became her boyfriend until the boyfriend she eventually killed decided he wanted her. Carrie’s sexual abuse started with perpetration by her father and this led to a constant state of conflict between loving and hating her father. This set the stage for both girls to confuse sex (even non-consensual sex) with love, an unfortunate, but common occurrence for victims of childhood sexual abuse.32 Moreover, neither had positive male role models in their lives to show them how men could be respectful towards them. Teresa knew some of her “friends” did not treat her right, but she desperately wanted the companionship because she was so lonely. Carrie also talked about her fear of being alone: I’m not used to bein’ alone. I’ve always had somebody in my life, always. And I’m scared sometimes. Like when we’ve [her and her boyfriend] separated and been totally apart, you know, that loneliness, I don’t like that. And I’m, I just, I just, I’m real codependent and I know that. I’ve got to have somebody there.

However, as of 1994, Carrie has learned to stand up for herself (she got a restraining order and pressed domestic violence charges against her boyfriend), yet she also justified her relationship with her partner. When asked why she was with her boyfriend, she stated he was a good provider to her children (she had two children after her release from prison, but her current boyfriend is not the father of either one of them) and he treats her children well. Carrie often reflected back on her own childhood and remarked that she wanted to give her children everything that she did not have growing up as a child. One of those things was a loving father who provided material comforts. Carrie seemed very torn between the loving father version of her boyfriend and the abusive side of him, and it was a constant struggle for her to figure out what to do about it. This is often one of the major impediments for women when deciding to leave a violent relationship. Societal notions about the “perfect family” provide tremendous pressure for the woman to “keep it all together.” The misconstrued idea that a two-parent family (even if in

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utter chaos) is better than a single-headed household leads women to blame themselves for taking their children away from their fathers.33 Even though the majority of the women came out of prison not looking for a relationship, as the years went by, they dabbled in dating and most found they had no qualms with being alone. They began to view themselves as strong, independent women who were okay without a man in their lives. Allison said, “Men look at us and think we’re different … we ask too many questions. We don’t know how to be quiet.” She found having a “traditional man” in her life was just not worth the fuss. Emma also found being by herself gave her a sense of tranquility in her life, “I look at the peace I have. I say wow, I have a nice peaceful house and if I want to have company I can have company. And then I can be by myself. I’m kind of like at peace.” Nevertheless, just as Teresa and Carrie liked companionship, Allison, who felt she attracted “traditional men,” still craved human affection and an intimate relationship. Allison admitted later on in the 2005 interview that she was involved with a married man. She felt this arrangement worked well because there was no commitment. She could still have companionship, but did not have to cater to his every need: It fit me because there’s no commitment …. And he is committed to his family in the sense of marriage is forever and you support your family and all this. And I’m committed to mine. So we did things like … it’s more like movies, dinner, he would come to watch television and that’s the extent of it really. I may call up and say hey take me to the movies and he’ll say not today, but maybe in a couple of days. Those relationships … there’s no wear and tear on it, there’s no commitment, there’s nothing like you gotta be somewhere, you know there’s none of that. If we schedule a time to meet and I have to go to work … sometimes with my work if someone can’t come in, they’ll call me … and if I had scheduled something with him, I’ll just call and say I can’t do it.

Laurel Richardson34 found similar results in her study of career women who chose to have relationships with married men because there was no obligation or commitment. They could have someone to share their time with, yet they also could keep them at a distance. They could have romance and companionship, without sacrificing their career goals and personal control.

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Identity Transformation: “I’m Happy, I’m at Peace with Myself”

The women’s stories in this book—whether they were denied clemency or granted clemency—all illustrate incredible resilience. What is more, most see themselves as having survived. When asked how the women in this chapter would describe themselves, they overwhelming used the term “survivor.” For some women, this journey from “I was like the underdog. I blamed myself,” to “I’m proud of the way I grew up and come out as a woman,” was a tumultuous path. It did not come easy, nor was it a fast process. Nonetheless, the women actively chose to move from the past and focus on the future. In order to do that, they had to reconcile what they had done, where they had been, and who they were in the past. First, the women had to see themselves as victims and “battered women.” For most, this epiphany happened while in prison during the domestic violence support groups. As Emma and Jackie both noted, initially they did not even think of themselves as battered women. Gail admitted she first joined the support group because of the clemency proceedings, but then found herself identifying with all of the other women’s stories. According to social psychologists,35 the turning point for identity change often accompanies a life stressor. The life stressor for these women was imprisonment, which created a downward spiral of self-hatred, self-blame, and major psychological distress. However, this changed with the domestic violence groups. It was here they began to view themselves in a different light. The next step for the women was the acknowledgement from the governor (in the form of the commutation) that they were justified in what they did. In 2005, Jackie was very clear in her interview, “I don’t think of myself as an ex-convict.” Sarah, after her release from prison, explained why she killed her abusive father, “The first time he did those things to me, he was signing his own death certificate then and didn’t know it. So that’s how I look at it now, if he had not done what he did to me, I would not have killed him.” The women had told their stories to numerous people in the prison (battered women activists, prison officials, and other inmates), attorneys, the parole board, and the Governor and by releasing the women this signified they were not to blame. Hence, even though some of the women still struggled with guilt, they had the community backing them which made it slightly easier for them to let go of their self-hatred. Furthermore, the media contacted some of the women after their release. These women became recognized as “survivors” who had lived through the worst abuse imaginable. Jackie, along with other women

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granted clemency, went on the Oprah Show and the Phil Donahue Show after they were released from prison to tell their stories. Because others saw them in a more positive manner, they also began to view themselves in this way, and their increased awareness about domestic violence took on new meaning in their lives in hopes of living violence free. Even though some struggled with putting this into action once they were released, all had hopes that people would treat them with respect, and this first started with seeing themselves as deserving respect and having a sense of self-efficacy. Margaret found herself taking control of her life, “I’m in control. Margaret. Nobody else is …. Put yourself first and stand firm.” Sarah also said, “It’s just that I know that I just can’t let anybody hurt me anymore.” Although all the women wanted respect and independence in their lives, they were often confronted by others (housing officials and employers) who made it difficult to get past their time in prison. This friction made this identity transformation an ebb and flow process. The positive outlook about themselves and their lives was more apparent for the women interviewed fifteen years after release from prison than those interviewed directly after their freedom was granted. One of the things that helped the women solidify their identities was continual involvement in the community which provided them a sense of purpose. Allison said she wanted to be remembered for, “The passion of the work that I do. I like people to ask me to do stuff …. Sometimes I’m good for other people, I like that.” Jackie said she wanted to be remembered, “as a person who cared and was giving.” These women also reflected back on the way they used to feel about themselves and how it has changed for the better over the years. Emma said, “I think I am successful compared to the way I used to feel about myself.” She continued her positive affirmation of her life, “I consider myself blessed. Even with all of the hardships that I had to go through I feel blessed.” When asked why, she responded, “Because I still have so much. I have my life for one thing. And I still have my family.” A lot of the women reflected on that fact—they were all still alive and that was something they did not take for granted. Jackie at 70 years old, said, “I have lived a full and prosperous life. I’m proud of the way I grew up and came out as a woman. I look forward to living to be a hundred.” The only woman who did not view herself as a survivor was Teresa. Throughout this chapter, Teresa’s story seemed to be the anomaly. As mentioned earlier, Teresa’s life of uncontrolled addiction and severe mental illnesses altered her life course making it difficult for her to see past victimhood. A requirement for positive identity change is the ability to see one’s self as an active participant in life. Sadly, Teresa was unable

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to do this and her sense of passivity led her into a vicious cycle of continued victimization. This chapter started with the idea of the women being freed, but not liberated. The women viewed themselves as strong “survivors,” felt a need to give back, and were joyful when they were reunited with their children. At the same time, the structural issues of having lived a life of abuse, society’s negative associations with people in prison, and the time spent in prison impeded the process of being free. As the women negotiated between these two worlds (the freed survivor versus the stigmatized victim), the strength of these women shines through their stories. Chapter Seven follows with an in-depth discussion on the similarities and differences between the women in this chapter who were granted clemency and those from Chapter Five who were denied clemency. 1

