Battered woman syndrome in female perpetrators in Republic of North Macedonia

Ivanova, Elena and Kosevaliska, Olga (2023) Battered woman syndrome in female perpetrators in Republic of North Macedonia. In: Battered woman syndrome in female perpetrators in Republic of North Macedonia. Springer Cham, pp. 133-163. ISBN 978-3-031-27628-6

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Abstract

In the past few decades, researchers are warning about the occurrence of " bettered woman syndrome - BWS ". It appears as a side effect of the domestic violence, that comes, mostly, from the intimate partner. BWS is also used to explain this phenomenon, when a woman commits serious violent crimes in a state of potential self-help. The reason we shed light on this topic is the wrong treatment of these women in practice. For years, women who kill their aggressor have been treated as murderers and given high prison sentences, without any adequate treatment for their previous victimization.
In the Republic of Macedonia, at the end of 2017 we conducted a survey on all women who were serving prison sentences. Four of the women charged with murder, out of a total of six, said they had previously been victimized and subjected to some form of violence. The women who committed the violent crime, and with whom we have spoken, have never been convicted before. All were sentenced to more than five years in prison, and none of them had received propriate penitentiary treatment as a victim of domestic violence. The practice in our country does not even recognize the specific type of the crime (although the law does) to subordinate the crime under the propriate article during the procedural part.
This chapter will raise the awareness about the problem that exist in this country but is still not properly enough recognizable in practice. The only case that inspires hope for possible improvement is singled out and analyzed as a good practice. However, the current legal arrangement is still not sufficiently well defined to respect the position of such a woman. At meanwhile, men still have strong influence in the family and are in a role of a perpetrators in most of the crimes committed against women. So, the effective knowledge awareness and fight against this influence, i.e., previous victimization and developing the bettered woman syndrome, would at the same time mean and be essential to the prevention of a good part of the crime committed by the woman.

Item Type:	Book Section
Subjects:	Social Sciences > Law
Divisions:	Faculty of Law
Depositing User:	Elena Maksimova
Date Deposited:	16 Jun 2023 12:39
Last Modified:	16 Jun 2023 12:39
URI:	https://eprints.ugd.edu.mk/id/eprint/31906

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