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167 U. Pa. L. Rev. 399 (2018-2019)
Discounting Women: Doubting Domestic Violence Survivors' Credibility and Dismissing Their Experiences

handle is hein.journals/pnlr167 and id is 409 raw text is: ARTICLE DISCOUNTING WOMEN: DOUBTING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SURVIVORS' CREDIBILITY AND DISMISSING THEIR EXPERIENCES DEBORAH EPSTEINt & LISA A. GOODMANtt In recent months, we've seen an unprecedented wave of testimonials about the serious harms women all too frequently endure. The #MeToo moment, the #WhylStayed campaign, and the Larry Nassar sentencing hearings have raised public awareness not only about workplace harassment, domestic violence, and sexual abuse, but also about how routinely women survivors face a Gaslight-style gauntlet of doubt, disbelief and outright dismissal of their stories. This pattern is particularly disturbing in the justice system, where women face a legal twilight zone: laws meant to protect them and deter further abuse often fail to achieve their purpose, because women telling stories of abuse by their male partners are simply not believed. To fully grasp the nature of this new moment in gendered power relations-and to cement the significant gains won by these public campaigns-we need to take a full, considered look at when, how, and why the justice system and other key social institutions discount women's credibility. We use the lens of intimate partner violence to examine the ways in which women's credibility is discounted in a range of legal and social service system settings. First, judges and others improperly discount as implausible women's stories of abuse, t Professor and Co-Director of the Domestic Violence Clinic, Georgetown University Law Center. tt Professor, Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology, Lynch School of Education, Boston College. We are indebted to Kiel Brennan-Marquez, Deborah Brake, Ronit Barkai, Andrew Budzinski, Rachel Camp, Gillian Chadwick, Elizabeth Clendenen, Courtney Colgan, Courtney Cross, Valerie Druckenmiller, Nora Dwyer, Carolin Guentert, Courtney Gray, Shameka Gregory, Ellen Gutowski, Margaret Johnson, Julie Kahn-Schaye, Jasmine Khalfani, Ayesha Khan, Laurie Kohn, Tammy Kuennen, Chris Lehmann, Margo Lindauer, Ester Serra Luque, Mithra Merryman, Jane Stoever, Robin West, and Ellen Wilbur for their insightful contribution and comments on earlier drafts of this Article. We would like to thank Helen Hailes, Briana Hauser, Andrea Muto, and Lauren Ruvo for their valuable research assistance. We dedicate this article to our daughters, Rachel and Zanny, whose courageous refusal to internalize the unjust credibility discounts and dismissals they have encountered inspired our efforts to move this conversation forward. (399)

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