Private Violence

On Halloween night 2008, Deanna Walters and her two-year-old daughter, Martina, were herded into her estranged husband Robbie’s 18-wheel truck. For the next four and a half days, Deanna endured a horrifying cross-country trip, suffering relentless brutality at his hands.

Robbie severely battered Deanna during the journey from North Carolina to California and back to Oklahoma, where a highway patrolman finally stopped them. Despite the severity of her injuries, police did not arrest him.

Presented during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, PRIVATE VIOLENCE emphasizes the stigma domestic violence still carries for its victims, telling the stories of two women: Deanna, a victim turned survivor, and Kit Gruelle, a survivor who advocates for justice on behalf of Deanna and other battered women. Highlighting the complex, frustrating realities of the abuse women suffer every day at the hands of intimate partners, as well as the difficulties of prosecuting domestic violence cases.

The most dangerous place for women in America is their own home: One in four women experiences violence there at the hands of an abusive husband or boyfriend every day. Moreover, 1,700 American women are murdered every year when they leave or try to leave abusive relationships, and 48% of the women killed in domestic violence homicides are murdered after they leave or are in the process of leaving.

Women in abusive relationships face the grim reality that leaving is a dangerous prospect. Not only are they choosing to uproot their lives, and the lives of their children, but leaving may result in the direst consequences.

In Deanna’s case, police took her and Martina to a hospital, where she finally revealed what had happened on the cross-country trip. But Deanna found it difficult to press charges because the abuse happened across state lines, and while she was badly beaten, she wasn’t harmed enough to satisfy the law. (Source: HBO)