Goffman, Stigma O'Brien, Making It In the ‘Free World’ 3 O'Brien, Making It In the ‘Free World’ 4 Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome, Third Edition 5 O'Brien, Making It In the ‘Free World’ 6 Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face,” pp. 368-389 7 Golden, War on the Family 8 Moe, “A Sheltered Life” 9 Raphael, Freeing Tammy 10 The Pew Center on the States, “State of Recidivism” 11 The Sentencing Project, http://www.sentencingproject.org 12 Browne, When Battered Women Kill 13 Ammons, “Why Do You Do The Things You Do?” pp. 533-566 14 Gagné, Battered Women’s Justice 15 Bush, Finding Their Voices 16 Browne, When Battered Women Kill; Leonard, Convicted Survivors 17 Hunter, Transitions In Mothering; Richie, “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face,” pp. 368-389 18 DeHart, “Pathways to Prison,” pp. 1362-1381 19 Raphael, Freeing Tammy 20 Raphael, Listening to Olivia 21 Hunter, Transitions In Mothering 22 Mumola , “Incarcerated Parents and Their Children” 23 Johnston, “Parent-Child Visitation in the Jail or Prison.” 24 Myers, Smarsh, Amlund-Hagen, and Kennon. “Children of Incarcerated Mothers,” pp. 11-25. 25 Sharp and Marcus-Mendoza, “It’s A Family Affair,” pp. 21-49 26 Raphael, Freeing Tammy 27 O'Brien, Making it in the ‘Free World’ 28 Gonnerman, Life on the Outside 29 Watterson, Women in Prison 30 Hunter, Transitions in Mothering 2

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Ammons, “Why Do You Do the Things You Do?” pp. 533-566. Russell, “The Making of a Whore,” pp. 77-98 33 Wuest and Merrit-Gray, “Not Going Back,” pp. 110-133 34 Richardson, The New Other Woman 35 Kiecolt, “Stress and The Decision to Change Oneself,” pp. 49-63 32

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7 Deserving or Not?

The stories from Chapter Two all seem eerily similar—childhood abuse, severe violence in intimate relationships, extreme fear, ignored pleas for help, and finally feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. As noted in Chapter Five, the women who were denied clemency struggled with their clemency decisions because, in their eyes, they saw themselves as no different from the women who were freed. Even the women discussed in Chapter Six who were granted clemency found themselves questioning the clemency process. They, of course, did not find fault in it as they were exonerated, but asked why some of their friends were not chosen as well. Lastly, much of the public was unsure why “murderers” should be let out of prison. The clemency debate in Ohio was hotly contested in the local media and, many prosecutors saw this as a huge threat to family security. Sadly, newspaper coverage of the clemency process was not always ideal, and for some women the media depictions were completely inaccurate. For instance, in Cindy’s case newspaper stories of her case noted that she was involved with another man and shot her husband in a jealous rage. Karen also was portrayed as a vengeful, manipulative woman who seduced a much younger man and talked him into killing her husband. These depictions do not match up with the women’s cases or the stories they shared in their interviews. It is hard to say whether the media influenced the clemency decisions, but it is something to consider. Sociologists Noh, Lee, and Feltey1 researched media portrayals of battered women who killed between 1983 through 2002. They found two dominant characterizations of these women. They were either depicted as “mad” or “bad.” The “mad” battered woman killed because she was mentally ill. Her actions were not justified, while at the same time, the killing was excused due to her diminished mental state. Simultaneously, media portrayals were also quick to jump on the bandwagon of the “bad” battered woman. She was the gold digging

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woman who killed to get her husband’s money or the vengeful wife who cheated on her husband. For obvious reasons, representations of battered women in either of these ways are problematic. In line with Kathleen Ferraro’s2 sentiments, these characterizations focus on individual level issues (personality problems) rather than assessing the sociological reasons for why a battered woman might kill. These portrayals do more harm than good when determining if a battered woman acted in selfdefense. Self-defense (meaning the woman was justified in her actions) is unable to coexist with either of the “mad” or “bad” descriptions. Even though there has been an in-depth analysis of the media descriptions of these women, how these women were depicted in the media might have played a part in how the parole board or Governor Celeste determined if these women were acceptable clemency candidates. This chapter looks at a variety of factors that may have influenced the clemency decision. Things under consideration are: length of relationship and severity of abuse, events at the trial including witness testimony and character assassinations, the nature of the crime, and the ideas surrounding what makes a “good” battered woman. “Maybe I Wasn’t Really Battered”

The underlying ideas about what makes a “good battered woman” not only influenced the media’s portrayal of the women, but made at least one woman who did not receive clemency pause for a moment as she reflected on her relationship. Veronica was the only person I interviewed who said she understood why she did not receive clemency. Yes, I was very upset [about not receiving clemency]. It took me a while to get over it. But like I said before, when I got over it, I realized that maybe I wasn’t really battered. When I heard all these other people’s stories and stuff and I thought maybe that’s why I didn’t get it. Mine wasn’t like that because I wasn’t really abused that badly. Some people, you know, it was awful to hear the stories. And I’m like mine was nothin’ like that. I mean the one incident that happened, but you know that happened a year before my case.

Veronica brings up an interesting point. How much abuse does a woman have to endure for it to justify violence against the perpetrator? What type of abuse does she have to withstand? How long does she have to be involved in the relationship? The average length of relationship for clemency recipients was 14 years compared to the women who were denied clemency where average length of relationship was five years. Even with Margaret’s partnership lasting only eight months, the courts

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still considered the previous 13 years she spent with her ex-abusive husband as a factor in her current abuser’s death and granted her clemency. At the same time, even though Lauren had a history of abusive relationships, her three month affair with her abuser that she killed did not seem to have the same impact on the parole board and she is still incarcerated. I struggled with the question of length of relationship and type and severity of abuse as I listened to the stories of Veronica and Lauren. In these two cases, the women were undoubtedly harmed. However, the abuse was not as significant as the others in terms of severity and frequency of physical violence. For example, Lauren talked about her boyfriend grabbing her butt or her breasts as examples of the physical abuse in their relationship, and Veronica said she only had one physical altercation with her boyfriend. At the same time, both of these women voiced considerable heartache over the emotional wounds their abusers inflicted upon them. Recall in Chapter Two, a common finding among abused women is the detrimental impact of emotional abuse and how the psychological scars are often harder to overcome.3 Yet, very few criminal justice or legal entities would consider arresting or prosecuting someone for emotional abuse. Additionally, a study that provided mock juries with various cases of battered women who killed found emotional abuse was not enough to justify lethal action and these women were more often given a guilty verdict than were physically abused women who killed.4 Besides the lack of severe physical abuse, the length of time these women were involved in their relationships was quite short. On a final note, these two women’s suggested motives tended to focus more on their boyfriend’s infidelity rather than the violence perpetrated against them. While sexual infidelity may be considered a type of sexual abuse, is it grounds for killing your partner? Veronica who accidentally killed an innocent bystander said: The last straw with me and this guy was we were together, or so I thought…I go and drive by his house and I see his car down the street in somebody’s else’s driveway. So I go to his house and I let myself into the house … I went in there and sure enough I find him in bed with somebody … so I went out and slashed his tires. I felt I was justified for doing what I did ‘cause I was hurt. So I lashed out that way … when we had this physical altercation I was [at a store] … so when my ex seen me he comes up and jumps on me, okay. So I automatically go into the glove compartment and get the gun and I chase after him and that’s how all of this came about and how I’m in

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prison. ‘Cause in the process of me shootin’ him, I shot an innocent person and I killed another person. Okay. I was bent on revenge.

Lauren, who lit her boyfriend on fire, also mentioned her boyfriend’s unfaithfulness as her motive, stating emphatically that she was tired of her boyfriend cheating on her so she was going to “burn his penis off.” One of the more problematic situations in the courts when women do kill their abusers is often they are portrayed as bitter, cunning women who contrived to “get back” at their husband’s cheating behavior—the scorned “Betty Broderick,” tired of her husband’s sexual antics. Of course, when Veronica and Lauren openly acknowledged this, it obviously did not help their cases. For the rest of the women who did not receive clemency, no one questioned the violence in their relationships, yet the years (or lack of years) with their partner probably played a part in rendering them unjustified in their actions. Ironically, the public perception that women must leave the relationship right away is valid only when no one is killed. Real Battered Woman?

