Assuming a different identity is illegal and difficult for a woman on her own. If she has children, the advent of the Internet has made it nearly impossible, especially if the FBI is hunting for her at her husband’s request. The current laws make it a felony for a woman with children to leave the country without her husband’s consent, and if she does, she can be charged with kidnapping, imprisoned and then the batterer has the children who have no one to protect them.
Men in uniform have “the code” protecting them. Their co-workers frequently disguise the charges in such a way that their buddy doesn’t lose his job, or the charges are shifted to lesser offenses. Often his co-workers actively conspire to protect a charming abuser. His family actively defames the woman and publicly discredits her. She is vilified. It’s not unlike the Salem witch trials. If she died then, she was innocent, if she lived, she was a witch. Today, when an abuser does kill her (Crystal Brame, Nicole Simpson) then it’s “oops—apparently she was telling the truth about the abuse.” She was innocent.
If a woman has the audacity to survive her batterers attacks, then she is figuratively burned at the stake, naked and splayed and gagged, subjected to defamation and derision. She is defenseless in our modem stockades of prison, without a voice to speak the truth to the public-because prison policy does not allow controversial inmates to speak to the media. The clear message is that women are disposable-- that battering is not such a bad thing, and even if your life is threatened, you better not defend yourself, better not expose the truth, or you will be subjected to a fate worse than death.
I interviewed a number of women imprisoned because of this issue. One had been married to a police chief, who had battered her and her children and who had child pornography and reportedly had molested other children. No one would help her. She eventually killed him, having no other alternative when he brutally attacked them. Another inmate had sought a restraining order against her husband. After the order was denied by Judge Alta Brady, her husband beat their son to death with a baseball bat. She is serving sixteen years for “failure to protect.” (She once told me after she saw me visiting my children “I would rather be doing your time.
