Law Commons^™

Battering, Forgiveness And Redemption, Brenda V. Smith

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

While there has been some acknowledgement that battered women kill, there has been less acceptance that battered women may have been arrested for some other offense. Can those fallible women be “forgiven” for their offenses and allowed to receive the community affirmation, validation, social services, and protection that other battered women receive? This Article focuses on a topic that, though discussed, has frequently been dismissed in the domestic violence discourse; battered women’s forgiveness of their batterers and battered women’s process of forgiving themselves for participating in the relationship.