Are battered women helpless? Court prompts debate in ruling on restraining orders.

Advocates for battered women say they face a frustrating conundrum all too often: What should authorities do when a domestic violence victim appears to accept her batterer back into her life, even when a restraining order is in place?

"Judges don't know what to do. Cops don't know what to do," said Victoria Lutz, director of the Battered Women's Justice Center at Pace University in White Plains, New York. "Most of the time women who are inviting [their abusers] back are doing so for a myriad of reasons."

In a January decision, a California appeals court held that one of those reasons is likely to be the victim's "learned helplessness"--her belief, after long-term abuse, that she cannot control events in her life.

"Once a women (or man) is conditioned to believe that she cannot control what happens to her, her perception becomes reality and she becomes passive, submissive, and 'helpless.' Even when shown she can control the situation, her behavior is not affected," Justice Elizabeth Baron wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. (People v. Gams, 60 Cal. Rptr. 2d 423 (App. Ct. 1997).)

The court ruled in the appeal of Augustino Gams after his conviction for stalking his ax-girlfriend, Linda Salcedo. He argued that Salcedo willingly maintained contact with him and even accepted an engagement ring after a court had issued a restraining order. Her behavior, he said, effectively nullified the order.

The court rejected this defense, calling Gams's story a "fictional version of events." Baron cited Salcedo's testimony that she called the police three times but was told they could not help her unless Gams became violent. She said she reluctantly accepted the ring and stopped contradicting him when he told people they were planning on getting married. Police finally intervened when Gams began threatening Salcedo after she tried once again to break off their relationship.

But even genuine consent to resume a relationship would be irrelevant, the court said, holding that a court order can be invalidated only by the court that issued it.

"To hold otherwise would place compliance with lawful court orders in the hands of the very people who often need the most protection from their own impotency," Baron wrote.

Lutz applauded the court for putting legal force behind the restraining order. In cases when victims consent to seeing the abuser in spite of an order, "many courts are nullifying the order of protection and saying if she doesn't want it, why should I use the power of this court to enforce it? Or worse, they say she's an accomplice to the violation."

But Lutz added that the court's discussion of learned helplessness "sends the wrong message." The notion that battered women are impotent is wrong, she said. "Most of the battered women I see have learned to survive better than the rest of us."

Fredrica Lehrman, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who represents domestic violence victims, said the court could have reached its conclusion without reference to learned helplessness. "The court may have wanted to red-flag that issue as one for other courts to be aware of," she said.

Lutz said the increasing discussion of battered woman syndrome inside and outside courtrooms may be encouraging judges to take a paternalistic attitude toward victims and creating the false impression that battered women are somehow mentally deficient.

But Lenore Walker--a Denver psychologist whose seminal 1979 book, The Battered Woman, was cited by the court--said learned helplessness is merely "a descriptive label" for behavior exhibited by battered women.

"If you expose somebody to repeated traumatic events, it's going to change the way they view the world and their competence in managing their lives," Walker said. "It's not a mental illness, it's just a behavioral truth."

Lehrman stressed that the debate over learned helplessness is not crucial to the issue of the legal validity of a court's restraining order.

"Whether this woman is impaired by learned helplessness may be a factor," she said. "But even if it were not a factor, even if she were perfectly capable of making the choice [to resume a relationship with her abuser], the order came from the court."