As noted above, the media’s portrayal of some of the women capitalized on myths about how battered women should behave. Kathleen Ferraro,5 in her analysis of her own experiences as an expert witness for battering cases in the courts, described the passivity of the legal system to move away from narrow definitions of the “real battered woman” which encompassed a more traditional, feminized, passive female. Even though academic scholarship6 and the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women7 promote a broader understanding of the dynamics involved in violent relationships, the courts still use a more constricted framework for assessing if a woman is truly a battered woman. This also could have impacted the women’s clemency decisions. Mentioned earlier, both Cindy and Karen were involved (or thought to be involved) in extramarital affairs. Angie’s sexual transgressions were a result of her abusive husband’s demands (forcing her to have sex with others and taking pictures of her). Natalie ran away from home and during her time away did what she could to stay alive and make money at 16. The unfortunate point made with all of these women’s stories is they did not uphold the sexual double-standard—women are to remain faithful to their spouses, not flaunt their sexuality, nor be promiscuous.8 While this standard is there for all women, Kathleen Ferraro9 found it incredibly hurtful for battered women who kill, since the prosecution

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often views this sexual behavior as evidence that the women were not as fearful of their abusers as they claimed. Furthermore, it impugns their character and allows the jury to question the women’s motives for killing. Other things that might have diminished the women’s character and impacted the clemency decision were prior alcohol and drug use. Just as sexual affairs are often a way to cope in an abusive environment,10 so is numbing oneself with chemical substances.11 Pattie, who used alcohol on a regular basis, noted, “The beatings didn’t hurt so bad when he hit me if I had been drinking.” Cindy used marijuana throughout her marriage. Emma (who received clemency) over indulged with alcohol to manage the abuse in her relationship. It is hard to say if alcohol and drug use had an impact on the clemency decisions, especially since it is a common coping mechanism for many battered women (and both clemency and non-clemency recipients reported this). However, if their prior substance abuse was known to the parole board, it could have been one additional discrediting factor. While Ferraro12 suggested African American women have an even harder time fitting the mold of the “real battered woman,” Beth Richie13 has repeatedly found black women are more likely to be incarcerated for a variety of offenses compared to their white counterparts. The racial disparity in terms of clemency recipients is perplexing. Linda Ammons14 analyzed the Ohio clemency process and reported that women who were granted clemency in Ohio in 1990 were more likely to be a racial minority. Since the idea behind clemency is to “right a wrong,” maybe the justice system acknowledged the racial inequality and were more likely to grant African American women clemency because of the off chance that their race played a part in their initial incarceration. Furthermore, since white women embody traditional femininity, it might be more disturbing for a white woman to act aggressively; therefore society treats her more punitively and would be less willing to give her a second chance. Finally, stereotyped ideas about inherent violence in the African American community make it less deviant for a black woman to kill a black man versus a white woman who murders a white man.15 Even though research acknowledges the varied experiences of battered women, the courts still view abused women through a very narrow lens and regrettably, it may have impacted whether some women were allowed to go home. The legal system seems to encourage a traditional ideal of gender and rewards women who succumb to the more submissive, dependent type of womanhood.16 Ironically, this form of femininity actually encourages women to be more reliant on men and

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thus, puts them at greater risk for battering relationships. The only flip side to this was when race was considered. While most research indicated stereotypes about non-white women make it especially difficult for them to fit this feminized mold, the clemency process in Ohio in 1990 may have taken this into account, while at the same time still upholding stringent femininity standards for white women. Nature of the Crime: ‘I’ll Never Get Clemency”

Cindy was charged with aggravated murder and abuse of a corpse. As soon as any parole board sees “abuse of a corpse,” they tell her she is never leaving prison. In many people’s minds Cindy must be a deranged killer. However, her story is not so cut and dried. Cindy shot her sleeping husband (not that unusual). Also, as noted in Chapter Three, Cindy, like most abused women who kill their partners, did not have a prior criminal record and was scared. She called her friends after the shooting and they came to her house. They moved her husband’s dead body to the basement and, unluckily, as Cindy went upstairs to call the police, one of her friends decapitated her husband. Lauren’s case is another illustration of how the method of killing could have impacted the parole board’s decision. Lauren lit her boyfriend on fire. She recalled a conversation she had with her brother after the fact, “I had to be a cold hearted person … he said most people just shot or most people stabbed, but I had to be a cold hearted person to burn him.” Obviously, Lauren had multiple issues against her, in terms of both length of relationship and revenge as motive. Other than the actual mode of killing, sometimes multiple victims were involved and this upped the stakes for harsh punishment. While it would make sense why Natalie might kill her sexually and physically violent father, her father is still living, and her mother and two brothers are dead. After running away from home, Natalie became involved with a young man. They conspired to break into her house so they could steal her dad’s car. Her boyfriend accidentally shot and killed her mother and brothers while her father escaped death. Natalie said other women in prison told her, “If I had killed my father, I wouldn’t have done a day.” Veronica’s case is similar; when she attempted to shoot her boyfriend, she also shot two innocent bystanders in a parking lot. One bystander was killed and the other was seriously wounded. Since for both of these women other individuals other than their abusers were killed, it would be hard to justify clemency by the defense of the Battered Woman Syndrome.

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As stated previously throughout this book and chapter, women who kill are typically regarded as more socially deviant than men who kill.17 Women who kill their intimate partners on average are convicted more often and given longer sentences (even when the killing fits the more traditional self-defense case) compared to men who kill their intimate partners.18 Although most movie-goers understand why Julia Roberts in Sleeping with the Enemy killed her violent husband at the end of the movie, consider what people’s perceptions would have been if Julia Roberts called her lover after the killing, she and her lover moved the body, and her lover severed her dead husband’s head. The empathy for Julia Roberts is gone. The same could be said for any of the other scenarios listed above. Had Julia Roberts killed others while shooting her husband or lit her husband on fire, she would have now crossed a line and would no longer be someone who is justified, but instead would be considered vengeful and menacing. Complicating Matters: Co-Defendants

Despite the fact that some of the clemency recipients had “help” in killing their abusers, the women denied clemency who had conspired with others seemed to fare worse. Often the co-defendants in these cases were given leniency if they testified against the women. In Alecia’s situation, even though it was both she and her mother who set-up the murder of her father, Alecia’s mother testified against her own daughter. Alecia’s mother was given a 25 year sentence, whereas Alecia is in prison for life. Karen’s ex-lover who shot her violent husband testified against her in order to avoid the death penalty. Lastly, Natalie’s boyfriend who shot and killed her mother and brothers swore it was Natalie’s intention to kill them, not his. All in all, these testimonies provided evidence of premeditation (even if this documentation did not adequately depict what happened). Whereas Angie’s case was not one that included co-defendants, she also had testimony at her trial that misconstrued the true reality of Angie’s relationship with her abusive husband. Her in-laws affirmed under oath that she was making up the abuse which obviously did not help her case.

