A collective sigh of sympathy rippled through the room when Abby J. Leibman, a longtime women’s rights advocate, revealed that she is the twin sister of a victim of domestic violence.
When Leibman said that her brother-in-law stabbed her sister 29 times — killing her while their young children cowered nearby — the 340 people in the room at “Creating Hope,” the 24th anniversary celebration for Shalom Bayit, gasped in unison.
“I know it’s difficult to hear,” Leibman said. “You have no idea how difficult it is to tell. But unless we make it real, it becomes an abstraction.”
Founded in 1992, Oakland-based Shalom Bayit is the first Jewish domestic violence agency in Northern California and one of the first of its kind in the country. Leibman is president and CEO of Los Angeles-based Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger and a founder of the California Women’s Law Center.
Before Leibman’s keynote address, Sen. Barbara Boxer received the 2016 Changing Lives Award. Boxer appeared via video and her son, Doug, accepted the award for her. The event was held May 17 at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco.
Linda Kalinowski, chair of Shalom Bayit’s advisory committee and Leibman’s college roommate, invited Leibman to tell her story at the event.
“This is a story our community needs to hear so they will truly understand not only the importance of Shalom Bayit’s work, but how much each of us can make a difference in how a victim of domestic violence should be treated and how a batterer must be held accountable,” Kalinowski said. “Abby’s story can also bring to light how whole families are victimized.”
In August 1995, after being married for 10 years, Nina Leibman told her husband, Kenneth Donney, that she wanted a divorce and that he needed to move out. The couple lived in Santa Cruz with son Philip, 7, and daughter Laura, 4. Nina Leibman held a doctorate in film, taught at college and was an author. Donney was a public interest lawyer and former federal prosecutor working as an administrator at Santa Clara University’s law school.
Donney refused to move. Nina Leibman filed for divorce in September, and he finally told her he would leave Oct. 27. Early that morning, Donney went into the den where his wife was sleeping, sat on her and stabbed her with a kitchen knife.
After Nina Leibman was dead, Donney called his father to say there had been an accident and then called 911. Police arrested him when they arrived. There was no trial, and Donney was sentenced to 16 years to life. His third parole hearing was held May 10, and he was denied parole until the next hearing, three years from now.
“Domestic violence murders are so difficult because they occur in the context of trust, and often of love and safety,” Abby Leibman said in an interview before the Shalom Bayit event. “In your own home, you feel safe, you feel comfortable and confident — and yet you also are incredibly vulnerable, and could be brutally murdered, as my sister was. That’s what makes this shocking.”
Leibman noted that in spite of experiencing shock when hearing her story, some people still have difficulty reconciling their expectations with reality.
“After Nina’s death, neighbors and people they socialized with would tell me that Ken was a loving father and husband — as though they needed more proof that he was not,” Leibman said. “That’s the big warning from this murder. There is a continuum of violence that starts before any physicality.”
Leibman added that women must be mindful of the signs, and not disregard someone’s need for control over a partner. “It’s too easy to say somebody loses his temper, but that’s not what it’s about,” she said. “When Nina would tell me Ken wouldn’t ‘allow’ her to do something, I would ridicule it, yet that was a sign of something that needed to be addressed.”
Though laws have changed, Leibman said what has not evolved is the idea that domestic violence is the victim’s fault. “We still think of this as different from violence inflicted by strangers, that somehow the victim is culpable,” she said. “Only Ken is responsible for my sister’s death. He could have controlled himself, and he did not.”
Leibman brought up her sister’s children as her own. “So many people stepped forward to help, and Temple Israel at Hollywood welcomed us with open arms, providing the spiritual support we were craving,” Leibman said. Laura, a graduate of New York University, is now a writer and an actor. Philip has a master’s degree in social work and works for child protective services in Los Angeles County.
Some 21 years after her sister’s murder, Leibman still has a big hole in her life, “a hole that nothing will ever fill,” she said. “Time teaches you how to live with the new reality, but I miss Nina every day.”
After Leibman’s talk, after the standing ovation, some in the audience still found it difficult to express their reactions. After a long silence, Marci Briskin of San Francisco said, “It was moving, so intense and powerful. I’m not happy she told her story, but I am thankful, because this is real, and it happens in our community.”