Type:	Journal Article
Title:	Pacific-Asian immigrant and refugee women who kill their batterers: telling stories that illustrate the significance of specificity
Other Titles:	The Sydney law review
Authors:	Tolmie, Julia
Keywords:	CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse);Homicide
Categories:	Culturally and Linguistically Diverse / Migrant / Refugee communities
Year:	1997
Publisher:	Faculty of Law
Citation:	19 (4), December 1997
Notes:	Reviews two recently decided cases involving Pacific Asian women who either killed or attempted to kill their violent partners, highlighting the inability of existing legal concepts of self defence to adequately position the actions of the accused within an understanding of intersectional and multiple forms of oppression and disadvantage. The NSW case of Muy Ky Chhay, a Cambodian immigrant, is examined first. It is argued that her failure to successfully raise self defence was due primarily to a failure by the court, to acknowledge her particular positioning, at the interface of different hierarchies of oppression, in assessing her claim. A similar argument is put forth for the New Zealand case of The Queen v Zhou, in which self defence was successfully raised with the support of evidence of battered woman syndrome, but no recognition was made of the specific nature of disadvantage experienced by the accused. It is suggested that in both cases, the argument of self defence in response to charges of murder or attempted murder was not realistically assessed because the ways in which race and gender converge to make the accused circumstances uniquely vulnerable, were not taken into account.
URI:	https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/16044
ISSN:	0082-0512
Appears in Collections:	Journal Articles

Items in ANROWS library are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.