Breaking News!

Trigger Warning
Breaking News! I’ve been reading about the story of Susan Falls (Australia) over the last few weeks. Susan Falls was standing trial for killing her husband. She pleaded not guilty to the charges (murder, manslaughter) she was facing. Tonight I found out she got off. This is an incredible outcome as Susan was a victim of extreme violence for many, many years. Her defense was basically that the murder was self defense to the domestic violence she had experienced in her relationship with her husband. I was really worried and interested in watching this court case unfold. Generally, women who kill their abusers often get much higher sentences (and public shame and outcry) than abusive men who kill their partners. I believe the main reason for this is that when an abused woman kills her abuser she often has to plan to do this. In a relationship marked by fear, physical inferiority or other power differentials the partner who is ‘weaker’ and feels that they have no other way out of the relationship HAS to plan something like this. The control and abuse in the relationship means that it’s got to a stage where it’s me or my partner. Abusive partners however claim that it happened ‘in the heat of the moment’, that ‘things got out of control’ without people considering the systematic abuse, threats and potential murder attempts which lead up to a killing.
In this case, Susan drugged her husband’s favorite meal of curried prawn, waited til he fell asleep and shot him in the head. She cowered in fear behind the kitchen counter with her children waiting for him to retaliate. She hid with her children for hours and could hear that he was still breathing. After a few hours she shot him again. Susan ‘…just wanted to stop what he was doing to [her]’.
The defense lawyer, reading from a transcript of her testimony, said Mrs Falls, when asked what she thought Mr Falls would do to her, had said: “I thought he’d either paralyze me or I’d lose an eye or just be killed.” Her abuser has made threats against her, her children and her family. Susan believed that he could do this. She knew what he was capable of – he’d be doing it to her for 20 or so years.
Take a look at this link for more of the story. There is a picture of the couple at the top of this story and you can easily see that he is at least two or three times the size of her.

While I so relieved and so happy that a jury seems to have understood the absolute fear Susan experienced in this relationship, and her state of mind when she killed her husband, I am so saddened that systems responses were not there for her when the first abuse started. I am so sad that it got to the point where she felt she had to make this choice to kill her husband just to live. I realize we are starting to make progress in systemic responses, but we have such a long way to go. It makes me really sad to think that more and more news stories of extreme violence (eg. Just this week a woman was stabbed and set alight by her partner at petrol station – she died) are being reported when to me it seems that the abuse in these relationships has probably been going on for a while and there would have be indicators of escalating violence or other warnings signs of increased danger. I would love it if services and people which interact with victims of abuse in the early stages of abuse such as police, hospitals, doctors, workplaces, chemists, child safety services, centrelink (social security) etc were trained to recognise domestic violence and how to RESPONSD quickly and appropriately.
While I realise this is a big ask, domestic and family violence affects the entire population. A lot of people think domestic violence isn’t their problem because it isn’t happening to them. However plenty of studies show that even on an economic level, the entire community is affected – the costs on the community including the use of emergency services, lost productivity due to work being missed and lots of things due to domestic and family violence was estimated to be about $8.1 billion (In Australia in 2002). In my local area a coordinated response is starting/trying to get off the ground. Unfortunately a lot of the critical stakeholders aren’t that interested or don’t see it as something which affects them and their work. It’s frustrating as a number of their clients are probably experiencing violence – they just don’t know how to explore it or dismiss it as something else. I’m not advocating interrogating everyone who comes in or suspecting that everyone is a victim of violence. I’m advocating for greater awareness of the warning signs that abuse is taking place and how to response appropriately when someone fronts with these potential indicators. How to get people to see that this is something that affects them? I don’t know.
Meanwhile, there is another court case going on at the moment in my area where a woman beat her partner to death with an axe. She also experience extreme abuse, “she fell pregnant and Mr Haynes’s brother Kevin jumped on her chest and abdomen, shortly before she had a miscarriage” as well as humiliation and her very realistic belief that if she didn’t do something, she would have been murdered. For more details click here .
I’ll be watching this case unfold as well, but hoping that this will lead to a push for early intervention.