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For that reason, not all battered women's organizations support the proliferating mandatory arrest laws. That puts them into an unlikely alliance with the police organizations that were critical of New York's tough new bill. "There are cases," argues Francis Looney, counsel to the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, "where discretion may be used to the better interest of the family."
Proponents of mandatory-arrest laws counter that education, not discretion, is required. "I'd like to see better implementation of the laws we have," says Vickie Smith, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence. "We work to train police officers, judges and prosecutors about why they need to enforce them."
"I took it very seriously, the marriage, the commitment. I wanted more than anything to make it work." Dana's eyes are bright, her smile engaging, as she sips a soda in the shelter and tries to explain what held her in thrall to Ted for so many years. Only the hesitation in her voice betrays her anxiety. "There was a fear of losing him, that he couldn't take care of himself."
Though Dana believed the beatings were unprovoked and often came without warning, she blamed herself. "I used to think, 'Maybe I could have done things better. Maybe if I had bought him one more Mont Blanc pen.' " In the wake of Nicole Simpson's slaying, Dana now says that she was Ted's "prisoner." "I still loved him," she says, trying to explain her servitude. "It didn't go away. I didn't want to face the fact that I was battered."
It is impossible to classify the women who are at risk of being slain by a partner. Although the men who kill often abuse alcohol or drugs, suffer from personality disorders, have histories of head injuries or witnessed abuse in their childhood homes, such signs are often masterfully cloaked. "For the most part, these are people who are functioning normally in the real world," says Bathrick of Men Stopping Violence. "They're not punching out their bosses or jumping in cops' faces. They're just committing crimes in the home."
The popular tendency is to dismiss or even forgive the act as a "crime of passion." But that rush of so-called passion is months, even years, in the making. "There are few cases where murder comes out of the blue," says Sally Goldfarb, senior staff attorney for the now Legal Defense and Education Fund. "What we are talking about is domestic violence left unchecked and carried to its ultimate outcome." Abuse experts also decry the argument that a man's obsessive love can drive him beyond all control. "Men who are violent are rarely completely out of control," psychologist Browne argues. "If they were, many more women would be dead."
Some researchers believe there is a physiological factor in domestic abuse. A study conducted by the University of Massachusetts Medical Center's domestic-violence research and treatment center found, for instance, that 61% of men involved in marital violence have signs of severe head trauma. "The typical injuries involve the frontal lobe," says Al Rosenbaum, the center's director. "The areas we suspect are injured are those involved in impulse control, and reduce an individual's ability to control aggressive impulses."