They killed their husbands after having been beaten and humiliated years in a row. Convicted to many years of imprisonment they are now serving their terms behind the bars. This is the sad story of several women who, from victims of domestic violence, became their abusers’ murderers. They found no other solution but to murder them in order to get rid of violence. Experts say that if the Anti-Violence Law functioned properly such cases could have been avoided.
She Hit Him with a Hammer in the Head
Ana has been in the women’s penitentiary in Rusca for more than a year. The barbed wire fence, the sky seen from behind the bars, her devouring longing for her children, and the thought that everything could be different – this is the picture of her everyday life. She got here because she had killed her husband with whom she had been married for 15 years. She hit him with the hammer in the head during a violent fight. Her cell colleagues who know her entire story say in one voice that it is not right for Ana to be here.
The beating and insults were part of the daily menu of her family life, which were especially served when her husband was getting drunk. At such times he didn’t care at whom he was hitting – at his wife or his two children, one of whom started to have serious health problems. The entire village knew about her suffering, including the sector policeman and the mayor, but nobody interfered. “Everyone lives like this in our village. Women keep silent and endure. We have no choice. I waited for the boys to grow up so that we could go somewhere to work and leave him to his fate,” Ana recounts. But this plan that she had weaved in her mind for many years was shattered in a December morning. The woman was breaking nuts to take them for sale when a fight started. She doesn’t remember how she came to hit him. She recovered only when she saw him lying on the floor. She called at her neighbors and called the doctors and the police but it was too late. When her two children returned from school, they found out that they had no father, and no mother either.
During the court hearing, all the eight witnesses confirmed that Ana had been cruelly beaten during her marriage. The judge, however, imposed a harsh sentence on her – 20 years of detention. After the appeal, the term was reduced to eight years. She will be almost 50 when she is released and her two children will be already grown up. If she had listened to her children who were telling her to get divorced, she would be with them now.
Doing Penance for My ‘Sin’ of Being a Wife
Ana, like many other women who have got into such institutions, is victim of an imperfect system of social and judicial protection of domestic violence victims, Tatiana Catană, Antiviolence Expert, says. Although many women say that they were in a state of affectation when they committed the crimes, the timeframes of detention for such crimes are rather long. One of the circumstances that can remove the criminal character of the act is self-defense, and in such state is “a person who commits the act to reject a direct, immediate, material and real attack directed at him/her from another person or at a public interest.” “Courts usually don’t take into account the scenario of the marriage before the crime was committed. Nor do law-enforcement bodies investigate the statements of the victims to see that the respective woman came to despair after having been beaten for many years. The prosecutor’s office and the police should seriously investigate the reasons for the crime and take such aspects into account,” Tatiana Catană says. Most of the times, judges consider that the state of self-defense is not present in such type of crimes. “The victims are usually women from poor families who don’t have the possibility to hire very good lawyers to represent them in court. In addition, the cases of such category are not paid much attention,” Catană adds. Thus, in order to be released from the prison of their marriages, some women must first pass through the common law penitentiary.
Regrets Last for the Rest of Their Lives
At Rusca women’s prison, most of the female detainees serve their terms for having killed their violent husbands, the penitentiary’s psychologist Tatiana Plămădeală-Grigoraş told us. “Some of them had been beaten and humiliated since they were children, and had the same kind of treatment after getting married. The women who come from violent families are mentally traumatized, they permanently indicate headaches. Not being treated in due time, such disorders have very serious consequences. In order to get them out of the depression, we work individually with each of them,” the psychologist tells us.
The thought that their children were left without a father because of them is tormenting and some of them need many years to recover from such obsession. If they could turn back time, each of them would choose to stay away from their violent husbands.
Maria, a woman from the north of Moldova, was beaten numerous times during her 16 years of marriage. During their fights, her husband was always telling her that he would kill her. The opposite happened in the end – he died from her hands. Their beginning was nice – they got married from love and were living together with their in-laws. The arguments started from poverty and needs. Her husband started to sink his sorrows in drinking. Shortly thereafter, the first beating happened. She forgave him, especially that her in-laws begged her to not leave him. Gradually, the punching and swearwords became something ordinary in their family. She was working by the day so that to be able to feed her children. In the fatal day, her husband had come home dead drunk, with a bottle of wine in his hand. When seeing him, she thought: “If he drinks some more, he will kill me.” Being desperate, she came up with nothing but to pour out the drink. She was in the kitchen, with a knife in her hand, when he grasped her by the throat, calling her to account. Wanting to stop her husband’s blow, she cut his throat. Her husband’s relatives asked that she get the harshest punishment, claiming that she had killed him deliberately, although the entire village knew her sad story. She didn’t object and accepted her punishment, although she was thinking only about her two children who were left destitute.
