series of five programs we have completed this tonight we will have completed three we expect to complete the other two before the end of november i'm tommy olsen and my co host maggie rose can't be here tonight because she's not feeling well so we sent a great shout out maggie get better soon we need you but this is a very important program for us a couple years ago we tried to get these two ladies on our program but we had snowstorms to contend with so we're very grateful that they came back to my immediate left is susan how who is a a criminal defender as well as in domestic violence for domestic violence and to her left is sandy who does family law both of these women however have the unique experience of having been in the situation of there being no laws in  when the domestic violence issues finally came to a head at that time there were women in framingham correctional and institution who had been incarcerated for killing their spouses who had been abusing them domestic abuse was not considered a viable defense both of these women were instrumental in turning that around so we have a much different situation today so having said enough i would like to like susan to take it and tell a little bit about her experiences her role in that thank you very much for having me and thank you for the introduction back in nineteen ninety three there were eight women in framing it him state prison as you said the maximum security prison who were convicted of either assaulting with deadly weapons or killing their batterers we prefer scenario met sandy working with the so called framingham eight to say they defended their lives in fact a documentary was made called defending your life and  an academy award in one nine hundred ninety three domestic violence was not the every day word that we hear today we've made so much progress eugenia moore was my client she had received a life sentence for defending her life against somebody who stalked her the stocking or had just been passed and she was not allowed to introduce any evidence at all of the abuse that she suffered at the hands of her batterer when the event happened she asked the teacher worked for the teacher she was very proud of that she asked the tea please to arrest the batter or they wouldn't they said see a judge you can see him tomorrow she went home he went home and then he stopped her and followed her when she went to her night shift we crisscrossed the state we had to do a lot of education on domestic violence nobody really understood it nobody would acknowledge it we have come so far today we have  domestic violence laws two zero zero nine and subsections and it went into effect after the jared remy case which caused so much confusion and consternation and outrage and it's really really tightened up not only are judges trained police departments are trained but if a batter is arrested with be it male or female same sex or not they're held for six hours it's a cooling off period they're not allowed to ask for bail during that six hours they want the battery to cool down and they want the i don't know whether we should say victim or survivor to have the time survivor absolutely to have time to make or to put in place  safety plan there are two new crimes with this new domestic bones law one is suffocation strangulation you would have thought that that would have been part of it yeah we were talking about that earlier and it was like well if you're killed you're killed i mean you know suffocation is a method right and the other one is am being domestic am and they're superior court which means they carry higher penalties since one thousand nine hundred three we have come so far there are so many police departments that have zero tolerance for domestic violence brookline is one where i practice and where sandy and i think belmont is too but there are still a certain pockets in the state that are not close to me i'm going to say it straight metropolitan areas where they need to be educated on restraining orders and on procedures for arresting the perpetrators and also prosecuting one of my i'm a little bit different than say me i'm a criminal defense attorney so i do defend batterers and i think we've come such a long way not far enough certainly not far enough can you give us a you said you defend that so how does that how can you do that and also do defend because as a criminal defense attorney you are really take an oath to be fair it's not my position to judge anybody  and i feel really really strongly that we have only addressed one side of the equation and rightfully say so those of the survivors one thousand nine hundred three we had nothing really had nothing to what nobody would listen to us but now we need programs that are effective and i don't know what these programs are because incarcerating a batterer for most of the time doesn't change the situation they get out or else they have people who contact the victim that she was the only woman that was battered by a woman her partner and if domestic violence between husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend was poorly understood in one thousand nine hundred ninety three believe me domestic violence in same sex relationships was that it was so far off of the radar of most police most  judges it was it was a very both prosecutors it was very very difficult in fact one of the struggles that i had working with the framingham eight team and susan those this is that people would you know people put out press releases eight women who were battered by their husbands or boyfriends and i'd say no wait a minute that's that's wrong that's wrong so it was very very difficult to ever read was but there were a lot of similarities between different case and other