Sisters in pain : battered women fight back / L. Elisabeth Beattie, Mary Angela Shaughnessy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Beattie, L. Elisabeth, 1953-

Contributor:

Shaughnessy, Mary Angela.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Abused women--Kentucky--Interviews.

Abused women.

Wife abuse--Kentucky.

Wife abuse.

Abusive men--Mortality--Kentucky.

Abusive men.

Mortality.

Justifiable homicide.

Interviews.

Kentucky.

Justifiable homicide--Kentucky.

Physical Description:

xxix, 214 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, [2000]

Summary:

In 1995 Kentucky governor Brereton Jones granted parole hearings to ten women who had been convicted of killing, conspiring to kill, or assaulting the men who had abused them for years. The media began referring to them as the Sisters in Pain, a name they embraced. These are their stories.

Each year, more than four million violent acts against women occur in the United States. According to recent statistics, more than fifty percent of all women will experience some form of domestic violence during marriage, and one-third of those will be battered repeatedly every year.

While these are disturbing figures, they remain nameless and faceless. Sisters in Pain gives voices to these numbers, stories to these statistics. L. Elisabeth Beattie and Mary Angela Shaughnessy's interviews of seven of the Sisters in Pain detail the physical, sexual, or psychological abuse they suffered at the hands of their husbands or boyfriends, battery beyond comprehension. Anyone who has ever asked, "Why don't they just leave?" will come to understand the interconnected strands of abuse that make just living through another day a personal triumph.

Beattie and Shaughnessy address the pervasive nature of domestic violence in America and explore the legal ramifications of fighting back. Their interviews with the Sisters in Pain reveal the ways in which these women have picked up the pieces of their shattered lives and learned to face the future.

Contents:

Politics, the Prison Quit, and Parole 3

Sherry Pollard 37

Karen Stout 63

Teresa Gulley Hilterbrand 85

Sue Melton 101

Margie Marcum 121

Tracie English 133

Montilla Seewright 157

Appendix A Issues Related to Research, Reform, and the Law 183

Appendix B "Warning Signs for Women: Predictors of Violence in Men" and "Why She Stays, When She Leaves" 193

Appendix C Private Artifact to Public Act: "The Quilt as Accusatory Text" and "The Nineteenth-Century Diarist and Her Quilts" 195

Appendix D National Domestic Violence Organizations and Kentucky Spouse Abuse Centers 201.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [213]-214).

ISBN:

0813121515

OCLC:

42462845