Sisters in Pain

Saturday, September 4, 2010 9pmProducer: Down to Earth ProductionsListen AgainMore InformationWhen a battered woman resorts to violence against her abuser, is she guilty of a crime? Or do her actions qualify as justifiable self-defense?In the Peabody Award-winning documentary Sisters in Pain, three formerly battered women share their riveting, intimate and honest stories of abuse, arrest, imprisonment, and, finally, freedom.These women are among the “sisters in pain,” 13 battered women in Kentucky who, in the 1980s and early 1990s, stood up to their brutally abusive husbands and boyfriends, and were subsequently found guilty of violent crimes.When Kentucky’s Governor Brereton Jones learned of the “sisters in pain” and their stories, he became convinced the women had acted in self-defense. In a controversial move, Jones granted all of the women clemency on his last day in office. This was only the third mass clemency for battered women in U.S. history.image: Quilt square made by the Sisters in Pain while in prison.