domestic violence cases there are patterns she got involved with her batterer the ba just started out flattering her buying her roses you're everything to me and then it became let me pick you up after launch let me you know pick you up after work and then it became who  going out with and it became you can't talk to your family so all of those patterns this pattern of isolation and you know charming turning into terrorism all of that was the same but the the big difference is that the other overlay and then same sex domestic violence is homophobia if you go to the police nobody's going to leave you because you're a gay person and that was certainly in the one nine hundred ninety three it was not i mean it would have been unimaginable the ten years later we were effectively a marriage you know or you'll lose your job or you know you lose your kids so homophobia itself became another tool fatter and that certainly was the case in deborah's case and also in her trial the trial attorney basically said to the jury let's just forget about this little problem with love and let's talk about the incident as a fight so instead of talking about it as domestic violence a whole system with to her he wanted to talk about it it's a fight because he didn't want the jury just i think about right one simple incident is that what he would wri right he wanted to take it out of context because he didn't want them to think about the two women as being in a relationship the district attorney on the other hand the debra defended herself in the kitchen but every single person who the district attorney called he asked how many bedrooms there were in the apartment and you know how many people were there two people there's room every single time so you know homophobia was like that was like a cloud over so so but we've also come as susan is saying just an incredible long way in terms of the understanding of police district attorney's domestic violence project is done so much turn that around the network for better lesbians as it was called at the time it's called the red now they did so much to turn things around they've gotten national recognition it's almost it's very difficult i think for people especially young people who weren't around then to realize how i was and how how we had to fight and  loyally to get resources and to get people basically to listen it's about power and control but it's also political it's very political governor weld went out on a limb to change the commutation fun phenomenal and carrying it through today we take it for granted you know restraining orders do work they do work they're not perfect they're not going to stop every single incident of domestic violence but at least they're something and one of the things that i'd like to to mention in one nine hundred ninety three on never forget they asked that the commutation hearing mast my client well why didn't you read that question i me then and you're in this now that he lives with her better she did and then she got him out of the house and he began stalking her he would stand outside her window he would throw rocks at her he followed her to work he merely came up behind her as she was going to work she had three children her children did not go to d c yet they did not go to the state she had such a community around her but the question is still asked today well why don't you mean where they going to go where do you go thank you yes sorry communion or there's cultural abuse there are certain cultures that will never go to the point i know in our town there's a there's a particular group i don't want to mention them but they're not going to go to the police the culture will take care of it in their own way and i'm not sure that's the best way although you know it's also the most dangerous time for a woman is when she's thinking about leaving or when she's going to leave that is the most deadly to god and she knows it really going to get her back so people don't appreciate how terrifying it is and how brave you have to be to to risk leaving you have to be so brave and take really a lot of  maintain we have to find a way to either keep them patters away or to change and i don't it's just not happening i don't want the programs are working you know no one hopeful thing that i see is all of the emphasis on anti bullying in school i think that that's going to go all the way it may not go you know immediately but i hope that that really has long term repr cautions because once they're battering at the age of twenty four you've kind of lost still yes i you know here and i hate to say that because i couldn't do what i do and if i didn't have hope that there was change i just don't see the i just don't see the change happening in the kinds of programs that we have now certified better as programs you know if i have a client who or who is convicted of battering you has to go to a certified court certified better is programs they're very expensive they go on for weeks i don't know but they're not going to admit in a public place right and if they don't admit then they violated probation and they go back to jail so i don't know what the answer is a twelve step program like here in alcoholics and i think so  think course shelters for that are that you feel this rage coming on leave very and go to a shelter or where somebody can sit down with you and what i mean yeah but it's not happening because if you go to jail you're not going to meet nice pleasant people who are nonviolent i mean if you go to jail you're going to come out angrier and you're going to have more tools at your disposal that you're talking to angry people absolutely so it's hardly the best option would you take  back a little bit and talk a little bit about