GA woman advocates for domestic violence survivors after serving 25 years in prison

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A mother who went to prison for killing her alleged abuser is advocating for other domestic violence survivors.

Attorneys with the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence say in many cases courts are not considering the history of violence a survivor has endured before finding them guilty.

In this case, the survivor says she has a second chance at life after getting paroled from a life sentence.

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“I felt numb. It was like all my limbs had locked up on me,” Latoya Dickens told Channel 2′s Ashli Lincoln.

It’s a day Dickens says she will never forget.

The moment that a Gwinnett County jury sentenced her to life in prison after being convicted of stabbing and killing her abusive husband.

“Despite everything I’ve been through, that was the last thing I wanted to happen,” she said.

After serving 25 years in a Georgia prison, she now sits as a free woman after a parole board granted her release in September.

“This abuse went on for a period of 14 years,” Dickens said.

She said she stabbed her husband after the two got into an argument that became physical.

“He got up and he shoved me to the sofa, and everything happened so fast, I remember calling 911,” she said.

“That day alone she tried to leave and he disabled her car,” Dickens’ attorney Janis Mann said.

Mann said despite testimony at the trial, her defense attorney at the time did not argue that her years of abuse could have led to her death.

“We wrote to the parole board for several years and highlighted the years of abuse that she experienced,” Mann said.

Mann, with the help of the Survivor Defense Project and the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence began to present to the state evidence of abuse that Dickens endured.

“I was eight months pregnant with my first child and he lifted me up and he slammed me off the porch,” Dickens said.

“Courts are really looking at one specific moment in time and that the law isn’t written in a way that we can consider context, circumstance, history,” Ellie Williams with the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence said.

In most cases, Williams said survivors of domestic violence are sentenced frequently and harshly.

“We’re certainly still lacking in the way that the law is structured and written,” Williams said.

Mann said 77% of domestic violence-related homicides occur when victims try to leave.

Numbers for the state show 49% of Georgia domestic violence fatalities involve relationships that began within the age range of 13 to 21.

Dickens met her then-17-year-old husband when she was just 13 years old.

“I don’t feel like I’ve ever been free,” she said.

Now that she’s out of prison, she says her mission is to help other domestic violence survivors who are currently incarcerated.

“25 years is not a short amount of time by no means, but it’s a blessing to have the opportunity to have a makeover, a redo,” she said.

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