Battered women

What can drive a wife to such a gruesome act as cutting off her husband’s penis? In the news last week, 48-year old Catherine Kieu Becker reportedly drugged her husband’s food. And when he had lost consciousness, she tied him up to the bed and, with the use of a kitchen knife, proceeded to sever his sexual organ and shred it at the garbage disposal of their kitchen sink. She then called up 911 and the police. Was Becker in a jealous rage? Or was she a battered wife who thought she had to kill him first or get herself killed?

This was not the first time a crime of this nature was perpetrated by a wife. Many similar assaults by wives against their husbands happen around the world, varying only in severity. In Virginia in 1993, Lorena Bobbitt did the same thing but was eventually acquitted on grounds of post traumatic syndrome, a form of mental aberration brought about by abuse. She was able to establish that she suffered sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband.

In the Philippines, the 1995 case of People vs. Marivic Genosa ( G.R. no. 135981) became the bedrock of the defense of battered woman syndrome. Marivic Genosa and her husband, Ben, had a fight where he attempted to get his gun to kill her but was unable to open the drawer where it was kept. Marivic was able to escape from him and hid in their children’s room. Ben, meanwhile, had retreated to their room. He was already in bed, asleep, when he was killed by Marivic. Marivic pleaded self-defense. She said that she had been an abused wife and proved it through the testimony of a doctor from whom she had sought treatments for injuries for at least six times. Expert witnesses were also presented to explain what the battered woman syndrome is and what it does to the mental state of a person.

The Supreme Court emphasized that the existence of the syndrome in a relationship does not, by itself, establish the legal right of a woman to kill an abusive partner. Evidence must still be presented in the context of self-defense, the Court added. It must be shown that at the time of the offense, she must actually have feared harm from the batterer and honestly believed in the need to kill him in order to save her own self. One who resorts to violence and claims self-defense must face a real threat on one’s life and the peril must be imminent and actual, not just imaginary, the Court said.

In ordinary circumstances where self-defense is pleaded, it must be proven that there was an unlawful aggression and that there was reasonable necessity of the means employed to prevent or repel the aggression being committed. It must also be established that there was lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person defending herself. In the Genosa case, although the aggression was no longer present at the time Marivic killed Ben, the Court stated that “where the brutalized person is already suffering from the battered woman syndrome, further evidence of actual physical assault at the time of the killing is not required. Incidents of domestic battery usually have a predictable pattern. To require the battered person to await an obvious, deadly attack before she can defend her life would amount to sentencing her to murder by installment.”

The Supreme Court stated that “because of the recurring cycles of violence experienced by an abused woman, her state of mind metamorphoses. To understand the syndrome properly, one’s viewpoint should not be drawn from that of an ordinary, reasonable person. What goes on in the mind of a person who has been subjected to repeated, severe beatings may not be consistent with—nay, comprehensible to—those who have not been through a similar experience.” Marivic Genosa was, thus, acquitted of the crime of parricide. –Rita Linda V. Jimeno, Manila Standard Today