“Yeah, because we was fightin’,” she said to me, as if repeating it would convince me that it was a perfectly good explanation for why her boyfriend had punched her in the face and sprayed her with pepper spray.

“Yes,” I responded, equally frustrated, “but that’s not a good reason. Just because you were arguing doesn’t give him the right to punch you.”

I was trying to get through to her but she refused to listen. I continued: “It’s never okay for someone to punch you, regardless of whether or not you’re fighting. It’s never okay.”

“…But we was fightin’.”

“Ma’am, I know you was fightin’!!” I responded, giving myself a quizzical look for a second and then deciding in exasperation not to even bother correcting my grammar.

“Look, I don’t even know why use callin’ me, I TOLE them befoe that I didn’ wanna press charges.”

They never want to press charges.

Many victims of domestic assault even go so far as to blatantly and completely change their stories after they’ve called 911 and gotten themselves out of immediate danger. When a victim, crying, scared and hurt, picks up the phone to call the police, everything comes out – the punching, the hitting, the abuse. But a few hours later, when a lawyer calls from the DA’s Office to find out what happened, inevitably nothing, in fact, ever happened. “He didn’t even touch me,” they’ll say. “We was just arguin’, it was nothin’. I tole ‘em, I don’ wanna press charges.”

Sometimes the woman’s afraid of what her man might do to her if she goes through with the charges. Often the woman doesn’t have a job and can’t support herself or her children on her own, so no matter how violent her man is, she has no choice but to put up with him. In the worst cases, not only has the woman been a witness to domestic violence as a child, but has been abused by so many men outside her home as well that it’s all she knows.

I suppose what struck me about this case was the woman’s complete confidence in the fact that her boyfriend had done nothing wrong – that it was fundamentally acceptable and even expected for him to hit her given the circumstances of an argument. “We was fightin’,” she kept telling me. “It was because we was fightin’.”

I hung up the phone and leaned back in my chair, staring into nothing. I let out a long, silent sigh, disappointed and confused at the state of things I did not and would never fully understand.

I got up, walked down the hall to my boss’ office and told her how resolute the woman had been in her belief that what her boyfriend had done was not wrong.

“Everyone whose been on the street knows that an order of protection doesn’t mean shit in this town. A piece of paper isn’t going to stop a guy from showing up at her office, shooting her, and then shooting himself – actually I just had one of those last week,” she said nonchalantly, as if she was recalling tasting one of the new banana mango smoothies at Starbucks.

“Once in awhile we have female defendants come in, but it’s usually the other way around. See like this woman slashed her husband’s forehead with a knife,” she said, pointing to a photograph on her computer screen. I looked at the laceration and winced, but she just kept on talking: “When that happens, I don’ really feel bad. The guy’s usually done some bonehead thing and he’s getting what he deserves.”

“What, like cheating on her?” I asked, not quite understanding what she was referring to.

“Yeah, you know, whatever.”

Don’t get me wrong, if any guy ever cheated on me, he’d be out the door in a second, but I didn’t know it was okay to stab him for it. What’s with the double standard?

Not wanting to get into another “public service crime” discussion with my boss, who saw many of the murders in Brooklyn as, well, public service, since half the victims were criminals themselves, I walked back to my desk and got back to work.

After I finished writing up the complaint and turned in the case, I went back to my cubicle and sat down. I looked at my next case, held it in my hand for a second and then put it back down on the desk. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a crumpled up piece of paper and stared at it. Before handing in the case, I had scribbled down the victim’s phone number when no one was looking. I pushed my next case aside, picked up the phone and listened to the dial tone for a few seconds before punching in the digits.

Instead of ringing, the dial tone broke into Kanye’s “Stronger.” I bobbed my head along until the music ended abruptly and I heard her familiar voice – “Hello?”

“Yes, hi, it’s Olivia calling again from the District Attorney’s Office…”

For several seconds the phone line was silent. She had been pretty clear as to her position earlier and I was sure she was wondering why I was calling again. I was wondering why I was calling her again too - I was not allowed to contact a victim after closing the case.

“Ma’am, I just want you to know that you don’t have to decline to prosecute if you don’t want to. You don’t have to drop the charges.”

We were speaking woman to woman now, and she responded with a tone to match: “Look, I know what you tryin’ to say. But he’s a good person. An’ we sat down, we spoke about it, an’ he spoke to ma son. He’s a good person,” she repeated. “It just happened, ya know?”

No, I didn’t.