Informant38

It was a complex situation, murkier than the black-and-white portrayal of domestic violence that currently guides public policy. In that view, there's a batterer and a victim; the batterer is an ogre molded -- misshapen -- by patriarchal society; the victim, a mouse made helpless by it. There is only one happy ending: the batterer is punished, the victim liberated.

But Sylvia did not see Michael as a monster. She saw him as the product of a lousy childhood. She also saw him as a good provider and, in time, as the father of their two daughters. Nor did she see herself as defenseless but rather as the beneficiary of a good upbringing, as a self-reliant working woman and as someone who stood her ground. She never wanted Michael locked up; she wanted him to change. She wanted to rehabilitate her family, not to break it up. And in that way, Sylvia -- like so many other women who refuse to call themselves victims -- is a formidable challenge to doctrinaire thinking about the nature of domestic violence and how to combat it.