The Police – An Ephemeral Help?
Over sixty domestic deaths have occurred in the past years. In most cases, the deaths could have been prevented, specialists say, if the police and the social assistance had interfered in due time.
According to the data of the Ministry of Interior, each fifth woman beaten by her husband withdraws her complaint filed with the police. The reason is the lack of trust in the law-enforcement bodies and her fear for her safety and that of her children. Many of them don’t even have a place to go to. Some are ashamed of what people would say. Not few are the cases when the aggressors determine them to withdraw their complaints by threatening them, or allure them with promises that they wouldn’t be violent again. The relatives or neighbors also come with advice that she “wouldn’t find a better one”… Not being sure that she would be protected from the fury of her ‘loving’ husband, the woman withdraws her complaint, while the beating is back shortly. The already established practice of fining the abuser has completely ruined the women’s trust in the police. They know that their partners would preserve their violent behavior, while the fine will have to be paid in the end from the poor enough family budgets. Domestic violence is generally considered a “family problem” and therefore the police hesitate a lot before interfering, says Ion Oboroceanu, Director of the Căuşeni Law Center. “Many policemen violate their work duties and convince the victims to withdraw their complaints in order not to start criminal investigations. I have seen women with their ribs or arms broken who withdrew their complaints. Today you are fighting and tomorrow you are making up, but I have to pad the road – this is how a policeman reacts when a woman comes to file a complaint against her husband,” Oboroceanu says.
The legislation of many European countries stipulates that a victim cannot return to her family so simply, after she has been abused by her partner. Courts admit that the parties make up only after it is established that the victim has benefited from all possible measures of social and economic assistance. In Moldova there are only 6 centers for victims of violence, while for the abusers there isn’t any psychological recovery service in place at present.
When It Is Too Late
In most of the cases of violence signaled, the aggressor is not arrested by the police, nor is he forbidden to approach his domicile. The one who leaves together with her children is usually the woman, i.e. the victim. Most of the victims decide to do this only when they cannot take it anymore or when their children’s lives are in danger. However, sometimes it is too late when they decide to take this step.
Elena, a teacher from the district of Criuleni was hospitalized at the Oncological Center shortly after she separated from her violent husband. Although they had been divorced for many years, they continued to live in the same house, each of them having their separate entries. Although legally they were not husband and wife any more, the man was controlling her life and beat her every time he had the occasion. Being afraid that the village may find out, she was taking sick leaves when having bruises on her face while in the other days she was going to work putting a smile on her face. Only one year ago she found power to leave her house and move to a different place. Her life got a new meaning and she was enjoying with her children every day of peace. But all this lasted until the day when she found out that she had cancer in both her breasts. The constant stress and beating endured years in a row brought her in the end to the operation table…
Face To Face With the Enemy
According to the OSCE Trial Monitoring Report for Moldova, “most of the times, the victims are put in the situation to wait in the same halls in courts together with the friends and relatives of the defendants. Taking into account the frequency of delays and postponements of court hearings, such unpleasant waiting periods may be very long. In a number of cases, the defendant directly threatened the victim. Neither the judge nor the prosecutor ordered application of protection measures or reprimanded the defendant,” the report also shows.
“The victim is taken through courts being heard several times, which is inadmissible,” this is how Ion Oboroceanu, Director of the Căuşeni Law Center, explains the multiple cases of reconciliation. “A woman aggressed by her husband cannot even obtain a medical certificate about her bodily injuries because in many villages there are no doctors. For instance, in our village, the doctor comes only twice per week, for several hours. Due to the fact that most families have modest incomes, they cannot travel to the city to see a doctor. Thus, the aggressor remains unpunished,” says Ludmila Ceacâru, Mayor of the village of Calfa, district of Anenii Noi.
The police have about 4800 domestic brawlers now in sight. To note that their number has decreased by approximately 600 as compared to 2007 and this on the background of increased cases of domestic violence. Studies show that, in Moldova, each fourth woman is victim of domestic violence – physical, sexual, psychological or economic.
This investigation has been produced under the Protection and Empowerment of Victims of Human Trafficking and Domestic Violence in Moldova Project.