Women who survive abuse are too often punished by a justice system that offers dangerous men leniency while demanding impossible perfection from their victims.A demonstration calls for an end to violence against women during the Million Women Rise march in London on March 7, 2026. (Zeynep Demir / Anadolu via Getty Images)

This is a story about choices that are not really choices. It is a story about impossible circumstances propelling us down pathways we believe unimaginable. You always believe it could never happen to you, until it does.

Content warning: This narrative feature contains descriptions of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

Impossible Choice

Naomi planned to end things with Moses (both names changed for privacy). Apprehensively, she entered their dilapidated red house, subconsciously knowing two truths: There would be a fight, and he would be violent. She wandered to the kitchen to make chicken sandwiches with the fresh tomatoes she’d purchased at the public market. Suddenly, she felt him behind her, and saw the flash of a blade. Smiling menacingly, his giant frame filled the doorway.

“He was preventing me from leaving the kitchen,” Naomi tells me. “How the fuck am I about to get outta here? That’s what I was thinking,”

She managed to retreat to the bedroom just as her brother called. Moses followed, demanding she put the call on speaker as he sat there. He punched his fist into his open palm repeatedly, glowering at her, a clear threat. She couldn’t signal for help.

“As soon as I hung up, he said, ‘If you try to call somebody, by the time they get here, you gonna be dead. And they gonna have to shoot and kill me.’” 

Before she registered the danger, Moses punched her in the face, and she bit through her lower lip. She shows me the scar sadly. Naomi begged him to call an ambulance, but he taunted her: “There’s nowhere you can go where I won’t find you. If I hear about you bein’ with someone, I’ll find y’all and kill you. I’ll find you. I’ll wait outside your bus stop.”

He slammed her against the floor. At the time, she realized “I have to get in defense mode, because I don’t know what’s about to happen,” she says to me.

She ran for the kitchen, desperate for a way to protect herself. He followed her, again blocking the doorway with his bulk. He lunged for her throat. She grabbed a knife.

“Our last encounter was him trying to choke me, and me stabbing him.”

Naomi sighs and leans against the passenger seat of my car, ending the story of the night she killed her abuser.

You may have survived the night, but are you living? Are you free? 

A grand jury indicted her for second-degree murder. A year later, she pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. Initially facing five to 25 years in prison, her sentence was reduced under New York state’s Domestic Violence Survivor Justice Act to three years’ incarceration, with five years of post-release supervision. Even the District Attorney’s office acknowledged Naomi was a victim of domestic violence, which “was a significant contributing factor” to her behavior.

When the options available to her were kill or be killed, why was she even indicted?

The Justice Gap

This is not a condemnation targeting Rochester, N.Y.’s justice system. The criminalization of women’s survival is woefully common. Up to 90 percent of women incarcerated for killing men had been abused by those men; most female violent offenders are likely to have been abused and responded violently to that abuse, leading to their incarceration.

Women also receive harsher sentences than men for killing their partners. The average prison sentence for men who kill their female partners is two to six years. Women who kill their male partners are sentenced, on average, to 15 years, despite typically acting in self-defense.

Demonstrators hold hands in solidarity during a protest against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh near the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 4, 2018. (Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)

The justice system seems to value lethally violent men’s lives over women’s.

Furthermore, equal sentencing for men and women in these cases would still be unjust because it ignores the different circumstances and motivations that often underlie their use of violence in intimate relationships: Women’s physical violence in relationships is far more likely to be motivated by fear and self-defense, while men’s violence in relationships is more likely driven by a desire to maintain control. (This is not to say that women cannot be predominant aggressors and men cannot be victims, but the gender disparity in motivations behind use of violence in intimate relationships remains stark and should inform legal charges on a case-by-base basis.)

Imagine you’re Naomi—a Black woman who wanted a better life for her children and herself—surviving the most harrowing night of your life. You’re dragged before a grand jury, forced to relive in graphic detail every violation of your body. You’re charged with and convicted of murder, merely for making an impossible choice to survive. You may have survived the night, but are you living? Are you free? 

The injustice of it haunts her today, precipitating several traumatic mental health crises. I wondered how her story might have changed had compassionate justice and common sense entered the picture.

Survival Is Gendered

Female victims of male violence have few choices in how their stories are represented in the public consciousness, falling into rigid archetypes. 

