A Saga of Spouse Abuse

Sarah Buel may be our best weapon against domestic violence.

By Hara Estroff Marano, published on May 01, 1996 - last reviewed on July 08, 2009

Whatever else American culture envisions of petite blondes, it doesn't expect them to end up as social revolutionaries. But just that turn of fate has brought Sarah Buel to Williamsburg, Virginia, from suburban Boston, where she is assistant district attorney of Norfolk County. To a gathering of judges, lawyers, probation and police officers, victim advocates, and others, she has come to press an idea that meets persistent resistance to explain why and, perhaps more importantly, precisely how domestic violence should be handled, namely as the serious crime that it is, an assault with devastating effects against individuals, families, and communities, now and for generations to come.

Buel, 41, a speed talker -- there is, after all, so much to say -- tells them what Los Angeles prosecutors failed to explain in the O. J. Simpson case: how batterers cannily dodge responsibility for their own actions, as if other people sneak into their brains and ball their fingers into fists; how they are deft at shifting the blame to others, especially their mates; how they watch and stalk partners, even those under the protection of the court, and especially those who have separated or divorced. Instead of holding up Simpson as the poster boy for domestic violence, the California trial let him get away with doing what batterers almost always do -- put on a great public face and portray themselves as victims.

The judges and cops and court officers pay attention to Buel because domestic violence is a daily hassle that takes a lot out of them. And if there's one thing Buel knows, its how batterers manipulate the law enforcement system. They listen because Buel has that most unassailable credential, an honors degree from Harvard Law School. But mostly they listen because Buel has been on the receiving end of a fist.

"Sometimes I hate talking about it," she confides. "I just want people to see me as the best trial lawyer." But, as Deborah D. Tucker says, "she grabs them by the heart." Tucker, head of the Texas Council on Family Violence and chairman of the national committee that pushed the Violence Against Women Act into the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill, explains: "She gets people to feel what they need to feel to be vulnerable to the message that domestic violence is not we/they. Any of us can become victimized. It's not about the woman. It's about the culture."

Certainly Buel never had any intention of speaking publicly about her own abuse. It started accidentally. She was in a court hallway with some police officers on a domestic violence case. "See, a smart woman like you would never let this happen," the chief said gesturing her way. And in an instant Buel made a decision that changed her life irrevocably, and the lives of many others. "Well, it did happen," she told him, challenging his blame-the-victim tone. He invited her to train his force on handling domestic violence. "It changed things completely I decided I had an obligation to speak up It's a powerful tool."

It has made her a star, says psychologist David Adams, Ed. D. By speaking from her own experience, Buel reminds people that law can be a synonym for justice. In conferences and in courts, she has gotten even the most cynical judges to listen to battered women -- instead of blaming them. "I am amazed at how often people are sympathetic as long as the victim closely resembles Betty Crocker. I worry about the woman who comes into court who doesn't look so pretty. Maybe she has a tattoo or dreadlocks. I want judges to stop wondering, 'What did she do to provoke him?'" Sarah Buel is arguably the country's sharpest weapon against domestic violence.

Buel finishes her talk, and in the split second before the audience jumps to its feet cheering, you can hear people gasp "Whew!" Not because they're tired of sitting, but because in her soft but hurried tones, the prosecution of batterers takes on a passionate, even optimistic, urgency. It's possible, she feels, to end domestic violence, although not by prosecution alone. Buel does not dwell on herself as victim but transmutes her own experience into an aria of hope, a recipe for change, "so that any woman living in despair knows there's help."

Not like she knew. She herself was clueless.

One of five children, Buel was born in Chicago but moved endlessly with her family from the age of four. Her father, an auto mechanic fond of drink, always felt success lay elsewhere. Her mother, a Holocaust refugee who fled Austria as a child, went along selflessly -- she didn't know how to speak up," says Buel which fueled her own desire to do so.

In the seventh grade, Buel was put on a secretarial track. "I was told I wasn't smart enough. So I refused to learn how to type." When she was 14, her parents divorced. Rather than choose which one to live with (her siblings split evenly), Buel headed for New York.

She went to school -- at first -- while working as a governess. For the first time, she saw television and while watching Perry Mason decided "this is what I want to do." The next year Buel bounced around to different schools and families including her mother's. "I went home for three months, but it was too different," she recalls.