Neither Angels Nor Demons

by Ferraro, Kathleen J.

• ISBN13: 9781555536633
• ISBN10: 1555536638
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-30
• Publisher: Northeastern Univ Pr

Summary

She is a victim of intimate partner violence, a woman who has been harmed. She is a criminal offender, a woman who has harmed others. Superficially, it seems she is two separate women. "Victim" and "offender" are binary categories used within law, social science, and public discourse to describe social experiences with a moral dimension. Such terms draw upon cultural narratives of good and bad people and have influenced scholarship, public policy, and activism. The duality of "good" and "bad" women, separated into mutually exclusive extremes of angels and demons, has helped segregate thinking about, and responses to, each group. In this groundbreaking study, Kathleen J. Ferraro exposes the limits of such thinking by exploring the link between victimization and offending from the perspective of the women charged with the crimes. Interviewing forty-five women charged with criminal offenses (more than half of whom killed their abusers; the others participated in a range of violent crimes related to domestic violence), Ferraro uses their stories to illuminate complex interactions with violent partners, their children, and the legal system. She shows that these women are neither stereotypical angels nor demons, but rather human beings whose complicated lives belie the abstract categorizations of researchers, legal advocates, and the criminal justice system. Ferraro begins with a general discussion of blurred boundaries and the complexity of experience, and moves from there to discuss women's interactions with the criminal processing system. In the course of her study, she reexamines, and finds wanting, many standard ways of evaluating women's violent behavior, including "mutual combat," "battered woman syndrome," and "cycle of violence." She argues that a more complex, nuanced understanding of intimate partner violence and how it contributes to women's offending will contribute to public policy less focused on control and accountability of individuals than on developing social conditions that promote everyone's safety and well-being and foster a sense of hope.

Author Biography

KATHLEEN J. FERRARO is Professor of Sociology at Northern Arizona University. A respected authority in the field, she has worked closely with battered women as an active participant in the anti-violence against women movement.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(9)
1. Blurred Boundaries and the Complexities of Experience	10	(36)
2. Irreconcilable Differences: Women's Encounters with the Criminal Processing System	46	(25)
3. Negotiating Surreality	71	(37)
4. The Social Reproduction of Women's Pain	108	(50)
5. Demonic Angels?: Violence against Abusers	158	(39)
6. Angelic Demons?: Crimes of Complicity	197	(49)
Epilogue	246	(8)
APPENDIXES
Appendix A. Pseudonym, Race/Ethnicity, Charges, Relationship to Victim(s), and Role in Offense	254	(4)
Appendix B. Abuse of Drugs and Alcohol	258	(2)
Appendix C. Women Who Killed Their Husbands/Partners	260	(1)
Appendix D. Context of Violence against Husbands/Partners	261	(1)
Appendix E. Prior Police Involvement, Children, Work, Abused as Child, and Parental Absence	262	(2)
Appendix F. Women Who Committed Crimes against Others	264	(1)
Appendix G. A Note on Method	265	(2)
Notes	267	(24)
References	291	(24)
Index	315