The victim may kill the abuser.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 3% of male murder victims are killed by an intimate partner (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Homicide Trends in the U.S.: Intimate Homicide, 2005).
In a case that became famous through a book and a movie, The Burning Bed, a wife repeatedly raped by her husband ultimately doused their bedroom with gasoline while he slept and set it alight (Faith McNulty, The Burning Bed, 1980), about the case of Francine Hughes). The first major study of battered women who kill their abusers was described in a book by Angela Browne titled When Battered Women Kill (1987). Browne found that three-quarters of her sample reported having been raped at least once by their abusers.
Raquel Kennedy Bergen interviewed 40 victims of intimate partner sexual abuse and reported that more than half had thoughts of killing their abusers, though only three thought this might actually happen. Bergen described one victim's situation:
"Rhonda is among the most visibly traumatized by the rape. She lives in constant terror of her husband's return . . . She told me, ‘I live in constant fear of him. All the time. And every day I think of how to kill him, and I pray to God it doesn't happen.'"
— Quoted in Bergen, Wife Rape (1996) at 59-60.
In the case of Mary Winkler noted earlier, she was ultimately convicted of the voluntary manslaughter of her husband, a prominent pastor from Tennessee. At trial she testified about her husband's preoccupation with pornography and what she described as "unnatural" sex acts and how deeply his conduct disturbed her. Visibly embarrassed, she displayed for the jury garments he insisted she wear during their encounters, and described him forcibly anally raping her. When she protested that these acts hurt her, he replied that if she sustained injuries, she could have them surgically repaired. Because of her family's position in the community, she felt it impossible to seek help for her situation because it would require her to reveal his conduct. (Emanuella Grinberg, Court TV News, "Pastor's wife says she shot husband after years of physical, sexual, emotional abuse," April 17, 2007).
This case provides a vivid example of how the stigma of sexual abuse can significantly complicate a victim’s capacity to seek help. The court seemed to take Ms. Winkler's difficult situation into account in sentencing her to a term of just 210 days' incarceration, most of which had been served pre-trial. She was released after 67 days in custody at a mental health facility where she had been undergoing treatment. Subsequently, she regained custody of her children.
