Battered Woman Syndrome Case Study

Introduction Battered woman syndrome (BWS) is a phenomenon where a victim of domestic violence ends up killing their abusive partner, usually when they are in a docile state such as being asleep. This syndrome has explained the psychology of an abuse victim and why they do what they do and when. This is a defense a lot of women used in court who are getting charged for killing their abuser. At times, this defense seems to work, letting the victim off without any charges. Unfortunately, there are several cases where women have not been lucky as the prosecution resorts to victim blaming in hopes to disprove that the woman has the syndrome. Examples of victim blaming include claiming that the woman in question could have left the relationship

When BWS cases are compared to stand your ground cases the differences are alarming. Both defenses claim to have an element of self-defense. Stand your ground is used as a defense when someone feels threatened and BWS is also used as a defense for killing someone who caused them harm even though violence may not be present at that moment in time. One study compared a case of stand your ground and a domestic violence case where the abuser killed her sleeping husband. In the stand your ground case a man shot and killed four young black men on a train when they asked the man (Goetz) to give them a dollar (Franks, 2014). The men were not armed and Goetz, who killed the men with an unregistered gun, ran away after making the kills (Franks, 2014). Goetz showed no remorse in court for the killings and claimed he did what he needed to do and claimed he got the gun after an incident of being robbed years back (Franks, 2014). Goetz claimed that he felt threatened by the young men even though he claimed to know they were unarmed and due to a past incident of being robbed he was in his rights to use force. Goetz was only found guilty for carrying an unregistered handgun and was found innocent for manslaughter stating that he was in his rights to shoot these men (Franks,

In order to be believable in your story of abuse the court is basically telling women that they need to docile at all times and almost subservient to their abusers. If they do something for themselves to help them in a difficult time it can be twisted by the courts as a woman not showing the “symptoms” to have BWS. In another case a woman’s professional life was under scrutiny because she was assertive and tended to have a strong personality around the workplace (Ferraro, 2003). Having this personality was used against the woman in trial because the court claimed that she showed no signs of learned helplessness in her life outside of the relationship (Ferraro, 2003). This is an example of blaming the victim for trying to live a successful life outside of the relationship and support herself financially. Due to this verdict the court is indirectly telling victims of abuse that their abuse basically needs to cause impairment in their functioning in day to day life in order for their claims to be valid. This contradicts the previous arguments that the victim did nothing to try and leave the toxic environment made by the courts. There does not seem to be a sure way for a victim to show that she was in an abusive relationship in the court of law without being questioned for every