Francine Hughes: Abused Women

Francine Hughes was one of these abused women, but she chose to fight back resulting in a landmark case within our legal arena. Ironically, Hughes based her defense on temporary insanity, although she was not insane, but rather an abused woman who suffered heinous acts of violence during the fourteen years of her marriage. Hughes admitted that she watched her husband sleeping on that fateful day reflecting on all the times he had hurt her and her children. She had tried to escape the trauma so many times before. She stood there filled with anxiety and confusion when the idea came to her. Hughes then poured gasoline on the bed and set it on fire, burning the house down with it. She then raced to the county jail and announced what she had done.

However, aggressive, violent, and insane behavior acted out against women and children leave its mark, but does not depict anything, but a victim. The very fact that this point has to be made leaves a rational person reeling for it is as if these battered women terrorized and abused themselves. Therefore, it is bizarre that a battered woman defending her life has to develop an insanity plea? Sociological theories explain long held perspectives. It can be said that the abuser is swept up in the patriarchal makeup of society and the man is only exerting his manly rights. In other words, it is assumed that it is a ‘natural state for men to hold a superior position over women’ (Helgeson, 2012, p. 21). The view that women are inferior to men cannot be left out of any research study into domestic violence. This attitude permeates throughout civilization and the effects are harmful. Conclusively it is the patriarchal conceptualized superiority complex that erroneously applies the insanity defense to the victim instead of the

Why would someone abused need to use such excessive force? The answer is classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a form of social learning and conditioning where stimulus responses are essential. Classical conditioning assumes an uncontrolled reaction to an appointed stimulus. In other words, this behavior is conditioned and previously irrelevant acts become connected with a learned response. Ivan Pavlov, a scientist introduced classical conditioning to explain behaviorism and involuntary reactions mediated by the autonomic nervous system. As a result, classical conditioning seems easiest to establish for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is an involuntary reaction mediated by the autonomic nervous system (McLeod,