Intimate partner battering and its effects (once commonly known as “Battered Women’s Syndrome”) are often described as a set of behaviors where women follow their abuser because they are afraid and traumatized. Its symptoms are most similar to PTSD, according to Rummel, and less similar to mental illness, a common misconception.

Arguments like the one Kelly’s prosecutor made are based on long-standing prejudices that such women who live with abusers are selfish and manipulative. In a report submitted in support of Kelly’s habeas petition, Dr. Geraldine Butts Stahly pointed out that women respond to severe and prolonged physical and sexual abuse through a series of survival mechanisms, such as learned helplessness (where victims are too afraid to defend themselves) and traumatic bonding (where victims form an emotional attachment towards their abuser).

The law permits survivors of abuse to present relevant testimony at their trial to show that they may be less culpable for their actions. But many women facing criminal charges never have this opportunity, either because the attorney fails to produce a suitable expert or because the jury misinterprets evidence of abuse. In addition, criminal laws are more male-centered. “When men experience violence,” said Rummel, “they react immediately. The laws are based on duress and provocation.”

Women, on the other hand, often experience ongoing violence, many times from the very people who are supposed to protect them. “They may not react immediately,” Rummel said. They go about their lives. They raise their kids. They move on. Then their rage explodes.”

Under most state criminal statutes, defendants can claim affirmative defenses of duress or self-defense, but these require that such acts be proximate in time and place, failing to address female-specific responses to violence. Women who kill their abusers, for example, often lash out after years of brutal violence. In other instances, women are not the primary actors; they are instead intimidated by their abusive partner and appear to be a co-conspirator. As Rummel suggests, this is an area where the law has not caught up to the psychological reality.

In recognition of this dynamic, California enacted Section 1473.5 of the Penal Code in 2001, which allows women to file a writ of habeas corpus if expert testimony on abuse was not presented at trial. (A habeas corpus petition—literally meaning “you may have the body”—is filed when someone has already gone through the appeals process. It is, in many ways, a petition of last resort.) Originally, the law was intended for women who were convicted of killing their batterers; the law was amended 2005 to include all women who may have been abused. While the law was heralded as a success by women’s advocacy groups, Rummel points out that it can be difficult to prove physical and sexual abuse years—sometimes decades—after the fact. She pointed out, “Witnesses may be gone, passed away, or have forgotten what they saw. Medical records might be destroyed or not available.”