eugenia and hurt her case and some of the other cases i don't know that much about the other cases except for one that you genius case was unusual because hers was really a stocking case she had had a relationship with this man he had lived with her she got him out of the house because he was too controlling he was isolating her in eugene's just a really very embracing full of life person and so she said i don't want this relationship anymore and she was going to work and he got on the bus and he hit her she got off the bus to the bus driver and asked the police they said no she went home she was going for a second ship she went to buy fireballs which is her favorite candy and she was getting into the car from the passenger side to put something down and she felt some in here you know it's dr and she did not have any recollection of stabbing him she said she turned around and she saw him walk away she didn't think she went on her bus route and at the end of route detective with there and arrested her and said so and so it was dead they let her out on personal recognizance she wasn't held on bail she was allowed to stay with her through the trial but the the real issue with her was when she lost her job she never got a back and maybe that was our fault maybe we should have five today i would have thought poignant in those days we were just happy that you were her sentence was commuted her sentence was commuted she worked very very hard she moves out of the city now her kids most of them three of them went to community college there were trouble she bought her own home she was on lifetime parole it took us twenty one years  served you said seven years seven years of a life sentence total twenty eight years where yeah that's right twenty twenty eight years between being in jail and also being on parole  is finally off of parole three times before the parole for defending herself and i think the parole board i can't speak for them but i think they finally saw that if this case were presented the to the courts today i don't even think the chain would far those cases are going to go when i hear about a single woman either killing her husband or somebody in the family and i often think of our women and they have the right the attorneys are pretty savvy today they're pretty savvy judges need a lot more education the district attorney's office or sat it's kind of hard for me to understand how anyone would killed an elderly parent that that's just hard for me to i mean i'd have to know that that is like but maybe i just had good parents you know maybe maybe your good your good elder abuse is on the rise it is and i'm not so sure that it's physical i think it's more economic at least from what i know a lot of it is a can on the kind of economic but we people don't want to hear it this is not a sexy but i'm glad that you're doing it people don't want to hear i was it oh a woman's meeting  this program is based on one billion rising and i know there are statistics every so often someone is killed the second program we did was when that south african got was the day after that south african guy killed his girlfriend right that was the second one and then in the interim there have been these horrible horrible horrible things about that young girl who was coming back from watching a movie she was in india i think and and she was gang raped and killed and you know so these these are extremes but still we need to be recognizing that we need football i mean it and then we have the wife or fiance saying oh no no that was just a little too i mean really she must be animal and i dish and to think that this is normal this is not normal well you know i hate to sound very very political but but here goes you know until women have any kind of parity with it until women are really equal if women's lives or throw away laws then this is going to happen it's just going to happen as long as men are trained either culturally or you know in any way that that they're better than women and women are expendable and ones just as good as the other and they're all going to cheat on you or whatever you can overpower them then this is going to happen  why one is married and i have to say i'm very proud that they you know they are you know they do act equally you know if they met i think it's not just my bringing them up i think it i think culturally that age group yes that generated as you said you know the book yeah i think that plays into and of course my daughter i mean she just doesn't think that you know any of this should ever happen you know should i not and it's interesting we were talking about how they don't understand nine hundred ninety three and why what it took to get to this point that she you know they take it for you know debra went out to get cigarettes stepper went out to get this you know it's it was she she was really under siege there she was at one point she was cooking for everybody in the kitchen later and then she said i'm stabbed and fell and depor had realised what had happened and then as soon as that happened all of the relative started you know descending upon depor so it was a horror up on yeah yeah it was a horrible situation and i mean she was really she was really under siege everybody in that building was a relative so anywhere she went you know there was like this fifteen years and she was so she got early parole so she was it was about seven i want to say seven i want to say seven but i'm not  court now there are a lot of interplay between family law and domestic violence obviously thank you both for coming thank you it was a pleasure thank you i thank you all thank you for coming in had to take time out and come all the way to belmont you know so thank you very much thank you