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The Battered Woman Syndrome

The major premise behind the clemency movement was the fact that the laws had changed and now the BWS was admissible in the courts where before it could not be part of a trial. It was assumed that the women who were currently incarcerated were unable to talk about the abuse in their trials and this was the reason for the clemency opportunity. Linda and Angie, however, came to prison right after the laws changed and they had been allowed to use the BWS in their trials. They mentioned that even though the BWS was used in their trials, no one understood it and it did not help them. Nonetheless, the point remains that both women were able to talk about the battering in their relationships and therefore, the reason for the clemencies did not necessarily apply to them. Angie even said, “I think that [my attorney] told me the reason I did not get the clemency was because I got to use the Battered Woman’s Syndrome in the trial.” In Angie’s case, she did claim self-defense and the BWS was admitted into court proceedings. Whereas, Raquel’s situation was a little different since she said she did not kill her husband. She admitted to abuse in the relationship, but testified that her husband committed suicide. Therefore, in her application she still claimed her innocence which did not fit with the criteria for clemency. A Final Note: Policy Issues to Consider

The primary reasons I found for denying one group of women their freedom and allowing another set of women to walk freely out the prison doors stemmed from such things as the definition of what it means to be a “good battered woman,” the nature of the women’s crimes, whether co-defendants testified against the women at their trials, and the cases being tried after 1990 when court changes on the BWS already were implemented. Interestingly, the social construction of the ideal battered woman connects with several of these factors as well as ignorance about battering relationships. Whereas many may agree that a woman is not justified killing her abusive partner after only being together for three months, it becomes somewhat more difficult to disentangle some of the social expectations put upon women and how, if women do not live up to these expectations, it is easier to punish them for their transgressions. The woman who takes a lover or who likes to party—is she less justified in her actions because she was not living a “pure” life? This type of questioning of women’s characters in court proceedings is not new and

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research on rape victims has duly noted how character assassinations in rape trials are a common occurrence.19 Moreover, some of these unsavory actions on the part of the victim may also prevent them from getting the help they need prior to a homicide occurring. Many of the women discussed police not taking them seriously if they had been drinking during an assault. The public, including the criminal justice and legal systems, should reflect on this and question why we continue to stick to outdated, simplistic ideas about what constitutes a battering relationship and which abused women are deserving of help. This book allows us to pause for a moment and consider deeper issues connected to battered women, homicide, and prison. Chapter Eight serves as a concluding chapter that discusses larger sociological issues—a lifecourse approach to women’s victimization and offending, posttraumatic growth that facilitated the identity transformation most of the women experienced, “gendered” programming in prisons, and postprison adjustment for women. 1 Noh, Lee, and Feltey, “Mad, Bad, or Reasonable?” pp. 110-130 2 Ferraro, “The Words Change, But The Melody Lingers,” pp. 110-129 3

Crawford, Liebling-Kalifani, and Hill, “Women’s Understandings of the Effects of Domestic Abuse,” pp. 63-82 4 Braden-Maguire, Sigal, and Perrino, “Battered Women Who Kill,” pp.403-408 5 Ferraro, “The Words Change, But The Melody Lingers,” pp. 110-129 6 Scheppele, “The Reasonable Woman,” pp. 456-460 7 National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, http://ncdbw.org 8 Garcia and McManimon, Gendered Justice 9 Ferraro, “The Words Change, But The Melody Lingers,” pp. 110-129 10 Ferraro, “The Words Change, But The Melody Lingers,” pp. 110-129 11 DeHart, “Pathways to Prison,” pp. 1362-1381 12 Ferraro, “The Words Change, But The Melody Lingers,” pp. 110-129 13 Richie, Compelled to Crime 14 Ammons, “Why Do You Do the Things You Do?” pp. 533-566 15 Hampton, Oliver, and Magarian, “Domestic Violence in the African American Community,” pp. 533-557 16 Garcia and McManimon, Gendered Justice 17 Garcia and McManimon, Gendered Justice 18 Browne, When Battered Women Kill 19 Shepherd, “Reflections on a Rape Trial,” pp.69-92

8 Making Sense of It All

Kathleen Ferraro’s book Neither Angels nor Demons1 illustrates that women who kill their intimate partners (or are involved in other criminal offending due to domestic violence) rarely fit nicely into either the “angel” or the “demon” category. These women’s lives are filled with complexities and paradoxes. The boundaries between victim and offender become blurred. This book highlights the complications of seeing battered women who kill as one-dimensional. One way to address this is to consider a life course approach. Life Course Approach

As people move throughout their lives, they encounter “turning points” that can alter their paths.2 When Karen was sexually abused by her brother, she said it changed her life. These women’s stories continually connect the dots between early childhood abuse (or dysfunction) to later intimate partner violence. Angie was told by her father, “she was pouring trash on his porch” when she became pregnant and later had an abortion after her uncle raped her when she was 15. As Angie later reflected on her life with her abusive husband, she said the sadistic sexual things he wanted her to do were “normal ” to her. Other women hinted at the acceptance of violence because of being blamed for the abuse when they were younger. This childhood abuse and lack of helpful intervention created an easy path for women to run away, abuse drugs and alcohol, and escape into unhealthy relationships. These things created a sense of defenselessness in the women and made it easier for abusers to use their power over the women. The women’s vulnerability was further heightened by early marriages and pregnancies, large age differences between themselves and their partners, and fast courtships. Through the women’s eyes, by

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the time the violence was really bad, they were already deeply enmeshed in the relationship, which made it that much harder to leave. Finally, the societal reactions to domestic violence during the 1980s were less desirable and more victim-blaming. The younger women in the study had fewer negative interactions with police and helping agencies, but even those more positive encounters were few and far between. One would hope that today things have improved, but studies still indicate an officer bias towards domestic disputes. While prior to the 1980s the more common complaint was police not taking domestic violence seriously, today the myth of mutual violence prompts many police to arrest both parties involved.3 Unfortunately, neither situation is helpful to the battered woman. Through a life course lens (or pathways approach, as coined by feminist criminologists4), these findings suggest we take a closer look at early childhood abuse and teen dating violence and its links to later intimate partner violence. The Bureau of Justice Statistics5 found that women aged 16 to 24 had the highest rates of intimate partner violence. Furthermore, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention6 reported significant links between experiencing teen dating violence and later becoming involved in a domestic violence relationship as an adult. While not all children who are abused will later become victims of intimate partner violence, the links are strongest amongst women who were sexually abused as children. Therefore, we must consider prevention efforts that focus on the psychological implications of childhood sexual abuse as well. In 2009, Ohio took a step in the right direction when then Governor Ted Strickland signed into law the Tina Croucher Act.7 This law, named after Tina Croucher (18) who was murdered by her boyfriend in 1992, mandated schools in Ohio provide prevention materials on dating violence to all 7th—12th graders. This has been one of the few times where multiple agencies are working together to address domestic violence for such a young population. Life may have been different for Teresa, who met her abusive boyfriend when she was 12 and he was 21, had she been attending Ohio schools today.

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Breaking the Boundaries of the “Angel” or “Demon” in the Criminal Justice System

Although the television show Snapped on TLC may provide a riveting 30-minute episode on why a woman killed her partner, it generally delivers a very myopic vision of women who kill. The stories rarely cover the women’s entire lives and tend to divide them into the “demon” or “angel” categories. Using a life course approach helps dismantle the stereotyped perception of the battered woman and shows these women seldom fit into this dichotomy. If the legal system only saw Allison as a vengeful wife who set up the killing of her husband, then they are missing the much larger picture of Allison’s life. Yes, she conspired and paid two men to kill her husband, but only after years of abuse with countless instances where she almost died. She stood up to her husband, fought back, but to no avail. He still brutally beat her, almost killing her several times. One such beating, he repeatedly hit her with an iron which resulted in 50 stitches to her head. Another beating led her to jump out of a third story window where she broke her foot, only to be carried back up the stairs by her husband who continued fighting with her. The criminal justice system needs to realize the quiet, meek battered woman is a myth. The abused woman learns early on in the relationship how to “manage” the violence.8 This managing may be appearing submissive or it may be fighting back. The important point is the woman is actively surviving as best she can at the time. Even though Walker’s original idea of learned helplessness9 has been revised, the legal system still retains the disturbing idea that “the only credible battered woman ….is a dead one.”10 Dr. Lynne Rosewater, a psychologist specializing in Battered Woman Syndrome, worked extensively with the clemency movement in Ohio. In an Akron Beacon Journal article, she suggested the negative press surrounding the clemencies (i.e., prosecutors suggesting killings were “coldblooded murder” or “executions”) as indicative of a larger social problem—the public’s ignorance about domestic violence. Without truly understanding the terror induced in battering relationships, it is difficult to grasp why a battered woman would use multiple shots to kill her sleeping husband and not report the killing to the police right away.11 We must continue education efforts in all areas of the legal and criminal justice systems about the true realities of intimate partner violence. The required curricula for law schools, police academies, criminal justice degrees, and social work programs need advanced courses on domestic violence. Even though many of these venues

