A Question of Self-Defence: The women who kill men who abuse them
Professor Susan Edwards has been contemplating this question, society and the laws’ response, and the perpetrators of abuse and the victim who by turning defendant, survives, for several decades.
Her early work focused on rape and domestic violence supported by empirical research with the police and observing court trials at a time when sexual and physical violence against women was marginalized, considered outré and discussions about it threatening. One man feeling uncomfortable when told the subject of her Ph.D. tried to trivialize the generic importance of the work and to erase any suggestion that it could be a serious subject worthy of attention, with the question ”Oh, have you been raped”? In the 1980s and 1990’s few women reported rape or domestic violence and those who did found few cases recorded. A feature article in the Sunday Times 29 January 1995 headline read; ‘the myth of a nation of wife batterers’ the co-writers criticized her findings remarking that “the phenomenon of domestic violence has been egregiously misrepresented and ludicrously exaggerated”. There has always been a struggle to establish public recognition of domestic and sexual violence and homicide.
Focusing on intimate partner violence Edwards takes us back in history exploring the cases where women in self-preservation were driven to kill their domestic abusers. She charts the development of the law through the examination of the cases that were to become watersheds, concluding perhaps surprisingly that current law and justice whilst claiming to recognise women’s physical inequity with men, the dynamics of male violence against women and women’s entrapment, instead treats women harshly when they defend their lives whilst the operation of the law on self defence is disconnected from these realisations.
About the Speaker
Professor Susan S.M. Edwards joined Northumbria University as Professor of Law. She is currently an Associate Tenant, at Red Lion Chambers, London RLC Door Tenant Professor Susan Edwards writes for Counsel Magazine | Red Lion Chambers and a barrister with a full qualification certificate (currently not practicing). She has previously practiced in the criminal, family and civil courts.
Currently, she acts as an Expert witness and is instructed in cases which involve domestic abuse where the accused has acted in self defence against a violent abusive partner/defence is duress/compulsion where both history and impact of abuse is of relevance to mens rea, and mitigation in sentencing. She is cited at paras 30, 31, RT v The First Tier Tribunal (Social Entitlement Chamber) and Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority: [2016] UKUT 306 (AAC). Also cited in sentencing remarks in The Queen v D (R), 2013 R v D (R) – [2014] 1 LRC 629 (paras 4,10,19,20, 34) The Queen -v-D (R) (judiciary.uk).
Published in October 2025 in Counsel Magazine on Sean Combs, Coercive control and the expert witrness Susan Edwards writes for Counsel
Susan serves on the Board of Trustees for Advance Professor Susan Edwards - Advance Charity, a charity supporting women and young girls affected by domestic abuse.
She is a mentor for CARA (the Council for At-Risk Academics) Home (cara.ngo). Cara is a rescue mission for academics around the world who need urgent help to escape from discrimination, persecution, violence or conflict.
She is a member of the UK Guantanamo Network an alliance of UK activists and organisations dedicated to closing Guantanamo prison and securing fair trials or safe release for the men held there and a member of their APPG. Bar Council article on Wives and families of Guantanamo detainees
She is a member of the Criminal Bar Association and a member of the Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC). Bar Human Rights Committee of England & Wales – Promoting and protecting human rights through the rule of law and Co-authored a report for the BHRC with WHRIN: following a research scoping visit to Nepal “Witchcraft Accusation and Persecution in Nepal”, Country Report Launched at National Women’s Commission in Kathmandu, Nepal, 2014 http://www.whrin.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/2480903_nepal_report_FINAL.pdf.
Susan is Professor of Law (Emerita) University of Buckingham, where she served as Dean of Law for ten years, and University Dean of Research 2007-2018 with responsibility for post graduate students, and also Director of External Relations 2018-2020 Prof Susan Edwards | University of Buckingham. She was appointed as Professor in 2003.
Susan has spoken at the Criminal Bar Association events on domestic homicide and abuse. She has lectured in the UK, US, Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, Japan, Australia, Tasmania, the Middle East, Iran, Bahrain, amongst other countries and conducted empirical research on domestic abuse and homicide in the US (Portland Police Department, Maine). She has also contributed to work on Human Trafficking first with the Coalition Against Trafficking in the 1990's when funded by Safer Cities project and Nuffield Foundation to research the CJS reponse to 'prostitution; and more recently the Human Trafficking Foundation report ‘The Voice of British Survivors of Modern Slavery 2021’.
Susan has worked for over four decades to improve the law and the criminal justice system and human rights and justice, engaging with gender related issues including sexual exploitation, pornography, abuse and domestic abuse and sexual assault victims/survivors working with and training police, working with survivors and the CPS. She has trained police in the UK and served as consultant on the Metropolitan Police in London first Domestic Violence Working Party 1985 and later in 1992 following publication of her research on policing domestic violence in 1985 and 1989. Commissioned by Standing Together Standing Together she wrote the seminal work on implementing the Duluth Model in the UK. She served as project coordinator for four Home Office projects on enhancing prosecuting domestic violence in 2000 and was commissioned in 2002 to write a report for CPS London on 'Expert Witnesses' . She continues to work closely with the CPS and contrubtes to 16 Days of Activism. She served as Research Director for the charity 'Pornography and Violence Research Trust' and her research with the Obscence Publications Squad and then the Child Protection Unit in Scotland Yard pioneered changes in sentencing regarding child 'pornography' in 2000.
Susan has tutored post graduate students across the world including Umeå Centre for Gender Studies Sweden (2009-2011), and Women’s Human Rights Training Institute Bulgaria (2003-2006) providing sessions for advocates across Europe in gender-based ECHR claims. Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation Institute (bgrf.org).
Susan has written over 150 academic articles many peer reviewed and several books including: Female Sexuality and the Law (1981) Martin Robertson, Women On Trial 1984 MUP (Nominated for the American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholar Award), Policing Domestic Violence (1989) Sage, Sex and Gender in the Legal Process (1996) Blackstone Press, The Political Appropriation of the Muslim Body, Islamophobia Counter-Terrorism law and Gender( 2021) Palgrave, The Political Appropriation of the Muslim Body: Islamophobia, Counter-Terrorism Law and Gender | SpringerLink.
Editor and contributor to Gender Sex and the Law, Croom Helm (1985), Coauthored Family Law OUP 1st 2007,2nd 2009,3rd 2011,and 4th ed 2013. Coauthored and editor Blackstone’s Guide to the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. OUP (202)3. Blackstone's Guide to the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 - Susan Edwards, David Malone, Gillian Jones QC - Oxford University Press (oup.com).
Served as one of the specialist editors for Borrie and Lowe: The Law of Contempt 4TH ed (2010) Butterworth Ch 6 ‘Civil Contempt’ pp 123-253.
Coauthored Contemporary Family Law, Routledge (2025)
Voted as a Distinguished Alumna (University of Manchester General Assembly elected 2016 – 2019).
Her media work has included being part of the team (Atlantic Eye production) for the Channel Four programme 'Streetlegal' transmitted 1993. She has written opinion pages over the years for The Times Law Page, most recent 2019. and appears regularly commentating on legal matters in the news. She dissiminates her work widely and has acted as Chairperson for Westminister Forum and regular speaker for Public Policy Exchange, and several other fora and regularly contrubute to the Law Commission reform agendas Law Commission report on Sexual Offences Evidence
Member of several learned societies serves on the editorial board of four law journals. Formerly Editor of Denning Law Journal from 2003-2016.
