Silence is a killer. Every nine seconds, a woman is beaten. As a response, some women stay silent about the issue while others take action. Either response can have serious consequences for the woman and those close to her.
On Tuesday, April 22, the Student Wellness Center’s Take Care Tuesday series concluded with a screening of “Sin by Silence,” a film documenting the lives of abused women. The unique thing about these women is that they have been incarcerated for several years for attacking and even killing their abuser. Some even serve life sentences for their crime.
The film opens on an inmate, Glenda Crosley, who has already served over 20 years in the California Institute for Women (CIW) for murdering her husband. She ran her car into him and pinned him against another car, killing him. To this day, she said she didn’t know what possessed her to commit the crime. All that she knew was that she was tired of being abused by someone who claimed to love her.
In prison, Crosley was surprised to learn that her situation was not totally unique from other incarcerated women’s experiences. Through different situations, she found that other abused women took the same route out of the situation as she had. In the CIW, she learned and quickly became a part of an inmate-initiated and inmate-led program called Convicted Women Against Abuse (CWAA). This group of women served as an intimate setting for incarcerated women to share their stories and experiences. “It is a place for women to heal,” Crosley said.
The CWAA was created in 1989 by Brenda Clubine, an inmate also convicted of killing her partner. “If someone would have told me 26 years ago that today I would be fighting for change on behalf of domestic violence victims, I would have told them they are nuts,” Clubine said. This group provides both personal and legal counseling for formerly abused women classified under Battered Women Syndrome.
Although Battered Women Syndrome came into the legal system in California in the 1980s, it has been heavily debated and has had trouble being integrated into the current system. In 1992, it was finally brought into the justice system, but without benefiting those women convicted before 1992. Because of this, it is harder for these women who had been serving sentences prior to the change to decrease their sentence time and still face obstacles in getting out of the institution. Some who do not have evidence toward their case may have more difficulties in being released.
During some of the sessions with CWAA, most of the women said they learned silence at a young age. In a lot of the women’s cases, abuse started from their childhood by their parents, and into adulthood by their partners. These women were beaten and molested, living in the fear of their abuser and afraid to tell anyone about their situation. Because of this fear, leaving the situation is not always an option either. From either dependence on their partner, faith that their partner may change or pure fear of their partner’s wrath, most women stay in their current situations. “I didn’t know that abuse was wrong and that I didn’t have to take it,” Clubine said.
Police have also been making strides in helping these women out of their situations. A few officers were interviewed on the matter. They said that, in the past, they had no real solutions for protecting the woman in a domestic violence dispute. One officer said that before, if the woman had no visible markings on her body suggesting physical abuse, they couldn’t do anything for her. Now, police forces are taking strides toward assisting these women, such as by helping the women find a way to get away from their abusers. Another officer said that ending domestic violence should be a priority among police forces. He also said that if domestic violence is eliminated, it can lead to eliminating 50 percent of all violence.
Clubine, the founder of the group, was released recently from her sentence after several times in court. Her goal now is both to help other women realize that they do not need to face the abuse and to eliminate their thinking that it is their fault. “I realize we tend to do our best to minimize things,” she said. “I must have done something to deserve [the abuse], if I had only kept my mouth shut or it’s because he loves me. Today, those words still haunt me. Yet I no longer believe or allow them to tear me down.” Through education and awareness, the group helps others in and out of prison. “Their voices are too important to be silenced,” Clubine said.