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provide such courses, they are often not required coursework. Furthermore, these fields need ongoing education on the dynamics of battering relationships that does not end once the degree is received or the initial training is completed. Revictimizing: The Prison System

I truly wish this chapter’s recommendations could stop at this point since I believe prevention and education efforts are one of the best ways to deal with domestic violence. Unfortunately, this is not the case and the story does not end here. Continuing with a pathways perspective we must consider the detrimental effects of incarceration for battered women who kill. Even though most incarcerated women are not in prison for killing their intimate partners, the majority have backgrounds similar to the women in this book. As noted earlier, almost two-thirds of the women in prison have been physically and/or sexually abused prior to prison.12 Disappointingly, the current structure of our prison system perpetuates this victimization. Prisons were never built with women in mind.13 The prison system continues to house these women without really seeing or hearing them. Many of the nuances of prison life continue abusive practices under the guise of security. For instance, a formerly incarcerated woman told me that while she was in prison the women could not receive any mail that had crayon or glitter on it. The rationale for this rule was it was a security risk since an illegal substance could be smuggled into the prison in such a manner. Considering the large number of incarcerated mothers, it would make sense that many times these letters would be coming from their children. Yet, to make matters worse, often these letters were returned to sender with no explanation and the women were never notified of the letter. Another common prison rule that contributes to further victimization is the shackling of pregnant women when they are giving birth. This has caused intense debate in several states and has initiated changes in some of the laws, but as of today the majority of state prisons still have this as a common practice.14 Beyond the various abuses discussed in Chapters Four and Five, if the women’s prisons offer programming, it is often substandard compared to men’s prisons. Additionally, the programming rarely connects to the women’s lives. Sociologist Meda Chesney-Lind continually advocated in her work over the years for gender-responsive programming in prisons. She found even in co-educational prisons the women were receiving inferior programming (educational, vocational, and counseling) as compared to the men.

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Not only are women left with a void of programming, but the help offered in prison generally does not adequately address the women’s histories of abuse. The women in my study show us how domestic violence groups and other forms of support groups can transform how they see themselves. They give credence to the need for these types of groups as well as understanding facilitators who are sympathetic to these women’s lives. Disappointingly, as the women’s prison populations have swelled, the availability of these programs has dwindled. Case in point, in 2012, only 1.5% of the prison budget in the state of Florida is devoted to programming.15 Not only have programs been cut, but the groups offered sometimes do not speak to the women’s lives. Two sociologists16 studied the inner workings of 12-step Alcoholic Anonymous (AA)/Narcotics Anonymous (NA) groups and interviewed women involved in them. They found the individual responsibility model which reflected the views of the founders of AA (white, middleclass, married men) did not mesh with these women’s self perceptions. As Hunter and Greer17 found in their interviews with incarcerated women, when contemplating reentry they struggled with their identities and often blamed themselves for the abuse in their relationships. Rather than incorporate a view of how structured sexism and racism had impacted their lives and life choices, they felt fully responsible for everything that had occurred in their lives. Unfortunately, this made it hard for them to move beyond the abuse and victim mentality. Again, this reinforces the necessity of looking at the events in these women’s lives from a life course perspective that understands how social inequities throughout the women’s lives have impacted the choices they made. Yes, Teresa who stabbed her boyfriend, had choices, but her choices were constrained by being a lower-class, African American woman living in a patriarchal society. Getting Out: The Issue of Collateral Consequences

One of the recommendations from Jody Raphael’s book Freeing Tammy18 was a serious consideration of the collateral consequences of incarceration. Collateral consequences are the wide array of costs that come with having a prison record—difficulty of finding and keeping a job, housing bans, prohibitions against governmental assistance, sanctions on voting, limits on federal financial aid for college, suspension of driver’s licenses, and loss of child custody, just to name a few. These greatly impact the ability of previously incarcerated people to move forward and stay out of prison. Since all of the women in this study have dealt with some of these issues, the challenges of being

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“free” were difficult and, without supportive families, they easily could have resorted to criminal activities in order to survive. In fact, the women who dabbled in criminal behavior after receiving clemency were the ones who lacked family stability and support. Ohio has been hard at work assessing the damage of incarceration and is one of the leaders in this area, with their current recidivism rate at an all-time low (34% in 2012). With the help of state legislators, the state started a workgroup in November 2011 to discuss the challenges previously incarcerated individuals encounter after they leave prison and to develop policy initiatives that help rather than hinder prisoners’ success once on the outside. 19 The women in my study felt “stuck.” They said they wanted to move on, but found it difficult. The longer they were out of prison the easier it became. Nonetheless, there were still limits placed on them (e.g., inability to change jobs) because of the felony conviction. Beyond these concerns, the issues that seemed the most disabling for the women when released from prison was how their treatment in prison (and subsequent stigmatization), coupled with their prior abuse, led them down the path of isolation. A lot of the women granted clemency were guarded and did not feel “safe” to let others in. This is a collateral consequence that moves beyond the difficulties of finding jobs and interferes with the women’s psyche and how they feel about themselves. It is something worth considering when looking at the after effects of incarceration—it is not just about housing and jobs but, as Goffman20 indicated, how this also impacts a person’s identity. Growth and Healing: “A New Way”

Whether we look at the women who received clemency or those still incarcerated, their lives took similar trajectories. Even when their paths diverged and one group was let out of prison, they still shared parallel experiences. One, most of the women (both who received clemency and were denied clemency) reported a change in how they saw themselves while in prison. The catalyst for this change stemmed primarily from the domestic violence support groups. They identified with the other women in these groups and were able to recognize what they had gone through. Their wounds were no longer invisible and they had others who understood their pain. They transformed themselves from “victims” to “survivors.” Second, both groups of women took on this survivor identity and felt they were no longer going to play the victim. They asserted themselves more often and demanded respect from others. Third, all the women reported a need to “give back.” They used what

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they had gone through to better society in a variety of ways. The incarcerated women gave back by helping and supporting women on the inside. The “freed” women volunteered or used their newfound knowledge to teach their children about healthy relationships. All of the women told their stories to me in hopes that what they had been through could help someone else. Fourth, most had some form of a spiritual transformation or a reaffirming of spiritual values. Many of the women denied clemency took part in the Christian prison ministry program Kairos and that facilitated their spiritual conversion. Whereas, the women on the outside were not able to participate in Kairos, they still reported an ever increasing desire for a relationship with a higher power. Finally, all reported a keen awareness of knowing who their true friends were. The women in prison noted the difference between “true friends” and “acquaintances” in prison. The women on the outside recalled knowing who they could call on once they were out and needed assistance. Psychologists Tedeschi and Calhoun21 would describe these women’s transformations as posttraumatic growth. According to them, many people experience traumatic events, but when people are able to move past them and use that trauma to grow and heal, they experience posttraumatic growth. They indicated five common things that occur: identity transformation, spiritual conversion, reevaluation of values, reconsideration of who your true friends are, and a desire to use your experience to help someone else. Amazingly, these women flourished in an environment full of weeds. Even when others refused to help, they did not give up. Their resiliency is profound and underscores the myth of the passive, meek battered woman. Furthermore, it breaks down stereotypes of the “felon,” “criminal,” and “prisoner.” They have a desire to “do good” and give back to society. As Angie noted in Chapter Five, “I’m a woman with great compassion for people, humanity. I … I’m full of love … I’m a very strong woman.” Ironically, these women (both inside and out) credited this transformation to the women around them. They said without their “sisters” they would not be who they are today. Their stories speak to the necessity of prisons to rethink how they are currently operating. The current set-up of prisons does not foster this type of rehabilitative environment, and, in fact, discourages it. Yet, the history of the women’s movement shows us how powerful these “consciousness raising” groups can be and the lasting changes that can occur when women tell their stories and are no longer invisible.22

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Concluding Thoughts

These women’s stories are sad because, as a society, we can and should do better. As Patricia O’Brien23 concluded in her book, “It could be otherwise.” (p.117) It is my hope these women’s voices are heard and, as a community, we think about these issues as “our” problems. Domestic violence has been deemed a private issue for too long. Along with that, we need to rethink our ideas about prisons and incarcerated people. I often ask my classes, if the people in prison were your mother, sister, friend, or even you—would you think differently about prisons and the treatment of those inside? 1

