Agency to Provide Legal Aid to Abused Women Who Kill Mates

A support group for battered wives has begun the nation’s first clearinghouse to aid the legal defense of women charged with assaulting or killing their husbands or boyfriends, officials said Thursday.

The National Clearinghouse on Battered Women’s Self-Defense will provide free advice and expert testimony for the estimated 700 to 1,200 abused women who are charged with assaulting or killing their partners each year, the officials said.

Noting that 80% of the women charged in such cases are convicted, spokeswoman Joan Ulmer said the group’s biggest task will be to increase public sensitivity to the problem.

“Obviously, there is not a great deal of understanding of what motivates a woman to defend herself against her abuser,” said Ulmer, who contends that there are “unique psychological and social reactions” involved in such acts.

In helping women prepare a legal strategy in such cases, clearinghouse officials usually prescribe a defense known as “battered women syndrome,” Ulmer said. A variation on the standard self-defense argument, it was used effectively in December in the trial of a Philadelphia woman charged in the shooting death of her husband.

While defendant Beadriz Singh was not actually being attacked at the time she shot her husband, a jury acquitted her after hearing how she and her children suffered daily abuse from the victim, Ulmer said.

This type of defense is not always well received by jurors, said clearinghouse founder Sue Osthoff.

“A problem for battered women on trial is that jurors and even attorneys who have never endured abuse at the hands of a loved one cannot comprehend the fear and violence in the lives of battered women,” Osthoff said.

“Therefore, there is little understanding about the choices, decisions and actions battered women must take in order to survive--including the need to use deadly force to defend themselves.”