This is Kim Dadou.

This is Kim Dadou.

On December 17, 1991 in Rochester, New York, she was arrested after her partner’s frozen body was found in a collapsed snowbank.

Life before that day had been good for the 25-year-old; she worked as a respite counsellor for the severely disabled, a job which she loved. She was making good money, travelled and was in a relationship. There was a darkness in her world though — her partner, Darnell Sanders, was abusive.

They’d been together for four and a half years by this point, and it’s fair to say she had become accustomed to his short fuse. Whether it was just a quick smack in front of her mother or a prolonged beating, anything would trigger his temper. If she were a minute late home, even if he thought that she was only eyeing up one of his mates, no perceived misdemeanour was too small. These most trivial of things put her at risk of getting hurt.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t try and escape either. Sanders had been arrested for domestic violence against her five times, but nothing ever came of the arrests. She’d tried multiple times to get a restraining order against him, but he always twisted it to make her look like the aggressor. To make her look crazy. Even after numerous sexual assaults, stab wounds and a punctured lung, nothing was done.

Then on that fateful winter’s night in 1991, the relationship would collapse in an explosive final confrontation. Despite everything, she loved him and wished dearly for it to work out, so on that night, she was happy to see his car turn up outside. After going back in to fetch some air freshener, as the car reeked of weed and cocaine, she got into the car and the two of them started kissing. Things quickly went south when she refused to perform a sex act on him.

“Bitch, who are you giving my ass to?” he yelled at her.

When he tried forcing himself on her though, she didn’t yield this time. She pushed him off, and a scuffle ensued. He hit her in the face and thigh before grabbing her throat and squeezing. “This is it, bitch!” he shouted at her. She tried to go for the door handle, but it was locked. Time was running out as her breath escaped her, but then she remembered that he kept a gun in his car. She shot him, managed to get free and ran.

Days later, the police turned up at her door and she learned that he was dead. After hours of interrogation, she was charged with second-degree murder. On the advice of her lawyer, who thought she’d be crucified by the prosecution, she did not testify. As a result, the judge refused to admit all the police reports, hospital records, women’s shelter reports and witness statements. She’d even kept a diary, which was deemed inadmissible for being too “prejudicial”.

She had done everything that was expected of a woman in her situation, but much of it was no use, and Dadou went down for manslaughter. She spent seventeen years in prison, her numerous parole appeals rejected even though she’d kept out of trouble and laid low, even attaining two degrees in psychology and English literature. She also wrote, and led the welding unit.

When she got out of prison, she devoted her energies to fighting for different sentencing for domestic abuse survivors. She’s delivered numerous speeches and became the face of the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. She now works as a customer rep for the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and spends time with her wife Annie Bell Brown, whom she met in 1991 after her incarceration. Continue reading