The sudden loss of Andrea from our lives forced us to seek reasons for the loss, and to ask questions about domestic violence, how and why it happens, and how to prevent it from happening. One of the dynamics that we encountered had to do with question of why battered women stay with, or return to their batterers. The term "blaming the victim" was coined by Ann Jones in her book, Next Time She'll Be Dead.

Blaming the victim - "... Surviors of severe trauma--combat soldiers, prisoners of war, rape victims, disastger victims, hotages, battered women---universally attribute their survival largely to good luck. But who wants to believe that our well-being hinges upon chance? Instead we trace the root of trouble from where it flowers. ... we search the victim for those peculiarities of psyche and circumstance that made the life give way, or, worse, impelled the victim to step across the line herself, deliberate and heedless .... we try 'to account for the victim's behavior by seeking flaws in her personality or moral character' because, having no knowledege of terror or coercision, we presume that in similar circumstances we 'would show greater courage and resistance than the victim.'"

"...[T]he battered woman whom we think of as 'staying' with a batterer, or returning to him, is usally a woman held captive by the force of separation assault. And as we have seen time and time again, when a woman perseveres in her struggle to get free, the grand finale of separation assault is often her own death."