Ferraro, Neither Angels or Demons Sampson and Laub, Crime in the Making 3 Garcia and McManimon, Gendered Justice 4 Belknap, The Invisible Woman 5 Rennison and Welchans, “Intimate Partner Violence.” 6 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Teen Dating Violence Fact Sheet 2012,” www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention 7 OhioStateLegislature,http://www.legislature.oh.us.bills.cfm?ID=128_HB_ 19 8 Wuest and Merrit-Gray, “Not Going Back,” pp.110-133 9 Walker, The Battered Woman; Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome, Third Edition 10 Pesce, “Inmates Hope For Freedom to Start Over” 11 Limbacher, “Voinovich to inherit debate over clemency” 12 Watterson, Women in Prison 13 Britton, At Work in the Iron Cage 14 Berg, “The Daily Beast,” http://www.thedailybeast.com 15 Floridia Department of Corrections, http://www.dc.state.fl.us 16 Sered and Norton-Hawk, “Who’s Higher Power?” pp. 308-332 17 Hunter and Greer, “Filing in the Holes,” pp. 198-224 18 Raphael, Freeing Tammy 19 Mohr, “Addressing Collateral Consequences in Ohio” 20 Goffman, Stigma 21 Tedeschi and Calhoun, “Posttraumatic Growth,” pp. 1-18 22 Taylor, Whittier and Pelak, “The Women’s Movement” 23 O'Brien, Making It In the ‘Free World’ 2

Appendix A: The Research Process

Feminist Methodology: Giving Voice to the Women

Feminist methodology provided the framework for this study. When I mention this to students, sometimes they wince, thinking this must be a research project focused on devaluing men. While the word feminist is often brazen with negative associations, the central components of feminism focus on gender equality and realizing that femininity and masculinity are social constructs. Feminism also recognizes that our social world is constructed by us, but because of patriarchal standards, women’s lives, words, and voices are sometimes ignored.1 If we take this standard idea and apply it to the research process we see that much of the early social scientific research often neglected women’s viewpoints (or just did not include them in research studies at all).2 Furthermore, frequently the analysis of women’s lives was viewed through a male lens that devalued women’s life experiences.3 For instance, much of the early criminological literature revolved around studies that only included male deviants. Female criminality was assumed to be a “biological problem” where women offended because of uncontrollable hormones. We know today that much of women’s criminal behavior is linked back to prior victimization in their lives, but early researchers neglected this fact because of sexist assumptions pertaining to women.4 Another issue relevant to feminist methodology debunks the common assumption that research on human beings can be and always will be value-neutral.5 Feminists dismiss this idea because they understand how someone’s statuses (gender, race, sexual orientation, and social class) can impact the research process. I’m a white, middleclass female and while I would like to say these statuses did not affect

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the interviews I conducted, I do not think that would be a fair assumption. Prior to my interviews with the women in this book, I conducted a pilot interview with a domestic violence survivor to test my research skills. I was a middle-class, doctoral graduate student and she was a working-class single parent who had dealt with bouts of homelessness throughout her life. At the end of the interview she commented on my diamond wedding ring and I realized the significance of the social class distinctions between the two of us. In subsequent interviews, I was much more cognizant of status differences and tried to minimize these power hierarchies as much as possible. I obviously did not realize how much of a challenge that would be until I arrived for my first interviews at the prison. I had been careful about what I was wearing and how I would present myself. But there was still this overarching theme that I was a “free” person who had never set foot inside a prison before. Even though on an academic level I knew the media’s portrayal of prisons was inaccurate, that was really all I had to go on for what to expect. The following is an excerpt from my field notes: I had my first visit to the Reformatory for Women today. It was not at all what I expected. I had envisioned something out of a movie where it would be this huge building with lots of fences, no trees or “pretty” things, and out in the middle of nowhere. I turned off the highway and began driving down the road towards the prison. There were residential houses to my left and I kept thinking it must be farther down because you couldn’t have a prison right next to all of these houses. I see a sign on the right pointing to the Reformatory for Women. I drive in the dirt driveway and keep expecting to come to a large gate where people would check my ID, but there is nothing but a big parking lot next to several buildings all surrounded by the typical prison fence. I saw a small building where inmates were caring for flowers out front. I wouldn’t have even known they were inmates, but for the t-shirts that shouted in bold print “Reformatory for Women Inmate.” I gathered my stuff from my car and headed towards the small entrance building. The women inmates out front turned, smiled, and said hello. It was almost surreal due to the images I had built in my head of what prisoners should look like and act like based on movie depictions. In the movies prisoners were not nice and are not normal. Yet, these women looked as if they could be my mom, grandmother, or my friend.

It was quite distressing to me when I became conscious of the preconceived notions I had about prison. I was the scholar who was supposed to be immune to society’s influences! The benefit of feminist

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methodology is it allows you to be honest about these issues, state them upfront, and then do what you can to minimize the influence of these outside variables.6 Of course it was challenging to completely dismantle the power differences when interviewing incarcerated women because of their stigmatized status, but my goal was to hear their stories. I listened to what they had to stay without judgment and viewed them as the experts. In line with truly hearing these women, I did not change their words and make them more “readable.” (p.189)7 In other words I did not want to take away these women’s voices by altering what they said to make it more grammatically correct. The quotes found throughout the book may at times be hard to follow, but as Kathleen Ferraro8 noted in her interviews with domestic violence survivors, that is part of the point. These women’s stories often do not follow a linear fashion, their emotions jump in, and at times their trauma makes it difficult to make sense of it all. But as I noted earlier, they are the experts on their lives, and so sometimes it is only through the disjointed, confusion that we (as outsiders) can come to understand the chaotic lives of imprisoned battered women. Along with not altering the women’s words, I continually assessed my research questions and reflected on the interviews. I started with an interview guide in order to conduct semi-structured interviews. For the most part, the interviews stayed within the parameters I made, but I allowed for flexibility. For instance, after several interviews I began asking additional questions about spirituality and religion, because that was a dominant theme that seemed to appear in many of the women’s stories, even though it was not on my initial guide. Therefore, the women’s voices still shined through as I allowed for inclusion of what they thought were the most significant components to understanding their lives. The women’s stories at times were hard for the women to tell and also difficult for me to hear. It was an emotional journey for all involved in this research and this also is an important piece in the research process for those using feminist methodology. Early research discredited the use of emotions and felt they swayed the research process.9 Emotions were to be put aside. But, how do you ignore a research participant’s tears when she’s telling you about the brutal beatings she experienced at the hands of the man she loved? Moreover, what does it mean when I (the researcher) cried after reading a letter one woman’s son had written in support of her release from prison? I knew intellectually these women’s stories were going to be horrific, but when I actually heard them, it was more emotionally and physically

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exhausting than I had anticipated. My first interview in the prison was with Pattie. Before we began the interview she handed me a letter her 23 year old son had written for the parole board in support of her release. The letter described the awful abuse he endured as a child by his father and it ended with the following: We want nothing more in my mother’s life as well as ours to have her home. We are planning camping trips and cookouts, Christmas as a family again after all these years, Thanksgiving dinners, and quiet movie nights at home. We hope that she won’t have to miss another birth or family death, any other occasions or holidays alone in that place. She has missed her mother’s passing, the birth of her other grandchildren, many holidays the rest of us spent with our families … Please let her come home to her family.

