"Getting Away With Murder"

According to a survey done in 1995 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, somewhere in the United States a woman is battered every even seconds. The problem is that every time a woman suffers this kind of abuse, there are very few people--even among those who are otherwise enlightened, respectable, intelligent, and sane and who consider themselves politically correct and nonviolent--whose first questions when they hear about a case of spousal assault or murder is not, "Why didn't she just leave?" Tragically, what this particular type of violent crime usually does not provoke is questions that are far more relevant and lucid and that would provide much more useful and concrete solutions to stopping it, questions such as:

"How can that man get away with that?"

"Where were the police?"

"Was he arrested?"

"Was he thrown out of his house?"

"Will he stand trial and be convicted and serve a stiff jail sentence?"

"Will the victim get police protection, financial aid, medical care, legal advice, child support?"

"How will that woman and her children survive, financially and emotionally?"

Instead, by asking the question, "Why didn't she just leave?" society makes an immediate judgment about the victim's part in a crime that was committed against her--a crime, by the way, that is covered under every single criminal statute throughout the United States, whether that crime is assault, battery, harassment, or, in the extreme, murder. In every instance, the only possible outcome of that question is that it automatically blames the victim of the crime for inciting, tolerating, or even enjoying the abuse. What usually follows is the assumption that in some kind of macabre and inexplicable way, the victim of spousal violence cooperated or acted in complicity with her assailant, allowing him or enabling him to carry out his assault. This in turn exonerates the police, health care providers, social service workers, prosecutors, and judges from acting on the victim's behalf. Consciously or unconsciously, inadvertently or on purpose, the effect of that question is to separate crime victims assaulted by intimate partners from crime victims assaulted by strangers.