The Martyr is angelic, with an endearing damsel-in-distress fragility. Preferably white, she has a warm presence that “lights up a room” or perhaps she is a gentle soul, beloved by all who know her. She is also dead. The press infantilizes her and her story becomes a romantic tragedy that the public mourns with superficial “if-onlys” and “bright-young-womans.” Too little, too late, issued after multiple red flags have announced their presence, yet were ignored, as in the cases of Gabby Petito or Nicole Brown Simpson.

I haven’t yet been able to come up with a fitting term for those who live, like Cyntoia Brown, Chrystul Kizer, Keshia Golden and Naomi. The public views them much less favorably. Their every gesture is scrutinized, each human imperfection weaponized. If justifiably angry, they are “vindictive.” If tearful, they must be “emotionally unstable” or “lying.” They’re often criminalized. Even if vindicated, they’re drained by that point—financially and emotionally—and public contrition is classically short-lived; the cycle will inevitably repeat.

It’s repeating today. Girls can’t escape the misogynistic expectations of the ideal woman: impossibly self-sacrificial and uncomplaining, particularly if motherhood is part of their identity—volitionally or not.

A newborn baby was recently discovered dead at the side of a road in Monterey County, Calif. DNA testing revealed the infant’s parents to be a local man Sergio Galvez Perez, 38, and his 14-year-old daughter. Any reasonable person would understand Perez’s daughter to be the victim of incestuous rape. Yet, Sheriff Tina Nieto announced arrest warrants for both the rapist and his victim, labeling the child a murder suspect. Nieto said her intent was “to locate Sergio Galvez Perez and the juvenile and bring them to justice.” Headlines read, “14-year-old girl, father, wanted after baby found dead on side of road in Monterey County”—as though the traumatized child victim impregnated and forced to give birth were as antisocial as her rapist, who is the only one who should bear responsibility for the infant’s tragic death. The victim is presented in this headline as the lead suspect.

Protesters raise their fists during a #BelieveSurvivors walkout against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the Hart Senate Office Building on Sept. 24, 2018. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Only after mass backlash was an Amber Alert issued for the missing girl, a child victim of traumatic and heinous violations, whom systemic misogyny has preemptively labeled as criminally responsible for a senseless death as the adult male who allegedly perpetrated the crime.

Meanwhile, aggressors reap the benefits of skepticism of the victims in a world that values men’s potential over women’s lives.

Despite court documents alleging appalling acts of abuse toward Angelina Jolie and their children, Brad Pitt continues to star in blockbuster films.

Despite pleading no contest to rape and attempted strangulation of two girls, Oklahoma man Jesse Mack Butler was sentenced as a “youthful offender” to supervised rehabilitation, counseling and community service and will not spend a day in prison, while his victims cope with the traumatic after-effects of his depravity and the misogynistic ineptitude of the justice system.

We live in a world that punishes survivors and creates more victims with generous latitude inexplicably afforded to men who have proven themselves dangerous to society. It seems that the only perfect victim is a dead one, a woman who can’t talk back.

Life After Abuse

Naomi struggled after her release with housing insecurity and illness. She has permanent rotator cuff damage after Moses’ final assault. Shortly after her release, her mother—who also survived domestic violence—died.

She’s lost faith in the justice system and in performative politicians who would use violence against women as a political prop to gain power, yet demonstrate very little interest in curbing the epidemic of violence against women, nor rectifying systemic injustices that disproportionately traumatize survivors of color.

Instead, they implicitly promote gender-based violence with their shocking tolerance of men who allegedly abuse women within their ranks. And, as in Naomi’s case, they choose to prosecute women whose only crime is … not to die at the hands of a violent abuser.

But I’m perpetually surprised by the resilience of women who survive abuse.

“Listen, I’m still here, Dr. Lee,” she says, despite everything. “I want people to hear my story.”

Naomi dreams of opening her own group home for abuse survivors recovering from addiction. She even wants to help men like Moses in order to prevent family violence and foster healthy relationships between men and women.

“He abused me, but he was a victim too. The trauma he grew up with, that’s all part of it. The system failed Moses too. I’m not trying to say that I’m the only victim. He didn’t get the help he needed at the time he needed it. Maybe he never reached out for it, but he needed it.”

I’m struck by the grace she can hold for her abuser. 

Most of all, she wants to help the traumatized children exposed to intimate partner violence: “They’re either gonna be the abusees or abusers without help. Not on my watch. I want to give them the love they didn’t get. The love I didn’t get. My story’s got to help people, so it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

At peace, she asks me if we can drive to Greece Canal Park to take photos of the sun setting on a golden afternoon.

The views above represent only those of the author and are not endorsed by any institution with which she is affiliated.

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