Try not to measure an older woman’s courage by doors that had not been built yet.In 1968, *Lorraine is twenty-five years old with two little child
Try not to measure an older woman’s courage by doors that had not been built yet.
In 1968, *Lorraine is twenty-five years old with two little children and a husband she is afraid of. With very good reason. The man is violent any time he gets good and ready.
Today, a younger woman might ask, “Why didn’t she just leave?”
So Lorraine tries.
She needs somewhere to live. The landlord wants her husband’s income information.
She needs credit. She has almost none in her own name and can’t get any.
She needs a better job, but employers can legally turn women away from jobs they believe belong to men.
She needs childcare, but there is no nationwide childcare system waiting for her. Some of her family and friends might be able to help for a bit. That is, if or until their own boyfriends and husbands don’t start getting after them to stop helping to “break up a happy home.”
She thinks about calling the police, but a husband beating his wife is still widely treated as a private family problem. There is no national domestic-violence shelter network for her to call. The police might call it a spat between a man and his old lady. At most he may tell the man to leave for the house for a bit. Or there could be unwanted attention by the police if the couple is Black.
In Brooklyn in 1976, Kathleen D’Amico said her husband choked her and repeatedly knocked her to the ground. She threatened to call the police. According to the historical record, he essentially told her to go ahead because they wouldn’t do anything.
She tried anyway.
As she walked toward the police station, her husband reportedly followed her for eight blocks, repeatedly knocking her down. Two officers eventually arrived. Rather than arresting him, they told her they couldn’t because she did not have an order of protection. They also told her they had emergency calls and couldn’t spend all day there.
There are other documented accounts from that same 1976 New York litigation. One woman, Lydia Thomas, said responding officers mocked her and treated the situation like a joke. Another woman described officers joking around with her husband. Her conclusion was chilling: police behavior would reinforce his violence.
And this wasn’t simply a handful of unfortunate encounters. Historical accounts describe police departments routinely approaching wife abuse as a “family” or “domestic” matter, emphasizing mediation, separation for the evening, or reconciliation rather than treating an assault by a husband the way they would an assault by a stranger.
WORK was done. HARD work on a piggy bank budget. Primarily by women, to change this. It isn’t even completely changed to where it needs to be, but it is not where it was. One of my mentors told me the story of how one of the statewide organizations that I worked for started their hotline with just one telephone. If I’m correct, it was three of them sharing a telephone.
So especially back in the day
“Why didn’t she call the police?”
Sometimes she did.
And sometimes the man hurting her already knew what would happen when they arrived.
In Torrington, Connecticut, Tracey Thurman had separated from her abusive husband, Charles “Buck” Thurman. During 1982 and 1983, she and others repeatedly reported his threats and violence to police. He had already been ordered to stay away from her. Tracey later obtained a restraining order. Still, according to the federal court record, requests for protection and arrest were repeatedly ignored, rejected, or delayed. At one point she was told the officer who could help her was on vacation.
Then came June 10, 1983.
Charles appeared at the house where Tracey was staying. Tracey called the police. About 15 minutes passed without an officer arriving. She eventually went outside, according to the court record, trying to persuade Charles not to take or hurt their young son.
Charles attacked her, repeatedly stabbing her in the chest, neck and throat.
A police officer arrived about 25 minutes after her call, after the stabbing had begun. But even then it wasn’t over. The federal court record says Charles dropped his bloody knife and, in the officer’s presence, kicked Tracey in the head. He went into the house, returned carrying their little boy, dropped the child onto his badly wounded mother, and kicked Tracey in the head again. Other officers arrived while Charles was still allowed to move through the crowd and threaten her.
Tracey survived, but with catastrophic injuries, including partial paralysis. Then she did something enormously consequential.
She sued.
Her argument was bigger than “the police failed me.” She alleged that Torrington’s practices effectively gave people experiencing domestic violence less police protection than other victims of violence, violating equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1984, the federal judge allowed that constitutional claim to proceed, recognizing that a police practice of providing inadequate or no protection to women abused by husbands could amount to discriminatory administration of the law.
A jury later awarded Tracey $2.3 million. Her case became part of the pressure for major changes in how Connecticut responded to family violence, including legislation requiring a much stronger law-enforcement response. Connecticut’s own judicial educational materials teach the Thurman case in connection with the state’s subsequent mandatory-arrest law.
Some of the protection you expect today, in the West especially, has a woman’s name and life experience somewhere in its history.
Some of what looks like obedience from a distance was calculation up close. Survival.
*Lorraine’s mother and father have one spare bedroom and tell her, quietly, “Baby, try to work it out.” They know that there will be drama. Reflief and settling issues by way of courts and the system is not an option for everyone.
Her pastor tells her marriage is sacred.
Her husband tells her she will never make it without him.
And Lorraine knows something nobody asking “Why didn’t she leave?” has had to answer yet:
Leave and go where? Where?!
Lorraine was not born with less courage than the women who came after her. She was born into a world with fewer exits.
Some of the exits younger women walk through today exist because women like Lorraine, Tracy, and Kathleen kept pushing on walls until somebody finally cut a door. Do not waste your inheritance laughing at the women who fought to leave it to you. Ask an older woman what changed during her lifetime. Ask the older women who worked in shelters what it was like.
You may discover that something you consider ordinary was once a long episodic war.
💔 They Don’t Say She Was Loved — They Say She Stayed – WE Survive Abuse
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Called Out of Our Names: When Did Respect Become Too Much to Ask? (audio ep) – WE Survive Abuse
When Women Call for Help—and the System Does Not See Someone Worth Protecting – WE Survive Abuse
If Men Are Afraid of Men, Why Are Women Being Asked to Give Up Their Safe Spaces? – WE Survive Abuse