BATTERED WOMAN SYNDROME

this story was taken from www.inq7.net

URL: http://www.inq7.net/opi/2004/jan/27/text/opi_mltan-1-p.htm

The (dangerous) silence
of the lambs
Posted:10:56 PM (Manila Time) | Jan. 26, 2004
By Michael L. Tan

I AM heartened by the way the Inquirer has been giving such prominent coverage to the case of Marivic Isidro Genosa, sentenced to death in 1998 and now ordered released from prison, following a Supreme Court review of her case. I consider the case so important that I will be using it in my classes with medical students and hope something similar can be done with all our law schools as well as institutions training health professionals.

Let’s reconstruct what happened, based on the court records.

Genosa was first found guilty of parricide by a court in Ormoc City in Leyte province. The court said that on Nov. 15, 1995, Genosa “did willfully, unlawfully and feloniously attack, assault, hit and wound one Ben Genosa, her legitimate husband…” The court added that because Genosa had done this “with treachery and evident premeditation,” she deserved the death penalty.

Fortunately, Genosa was able to appeal, with lawyer Katrina Legarda coming in for the defense. With the help of her lawyers and psychologists, Genosa proved she was suffering from the “battered woman syndrome,” with the following signs: (1) the woman believes that the violence inflicted on her is her own fault; (2) the woman is unable to place the responsibility for the violence elsewhere; (3) the woman fears for her life and for her children’s; and (4) the woman believes her abuser is omnipresent and omniscient.

In addition, Dr. Dino Caing testified that Genosa had consulted him at least six times for injuries related to domestic violence and another 23 times for “severe hypertension due to emotional stress.”

Reviewing these new findings, the Supreme Court concluded that Genosa had acted in self-defense, and reduced her sentence from capital punishment to six to 14 years. Because she had already been in prison for more than six years, she was ordered released. The Genosa case has many implications for our courts. Mainly, I was struck by how Genosa had in fact pleaded self-defense when she was first tried, but the court ruled that there was no violence immediately preceding the murder. I wonder how many Genosas have been — and will be — victimized by our judicial system’s lack of understanding of domestic violence.

Coincidentally, the day the Supreme Court ruled on Genosa, the Social Weather Stations (SWS) research group released a survey in which nine percent of the female respondents said they had experienced physical abuse, the majority of whom said this harm was inflicted by their husbands, boyfriends or live-in partners. In the same survey, 12 percent of the male respondents admitted they had physically harmed someone, the majority of whom were their wives, girlfriends and live-in partners.

What our lawyers and judges need to understand is that the degree of violence may vary but because the battering is chronic and becomes more and more frequent, we eventually get the battered woman syndrome, and the long-suffering victims’ outburst may not necessarily be triggered by a violent act.

The syndrome is really similar to what we see in people recruited into cults. Abusive spouses or partners, like cult leaders, hostage their victims’ minds by making them totally dependent, so that even if they are constantly abused, they stay on, sometimes even blaming themselves for the violence. They stay on, too, because their dependency relationships make them believe their abuser is all-powerful, and that there is no escape.

Victims of domestic violence often do not fight back, some even turning to self-destructive behaviors, including suicide. Note that if Genosa had been executed, the message that would gone out to other battered women was that they should just bear with their suffering.

Genosa fought back, and the fact that she shot her husband, and then bludgeoned him with a pipe, tells us it wasn’t just pent-up anger but fear that was involved, almost a determination that she would never again suffer from the abuser. The court only saw the victimized woman’s violence, not the violence inflicted on her by her husband over the years.

Her husband’s death has not meant relief for Genosa. She languished in jail from the time of her arrest in 1995, through her death sentence in 1998, until the Supreme Court ruled in her favor. Even with her release, she still will need help to deal with many old wounds.

The Genosa decision is important because it can now be invoked in other trials, hopefully to help more battered women from being doubly victimized, first by their partners and then by the courts. The Genosa case is particularly instructive because it shows how our judges are willing to even send a battered woman to death row. I’ve written in the past about why capital punishment is so dangerous because it is imposed so capriciously.

Law schools should tackle this landmark case, together with education on gender issues and gender-based violence. I did want to alert the health professions as well to the Genosa case because it so graphically represents what could happen when battered women are unable to get help. Note how Genosa’s doctor had treated her six times for physical injuries. I am sure there were many other times when she did not seek medical help because the injuries, at least the physical ones, were “milder.”

Note, too, that the doctor saw Genosa 23 times for severe hypertension. Our medical, nursing, occupational and physical therapy schools should all be teaching students how to detect signs of domestic violence, especially the less visible emotional and mental injuries. Health professionals are sometimes too quick to dismiss complaints like “back pain,” “high blood” and “nerbyos” [tension] as “psychosomatic” when, in many cases, they are idioms of distress, ways by which battered women are trying to ask for help.

Detection is only the first step. Health professionals need to know where to refer battered spouses. The congressional spouses’ organization has set up halfway houses in each region for survivors of domestic violence but we will need many more of these refuges, as well as counseling centers. The Social Weather Stations figure showing nine percent of women suffering from physical abuse means we may have some 2.1 million people being victimized, many of them bearing the violence like lambs, in dangerous silence.
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