“Sin by Silence” spotlights domestic violence

Women are going to prison at an alarming rate. Over the last quarter century, they’ve represented the fastest-growing segment of America’s prison population, and of that entire group, nearly 80 percent are survivors of domestic violence. For many of these women, the path to prison started with abuse in the home and ends with a justice system that prohibits evidence of battery from being used in their own legal defense. A new documentary by director Olivia Klaus, Sin by Silence — premiering on Investigation Discovery Oct. 17 — focuses on the people behind those statistics, and shows how the law has often failed protect them.

Sin by Silence goes inside the California Institute for Women, where inmate and domestic violence survivor Brenda Clubine (pictured) created the first inmate-run support group for helping abused women, Convicted Women Against Abuse (CWAA). Clubine herself endured broken bones and skull fractures before ending up in prison for killing her husband, but once there, she discovered a lot of women who shared her experience of a relationship gone violent. At some point during her 15-year sentence, Clubine decided to give an identity to the group that met in the prison yard to discuss their stories and formed CWAA.

The stories of the women in Sin by Silence are varied, but at the heart, essentially the same. From LaVelma, who killed her pastor husband for the beatings he administered to Joanne, who, without money or a shelter to go to with her children, was forced time and again to return to the home where the abuse heaped upon her and her kids only escalated, they’re the stories of women who found themselves backed into a corner where the law and the community couldn’t — or wouldn’t — help them, and murder became a means of survival.