Battered Woman Syndrome: The State of the Law

Battered woman syndrome was identified in the late 1970's by American feminist psychologist Dr. Lenore E. Walker. She developed this theory after interviews of 435 battered women. This syndrome became used popularly in the defense of women who killed their husbands. However, since the first introduction of battered woman syndrome, other researchers have failed to duplicate the original results and it has not been generally accepted in the field of psychology. As a result of this, it has become a legal term rather than a psychiatric diagnosis.

The legal theory of battered woman syndrome basically states that the abused woman can use force to defend herself from the abuser because they are acting in the belief that this is the only way to escape the situation. Courts in the United States have accepted battered woman syndrome to degrees ranging from being allowed as a defense to being used only for mitigation purposes. It has been used mainly in homicide cases, but has been use to a lesser extent in assault cases as well. It deviates from traditional self defense in that it does not require that the harm she is saving herself from must be immediate- battered woman syndrome has been used in cases where the woman has stabbed the abuser while he was sleeping, for example, and she was not protecting herself from immediate bodily harm.

Battered woman syndrome is often used in conjunction with other legal defenses. Most often it is used to support self-defense, insanity and diminished responsibility arguments. As used by Lenore Walker, battered woman syndrome referred to a pattern of learned helplessness, a cycle of violence on the part of the batterer, and a form of post-traumatic stress disorder on the part of the woman. It is the post-traumatic stress disorder component that defense lawyers rely on. They argue that as a result of this disorder, the woman believes that the only way out of her situation is to react to violence with violence, thus creating in her a mental state where she must commit the actions she has committed to protect herself.

In the United States, expert testimony on battered woman syndrome is only allowed in about 2/3 of the states. It is far from being widely accepted among even legal professionals, and challenges to its use continue to mount. Many defense attorneys are abandoning battered woman syndrome as a single construct meant to explain the actions of all abused women who commit violent acts. Instead, they are relying on psychology as it relates to individual women, and not battered women as a whole, in explaining why each individual would commit violence.