My head was down reading the letter and as I finished, I realized I had tears trickling down my face. I did not know what to do because all I could think was, as I researcher, I should not be crying. Reflecting on this, I understood the tears represented a lot. For one, it made me become conscious of the fact that this woman sitting in front of me was not this “abstract imprisoned woman,” but she was a real-life person who had a family and had missed out on so many things many of us take for granted. Furthermore, it also showed Pattie that I was a caring person, as well as a researcher. I was not there to take advantage of her, but to truly hear her story. In the end, it created an instant rapport between us and she talked for three hours straight about her life. A final note about feminist methodology is that research is connected to social change.10 The sole purpose of this book was to bring attention to the plight of imprisoned battered women. Not only that, but hopefully it opened up dialogue about how we can better help domestic violence victims before there is a loss of life, how we can improve our prison system so it does not continue to revictimize women, and how we can better serve women coming out of prison. Also, on an individual level, this research created positive change for many of the women interviewed. Most of the women told me the interviews, on some level, were empowering for them. Some even told me I was the first person they had told their story to that had listened without judging. I received letters from a few of the women after the interviews thanking me for hearing their stories. For example, Pattie, who had been in prison for 16 years at the time of our interview, wrote: Your attentiveness to my life and survivor sisters brought them a glow and a sense of empowerment. Such a better gift no one could have

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137

gave them their entire lives! Doing a life sentence, feeling no one listened or cared is emotionally crippling. Your kindness will never be forgotten, Rachel. You made a difference in here. You believed in and listened to my lifer sisters. There’s a sparkle in their eyes, their heads are held up and a new lightness in their hearts. Someone cared enough to come into this prison and hear them with their heart.

This letter is similar to correspondence sociologist and prison teacher Lora Bex Lempert has received when she taught college courses in Michigan’s prisons.11 When women are locked inside a world where they are constantly dehumanized, and someone walks in and sees them as people with feelings, it can be extremely powerful. Other prison research and scholarly work on battered women12 has found when women are able to share their stories of abuse in non-threatening environments they are able to recognize their strength and resilience as survivors 13and this is what transpired in these interviews as well. Hopefully this research was transformative for the women on an individual level, but will also generate discussion about larger structural changes. Challenging Issues in Research: Interviewing in a Prison

Because universities and prisons are bureaucratic structures, sometimes it is a long, tedious process to gain admittance into prisons for scholarly purposes. I was fortunate in that it only took me five months to acquire all the needed okay’s to interview women in all four of the women’s correctional facilities in Ohio. That being said, in some instances, I still found myself tiptoeing around prison personnel in order to conduct my research. Sociologist Dana Britton14 found in her interviews with correctional officers that they are often trained to be on guard, always suspicious of prisoner’s motives and actions. Since my research only focused on imprisoned women, prison staff may have been wary of me. Additionally, they may not have been familiar with the research process and the fact that the research participants (women prisoners) have privacy rights that are protected. Case in point, at one institution the warden’s assistant refused to leave the room when I started the interview. She demanded that she be present, stating it was for my own safety. I provided her the written documents indicating she could not “supervise” my interviews. She left, only to return a few minutes later, and noted she would check on us periodically through the interview to make sure I was safe. However, her checking on us meant she would come into the room and sit down with

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us for several minutes at a time (totally 8 interruptions throughout our interview). Each time I would remind her that she could not be in the room during the interview. Thankfully, a scheduling conflict arose with the room we were in, and we were moved to another room a ways away from her office, and the interruptions stopped. This experience is insightful for a number of reasons. First, it illustrates the prison staff’s perceptions that inmates are violent people who should not be trusted. Secondly, it demonstrates prisons ill regard for incarcerated women’s privacy and rights as individuals. Another barrier to interviewing in prison was the lack of say I had in when and where I conducted the interviews. For example, at one institution the warden’s assistant set up the interviews with several women on what the women call “yard day.” This is like their annual 4th of July where they have a variety of fun activities outside for the women. I had one woman cancel the interview because she did not want to miss out on the festivities. Another woman left halfway through our interview so she could participate in the drill team procession, only to return twenty minutes later, and finish the interview. I was at the mercy of prison staff for rooms and accommodations as well. Many of the rooms were not very secluded and sometimes it was difficult to hear the women because of outside noise (especially when transcribing the interviews). In one instance, a self-defense class for corrections officers took place in the room adjacent to where I was. In transcribing the interviews I often heard the correctional officer’s voices over the women I was interviewing. Finally, I mentioned in Chapter One, that some of the facilities were reluctant to provide water and tissues for the women during their interviews with me. Even though this may seem insignificant in the big scheme of things, it reveals how little control researchers have over the research process when conducting research in prisons. Although I had somewhat more decision making power in interviewing women outside of prison, I still ran up against unforeseen issues. I had batteries die on my tape recorder, interviews at overcrowded restaurants where I strained to hear the women’s words and interruptions from family or friends present at the interviews. There were times where I struggled to get the women to talk, and wondered if I should continue asking questions when they were on the verge of tears. Research on human subjects is tricky because you are dealing with people, not test tubes. But all in all, it is incredibly important. One of my students told me, “I thought women in prison were bad, bad, bad ….” It is for that reason that continued research on “invisible populations,” is needed. It is often a daunting task, but it is well worth the struggle.

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139

1

Johnson,The Gender Knot Acker, Barry and Esseveld, “Objectivity and Truth,” p.133-153 3 Fonow and Cook, “Back to the Future,” p. 1-15 4 Belknap, The Invisible Woman 5 Halphin, “Scientific Objectivity and the Concept of the ‘Other’,” p. 2852

294

6

Fonow and Cook, “Back to the Future,” p. 1-15 Riessman, “When Gender is Not Enough,” p.172-207 8 Ferraro, Neither Angels nor Demons 9 Hesse-Biber, Leavy and Yaiser, “Feminist Approaches to Research,” p. 37

26

10

Fonow and Cook, “Back to the Future,” p. 1-15 Lempert, “Teaching in Prison” 12 Gagné, Battered Woman’s Justice 13 Nichols and Feltey, “The Woman is Not Always the Bad Guy,” p. 78411

806

14

Britton, At Work in the Iron Cage

p141_Layout 1 7/15/13 3:36 PM Page 1

Appendix B: Summary of Women

Table B.1: Summary of Women Interviewed Women

Race

ace

Pattie

Age at Length of Interview relationship Age at Length of Interview relationship

White hite

Alecia

50 @ 2005

50 @ 2005 White 36 @ 2005 hite 36 @ 2005

Cindy

White hite

Karen

47@ 2005

47@ 2005

White

49 @ 2005 49 @ 2005 Lauren Black 47 @ 2005 ack 47 @ Angie White 41 @ 2005 2005 hite 41 @ 2005 52 @ Martha White 2005 hite 52 @ 2005 Raquel White 54 @ 2005 hite 54 @ 2005 hite

Veronica ack Katrina

Black 40 @ 2005 Black

ack Natalie

46 @ 2005 White

hite

Linda

42 @ 2005 Black

6 years 6 years Abuser: father Abuser: father

2 2 0 0

6 years 6 years

3 3

15 years 15 years

2 2

3 months

2

3 months 5 years

2

5 years

3

3 years 3 years

2 2

Unknown Unknown

3

4 4

40 @ 2005

3 years (off & 0 on) 3 years (off & 0 on)

46 @ 2005

9 years (off & 3 on) 9 years (off & 3 on)

42 @ 2005

Abuser: father Abuser: father

39 @ 2005 39 @ 2005 Carrie White 24 @ 1990 hite 24 @ 28 @ 1990 1994 28 @ 1994 ack

# of Children # of Children

0 0

2 years

1

2 years

1

Abuser: father Abuser: father

2 (after prison) 2 (after prison)

Actual Killing Actual Killing

Legal Representation Legal Representation

Plea Conviction Sentence # of Bargain Years Plea Conviction Sentence Served Bargain at

Shot husband Shot during fight husband Mother & during fight her set up Mother murder&of her up herset father murder of Shot her father sleeping Shot husband sleeping husband Lover shot husband Lover duringshot fight husband Lit boyfriend during fight on fire Lit boyfriend Shot on fire sleeping Shot husband sleeping Shot husband husband Shot during fight husband Husband during fight committed Husband suicide by committed overdosing suicide by on medicaoverdosing tion on medicaShot tion boyfriend & Shot 2 others in boyfriend parking lot& 2 others in Shot lot parking boyfriend Shot after him boyfriend stalking her after him Boyfriend stalking her shot mom & Boyfriend 2 brothers in shot mom & robbery 2 brothers in robbery Stabbed boyfriend Stabbed during fight boyfriend Set house during fight on fire after Set house a fight with on fire after father – a killed fight father; with father – grandmother killed father; hurt in fire grandmother hurt in fire

