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Battered Woman Syndrome |
It is an extremely common social event
involving physical and sexual violence by men against women and children.
It was medically recognised as a mental disease until 1994. It is not a
defence but a means of convincing the court of diminished responsibility
or provocation. |
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What is it? |
All syndromes are defined by clusters of
symptoms. Battered Woman Syndrome was initially proposed by an American
Leonore Walker (1984).
There are two premises: a cycle model of
violence and 'learned helplessness'. |
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Why doesn't the woman leave? |
Women have always known that this is often
the most dangerous thing to do. It is professionals who have not
understood that fear is one of the most potent reasons why women do not
leave violent men. |
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For every 100 men who kill wives 23 women
kill husbands. |
Accurate official data on women who kill is
difficult to access and incomplete. |
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Jane Mooney (1994) North London Survey |
As many as one in three women experience
violence in a heterosexual relationship; many of those fear for their
life. |
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Diminished Responsibility |
It can be used as evidence of an
'abnormality in mind' in relation to diminished responsibility.
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Provocation |
It can be evidence of the characteristics
which can be used to assess the reasonableness of action for the defence
of provocation, see Kiranjit Ahluwalia's appeal where it was recognised;
although her appeal succeeded on grounds of diminished responsibility. |
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Problems |
It diverts attention from the previous
behaviour of the man and the case becomes about the woman's personality
defects rather than the man's behaviour. |
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Kiranjit Ahluwalia |
Provocation was unsuccessful because the
delay between her husband's last attack on her and her retaliation (a few
hours) was deemed to be a "cooling down" period and not a "boiling over"
period as her defence suggested.
On appeal the expert evidence and
psychiatric reports which had not been presented at the original trial
were admitted. At re-trial she was found guilty of manslaughter due to
diminished responsibility and sentenced to three years and four months
(the time she had already served), and so was released immediately. |
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Emma Humphreys |
Her appeal succeeded because the judge at
the original trial should have directed the jury to consider the
cumulative provocation she suffered at the hands of her boyfriend/pimp. At
the original trial, the jury was only directed to consider the final act
of provocation.
The second ground concerned provocation.
Emma's so called "abnormal personality" and her "attention seeking
traits", should have been taken into account when considering the relevant
characteristics of the 'reasonable man'.
For three years after her release Emma
campaigned for Justice For Women, but continued to battle with anorexia.
On the 11th July 1998 Emma died in her sleep after an accidental overdose
of prescription medication. |
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Sara Thornton |
Her plea of diminished responsibility
focused on her own state of mind rather than the batterings she had
received.
Her first appeal failed on the grounds that
the 60 seconds it took to get the knife did not constitute "a sudden and
temporary loss of self-control". She could have "walked out or gone
upstairs".
A further appeal allowed new evidence
showing the extent of the domestic violence she had suffered and its
impact on her mental state. Taylor LCJ quashed her murder conviction on
the grounds that the judge at her original trial had not directed the jury
to consider all the relevant characteristics of the "reasonable man" test
in provocation and ordered a retrial. At retrial she was found not guilty
of murder but guilty of manslaughter. The jury did not indicate
whether it was on grounds of provocation or diminished responsibility or a
combination of both that reduced her conviction from murder to
manslaughter. She was immediately released from custody. |
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R v Hobson [1998] CA |
Battered woman syndrome is capable of giving
rise to a defence of diminished responsibility.
D had stabbed her abusive and alcoholic
partner to death during an argument. At the trial she contended that she
had acted in self-defence, and there was a subsidiary issue on
provocation. She had been convicted in 1992.
On her appeal heard in 1997, application was
made for reception of the evidence of two psychiatrists. They opined that
the appellant had been a victim of battered women’s syndrome, a condition
not recognised in the standard British classification of mental diseases
until 1994, and therefore (it was suggested) a condition not considered by
British psychiatrists at the date of the trial as capable of founding a
plea of diminished responsibility.
The Crown resisted the reception of this
evidence, relying on a report prepared for the appellant before the trial
which excluded the possibility of a diminished responsibility defence.
The Court of Appeal ruled that the evidence
should be received, and in the light of that decision the Crown did not
seek to support the conviction as safe. A retrial was ordered.
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Organisations campaigning |
See here for more detail on BWS |
