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Today I thought, "If there's anything I accomplish today, let it be freeing Sabrina Fiaai from jail." Sabrina’s choice may
have saved her lifeI am not a person who condones violence. I don't know Sabrina. She's not a client of our AmeriCorps domestic violence project. So why is it so important to me that Sabrina be free?
On Feb. 7, Sabrina picked up a knife and killed her husband, the father of their four children. No one seems to dispute that Sabrina killed her husband. But that doesn't matter to me -- freeing Sabrina remains my focus.
She is being held in prison, not for a murder charge, but for an old contempt of court traffic violation. Sabrina is in jail for lack of $150 to post as bail.
At 9 o'clock this morning, I asked one of our AmeriCorps advocates to get every piece of available information about Sabrina, who had a long history of abuse at the hands of her husband. I kept saying, "We have to get her out of jail."
The advocate cautioned me, as she should have, that we really didn't have the whole story. She'd called the deputy prosecutor, who said Sabrina might be having some emotional problems and that they would hold her in custody for a while.
"Who wouldn't have emotional problems in her situation?" I thought, troubled by the separation from her children.
We called some people at the State Coalition Against Domestic Violence and they agreed to collect contributions to free Sabrina. We made arrangements to go down to the jail the next morning, with a domestic violence shelter advocate, to post bail for Sabrina.
I asked another colleague, a young man, if his mother would let him stay in jail over $150, and he said that he wasn't sure. Perhaps if he had murdered someone she would.
That hit home. It never even occurred to me that Sabrina had murdered anyone.
Yes, her husband had been killed and she wielded the knife but, in my mind, it was more akin to a death during a war than to a murder.
Moreover, where was Sabrina's mother or family? Why weren't they bailing her out? Where was her support system? I thought back to my own break-up with my first husband and to my own mother's words, "What did you do to drive him away?"
I could picture the household in which Sabrina lived, burned, beaten and scarred by her husband, while her four children probably looked on. She must have had to watch while he beat the children.
Sabrina's choice was not a good one, but I don't think there could have been a good choice. If I had any will and were in that situation, I might have done the same thing.
When it is a question of who survives and whether four children will still have a mother, Sabrina, like many of us -- if faced with a threat to our own lives and the lives of our children -- chose survival.
Now, I don't really know the facts of Sabrina's story, so you can take my words as the opinion of one. The only people who really know are those who lived in that house.
I do know, however, that Sabrina is alive -- unlike 74 other women in Honolulu who were killed by their husbands or boyfriends in the past six years.
After much healing, Sabrina Fiaai and her children will have a chance at recovery and some happiness. Sabrina may not be free for long, but she is alive.
Judy Sobin is executive director
of Volunteer Legal Services Hawaii.