Mary Winkler is already out of jail.. She is the one from Tennesse that shot her preacher husband in the back with a shotgun...

[heatherrae]

Gotta realize what the verdict of manslaughter means, she never planned to do it. She was a preachers wife, she might have been trying to be a "good, demure, respectful wife," she genuinely might have thought this was her lot in life, that was why she didn't take it to the authorities.

Voluntary manslaughter ALMOST falls under the category of self defense.

And sometimes leaving is not an option. First of all there is the very real situation of Stockholm syndrome. You have to look at the whole picture. When you're a single man saying "Why the hell didn't she leave?" it seems blatently obvious. But as a daughter of an abuser, I'm telling you, it ain't so easy. They had kids, he was a leader in the community, preachers don't make a lot of money. Where would she go with three kids? And if you want to say, so leave the kids, if you read other articles about the case she had good reason to fear leaving him and leaving the children with him, and he had isolated her from her family. Plus her family might have said simply "You can't leave your husband, you're married." That's a very Christian mindset.

Yes, you pretty much nailed it on why abused women don't leave. Abusers isolate you from your friends and family and make you BELIEVE there is nowhere to go. They will purposefully try to leave you destitute so you can't leave. Most of them probably know you want to leave (mine did) so they take steps to make it very hard to go. My ex would rip out all the phone cords, destroyed the computer, disabled my car, etc. Then, there are the psychological games that they play on you. I didn't even have any kids with him and have a professional degree, and I found it hard to get away from him.

I don't know if this woman was abused or not. I'm just speaking in general.