Paid Attorney

No

1 141

Paid Attorney Public Defender Public Defender Public Defender

No Yes Yes

Murder Murder

Paid Attorney Public Defender

No

Public Defender Public Defender Public Defender Public Defender Paid Attorney

Public Defender Paid Attorney Paid Attorney

Public Defender Public Defender Paid Attorney Paid Attorney

Unknown

No No No

No No Unknown Unknown

Public Defender Public Defender

Public Defender Public Defender Public Defender Public Defender

No No Yes Yes

Interview 16 years

15 to Life

Aggravated 20 to Life 18 years Murder Aggravated 20 to Life Murder

Aggravated Murder & Unknown Abuse Aggravated of Murder & Corpse Abuse of No Aggravated Corpse Murder No Aggravated Murder Yes Aggravated Murder Yes Aggravated No Murder Murder No Murder

Public Defender

15 to Life

15 to Life

18 years

15 to Life 20 to Life

16 years

20 to Life Life

20 years

Life 15 to Life

15 years

15 to Life

Aggravated Life 23 years Murder Aggravated Life Murder Aggravated 20 to Life 15 years Murder Aggravated 20 to Life Murder

Murder & 2 23 to Life 20 years counts Murder & 2 23 to Life Felonious counts Assault Felonious Murder 15 to Life 17 years* Assault Murder

15 to Life

Petty Theft, Life 25 years Aggravated Petty Life Murder, & Theft, Aggravated Aggravated Murder, & Robbery Aggravated Aggravated 15 to Life 10 Robbery Murder Years** Aggravated 15 to Life Murder Murder 15 to Life 7 ! yrs. @ Murder 15 to Life clemency

p142-wip_Layout 1 7/15/13 3:48 PM Page 1

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Battered Women Doing Time

Women

Race

Age at Interview

Length of Relationship

# of Children

Actual Killing

Legal Representation

PleaBargain

Conviction

Sentence

Sarah

Black

Abuser: father

0

Shot father after a fight

Public Defender

Yes

Voluntary manslaughter

5 to 15 years

Allison

Black

48 @ 1990 52 @ 1994 46@1994 56@2004

21 years

6

Paid Attorney

No

Black

42@1994 52@2004

18 years

2

Paid Attorney

No

Aggravated murder for hire Manslaughter

23 to life

Emma

15 to life

1 yr., 4 months @ clemency

Jackie

Black

56@1990 60@1994 70@2004

25 years

2

Hired 2 men to kill her husband Son shot father trying to protect his mother during a fight between his mother & father Shot sleeping husband

Paid Attorney

No

Murder

15 to life

Teresa

Black

27@1990 31@1994 42@2005

6 years

0

Paid Attorney

No

Murder

15 to life

Gail

White

50@1994

32 years

4

Paid Attorney

Yes

Involuntary Manslaughter

2 to 10 years

2 years? @ clemency

Margaret

Black

39@1994

4

Paid Attorney

No

Murder

18 to life

1 yr., 4 months @ clemency

Betsy

White

58@1993

8 months (13 years in abusive relationship with husband just prior to this relationship) 23 years

Stabbed boyfriend during physical fight Shot husband during fight (had planned on killing herself, not her husband) Shot boyfriend during fight

10 yrs., 10 months @ clemency 8 ! yrs. @ clemency

Life

10 years @ clemency 6 yrs., 10 months @ clemency 2 yrs., 3 months @ clemency

Michelle

Anne

3

Set up killing Paid Attorney No Aggravated with neighMurder bor, hired hit Black 63@1992 2 years 3 Shot Paid attorney No Aggravated husband Murder after severe beating White 51@1992 Unknown (6 2 Shot Unknown No Attempted years?) boyfriend Murder during fight – he survived & is still living * Katrina was released 2 days after her interview. ** Linda had been out of prison for 5 years at the time of her interview.

6.5 to life

5 to 25 years

# of Years Served at Interview 5 yrs., 9 months @ clemency 4 yrs. @ clemency

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Index Abusive relationships: descriptions, 1-2, 28-29; coping, 29-31, 104; entrance 25-26; escalation, 26; leaving, 2, 24, 27, 30; social class, 29

Giving back society, 74, 95, See also Posttraumatic growth Goffman, Erving, 51, 69, 89, 133 Health problems: from abuse, 78-79, 101-102; and mental health abuse, 79, 99-100

Battered woman’s clemency movement, 5-6; 60-62; and pardons versus commutations, 5, 89; prior research women granted, 6-7 Battered women’s shelters, 94-95 Battered woman stereotypes, 44-45, 116-120, 127, See also Selfdefense law Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS), 4-5, 44-46, 120, 122, See also Post-traumatic stress disorder Battered women who kill: reasons, 2, 15-21, 30, 32, 35-41 Browne, Angela, 30, 37, 39, 96 BWS. See Battered Woman Syndrome

Identity: battered woman, 45, 57-58, 110; and victim versus survivor, 10-11, 59, 67-69, 74, 110-112, 130-131 Kairos, 72-73 Learned helpessness. See Walker, Lenore Leaving prison: assistance prison, 92, employment, 96-99; family assistance, 6, 93; forced dependency, 6, 95; halfway houses, 92-93; housing, 92-94; isolation, 91, paranoia, 79, 90-92, 130; relationships men, 107-109 Life Course Theory, 22, 25, 108, 125-126 Living violence free, 103, 106, 109

Celeste, Richard, 5, 89, 116 Childhood sexual abuse, 21-25, 108, 125; and lack of intervention, 23 Children contact prison, 80-83, 103; and difficulties, 80-81, 103-105 Community service, 94-96 Criminal offending after prison, See Drug and alcohol use Cycle of violence. See Lenore Walker

Mandatory or pro-arrest policies. See Police interactions O’Brien, Patricia, 70, 90, 93, 106, 132 Overmedication jail, 43

Dating violence, 126 Dissociation, 24-25, 99, See also Abusive relationships coping Drug and alcohol use, 30; and after prison, 98-101

Parenting, 81, 105-107, abandonment issues, 105-107, See also Children contact prison Parole, 83-85, 94 Plea bargain, 44 Police interactions, 31-32, 36, 42, 126 Posttraumatic Growth 69, 131

Feminist theory, 133-137 Gagné, Patricia, 6, 37, 47, 97

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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), 28, 37, 41, 49-50, 79, 96, See also Dissociation, See also Battered woman syndrome Prison: abusive practices, 59, 74-76, 83-85, see also Sex abuse in prison; changing nature, 52-53, 85-86; coping, 53-54, 74-75, 8283; deprivation, 91-92; education, 74,85-86; health and healthcare, 54-55, 79-80, See also Health problems; masculine nature, 76, 79-80, 128-129, See also Prison staff training; pseudo-families, 53; rules, 51-52; suicide, 54; support groups, 56-58, 66-67, 69, 110, 129, 131, See also Identity Prison staff training, 75-76, 84, 137 Psychological abuse, 28-29 PTSD. See Post-traumatic stress disorder Raphael, Jody, 25, 50, 74, 100, 105, 129 Rehabiliation versus custodial care, 55-56, 75, 85-86 Research methods, 7-9, 137-138, See also Feminist theory Safety, Freedom in Prison, 58-59 Self-defense law, 3-4, 38, 46, 116 Sex abuse in prison, 50, 77-78 Spirituality and religion, 70-73 Stigma, See Goffman, Erving; See Battered woman stereotypes Torture. See Psychological abuse Walker, Lenore, 3, 30; and cycle of abuse, 27; learned helplessness, 30, 33, 127 Welfare to work, 93 Zimbardo, Philip, 59

About the Book

When is killing an abusive partner an act of murder, and when is it selfdefense? How does our criminal justice system deal with battered women who kill, and to what effect? Rachel Schneider traces the lives of women who sought clemency after being imprisoned for killing their abusers, drawing on a series of intimate interviews to explore the circumstances leading up to the killings, the women’s experiences in the courts and in prison, and the diverging paths of those whose sentences were commuted and those who will spend their lives behind bars. Rachel Zimmer Schneider is lecturer in sociology at the University of Akron.

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