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NYC nurse Tracy McCarter is awaiting trial without bail on Rikers because she stabbed her abuser in self defense. The criminal justice system punishes victims of gender based violence and leaves them without any recourse #StandWithTracy #SurvivedAndPunished
Domestic violence victims are explicitly excluded from Stand Your Ground laws because the laws are written to exclude people sharing an address #SurvivedAndPunished
Women are often forced to use the Battered Woman Syndrome defense to explain killing their abusers which casts them as victims suffering from a psychological disorder. In one study by the DOJ, 63% of cases that used the BWS still resulted in conviction https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/batter.pdf
Men serve longer sentences than women usually but the average prison sentence of men who kill their female partners is 2-6 yrs and 15 years for women. Most women who kill their partners do so to protect themselves from intimate partner violence https://www.aclu.org/other/words-prison-did-you-know
According to @NCADV approximately 1.3 million American women experience DV/IPV each year. Women make up 85% of the victims of DV/IPV. Black women are almost 3x as likely to experience death as a result of DV/IPV than White women.
Black women only make up 8% of the population but 22% of homicides that result from DV/IPV happen to Black Women. Black women have the highest rates of intra-racial violence against then than any other group. @FeministaJones https://time.com/3313343/ray-rice-black-women-domestic-violence/
When someone is killed police must investigate but it is at the discretion of the DA to impanel a grand jury or bring charges. If a woman shoots her abuser in self defense there is nothing requiring her to be charged and to go through a trial #SurvivedAndPunished
A thread I wrote on IPV stats https://twitter.com/queenmab87/status/1023661964680212486?s=21 https://twitter.com/queenmab87/status/1023661964680212486
Additionally protection orders require trust and involvement with police to enforce them. Studies show inconsistent enforcement by police at best and mandatory arrest laws only marginally increase enforcement #SurvivedAndPunished https://www.aclu.org/other/domestic-violence-protective-orders-and-role-police-enforcement
