Battered justice.

• Author: Meier, Joan
• Position: Includes relate article on wife-beating and the rights of men

BATTERED JUSTICE

Last August in Somerville,Massachusetts, Pamela Nigro-Dunn was coming home from work and got off the bus at the stop where her mother met her each day. A man drove up and insisted Nigro-Dunn get into his car. When she and her mother resisted, he threw mace into her mother's face. Then he shot Pamela, who was five months pregnant, in the abdomen and dragged her into the car. Her body was found in a garbage dump nine hours later. She had been shot, strangled, and stabbed. The murderer was arrested three months later in Florida. He was her husband.

Roughly 1,350 women were killed by theirspouses, ex-spouses, or boyfriends in 1985. They were the victims of the most extreme form of wife battering but represent only a fraction of those who have suffered from what appears to be an epidemic of violence within marriages. National surveys have suggested that as many as one out of four married couples endure at least one act of serious violence during their marriage.

This domestic violence is one-sided: 85-95 percentof assault victims and two-thirds of domestic murder victims are women. And it usually is not an isolated event but part of a pattern of escalating violence. Where there has been murder, there has usually been a history of beating. Consequently, many killings were predictable and could have been stopped. In most cases, the victims had brought their abusers' earlier assaults to the attention of the police, prosecutors, or courts. Pamela Nigro-Dunn had been to court four times trying to stop her husband's attacks before she was murdered. She received a restraining order, but the judge refused to give her police protection. Similarly, the murder of Leedonyell Williams in Washington, D.C., this past summer was committed the day after charges against her attacker were dropped. One Minneapolis study found that in 85 percent of spousal murder cases there had been prior contact with the police; in 50 percent they had been called at least five times in the preceding two years.

Many people are aware that wife-beating is aproblem. But few are aware of the shocking way that violence is ignored by the criminal justice system. When called for help, police rarely make arrests. When they do, prosecutors rarely bring charges. And when cases are brought to court, judges too often have the attitude of Paul Heffernan, the Massachusetts judge who was sitting on the bench when Pamela Nigro-Dunn requested help.

In the first affidavit Pamela filed, just sixweeks after her wedding, she stated, "I'm a prisoner in my apartment. He locks me in and takes the phone cord out. He chocked me and threatened to kill me if I try to leave. He made me work only where he works. . . . My life is in danger so long as he is around.'

Pamela asked Heffernan to order Paul Dunnout of the apartment, but the judge refused and then asked her, "Did he demonstrate this type of behavior before you married him?' presumably reasoning that, if the husband had hit her before they were married, she was not entitled to police protection if she was beaten--however badly-- after she was married. Pamela moved out.

Five days later, she returned to court to obtaina police escort so she could return to the apartment for her clothes. "I don't think it's the role of this Court to decide down to each piece of underwear who owns what,' Heffernan said. "This is pretty trivial . . .. This court has a lot more serious matters to contend with. We're doing a terrible disservice to the taxpayers here.' Heffernan then turned to her husband and said, "You want to gnaw on her and she on you fine, but let's not do it at the taxpayers' expense.'

Pamela moved in with her parents, but afterpressure from Paul to return and promises that he'd reform, she reconciled with him for several weeks. The abuse resumed. She didn't go back to court to seek further protection. Why would she? She moved back to her parents', and her mother began accompanying her to and from the busstop because they had seen Paul circling in his car. Shortly thereafter he murdered her.

It is appalling that so many women suffer asPamela did at the hands of their spouses. But it is perhaps even more appalling that so many are further abused by the criminal justice system. Although in recent years several cities have moved toward reform, domestic violence remains at best a low priority. There are many reasons for the reluctance of police, prosecutors, and judges to handle these cases, but at the root is the belief that wife-beating is simply not criminal behavior.

Police who won't arrest

The passivity of police in dealing withdomestic assaults was made clear in a landmark case in New York City in 1976. Twelve battered wives sued the city police department and family court for failing to arrest and prosecute men who attacked their wives--simply because the victim and assailant were married. The out-of-court settlement required the police department to change its policies and was hailed as a turning point in the country's police and court treatment of domestic violence cases.

But in the four years I have represented batteredwomen in Chicago and Washington, D.C., it has become clear that little has changed since the New York case. Catherine Klein, who has worked with about five hundred battered women over the past five years, cannot recall a single arrest that happened without her intervention. Early last year, for example, the D.C. police were called by nurses at a hospital where Down Ronan*, who was five months pregnant, had gone for treatment after being kicked in the back by Jimmy Smith, her boyfriend and the father of her child. The police refused to arrest Jimmy because they hadn't seen the assault. "It's a domestic problem. We really don't get involved,' they explained to the nurse.

* Some of the victims' names have been changed.

Fearing what might happen if she continuedto live with Jimmy, Dawn moved in with his sister. About two weeks after the baby was born he found her there and attacked her in her bed, splitting her cheek open with a belt buckle, and cutting her eye with the heavy ring he wore. When his sister tried to stop him, he threw her against a dresser. The police, called in from the street by the sister, again refused to arrest because they had not "seen' the assault, even though there was a witness. Instead, they simply advised Down to go to the hospital for her bleeding cheek and eye.

Similarly, in December 1985, D.C. police werecalled to the home of Barbara Nelson after her husband, who no longer lived there, broke into the house, brandishing a razor and yelling, "I'm going to kill you and that nigger in the basement.' There was no other man in the house. When Nelson asked the police to arrest him, they refused. When later asked why, one officer responded that Barbara had seemed more excited and hysterical than her husband.

This reluctance to arrestis corroborated by studies conducted in the late seventies in Colorado and...