By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—A listing in The San Diego Union-Tribune's weekly television magazine caught my eye. It told about the Arts & Entertainment network's  premiere last night of the documentary, "Abused," detailing the case of Susan Greenberg, who shot and killed her abusive "boyfriend"  in 1987.

With the principal in the case having such a name as "Greenberg," I thought the show might deal with an issue that the Jewish community hates to consider: that domestic abuse may run as rampant in our community as it does throughout American society.

The circumstances surrounding Greenberg's life did not match my expectations.  Nevertheless, the tightly edited documentary was well worth the hour of viewing time. It showed points and counterpoints as a defense team and a prosecutor debated whether Greenberg had been wrongly convicted because "battered woman's syndrome" was not a permissible defense in California in 1987 as it is now.  The documentary so well represented both sides of the argument that until Placer County Superior Court Judge J. Richard Couzens announced his  verdict, in favor of Greenberg, I had no idea which way the judge would go.

Greenberg was the adopted child of Irving and Beverly Greenberg of Atlanta.  According to her testimony, at the age of 6, she was forced by a neighbor boy who was babysitting her to perform fellatio on him, and told by the young man that if she ever told her parents they would not allow  her to remain in their family. She believed him.

A psychologist, Nancy Kaser-Boyd, upon whom the defense team relied, indicated that this incident and her learning disabilities contributed to Greenberg's low self-esteem, which expressed itself later in life in such self-destructive behaviors as drug use and prostitution. Her parents thought that "tough love" was the answer: either she could conform herself to proper standards, or she could leave their home.  Without hesitation, she walked out and was picked up, while hitchhiking, by a truck driver.  He took her to Oklahoma, where he turned her over to Richard Turner Jr., the man she ultimately shot to death in California.

The hearing tried to peer behind closed doors into what had happened between a man and a woman in the privacy of their bedroom 15 years before.  Turner was dead so he couldn't testify, and Deputy Dist. Atty. Peggy Turner (no relation) pounded away at the theme that Greenberg had changed her story so many times—that her testimony at the hearing was so contradictory to what she had said at the time of her arrest—that no reliance could be placed on anything that she said.  Everything might be a fabrication.

The case therefore contested the importance of some of the physical evidence—semen on the sheets, the large number of shots Greenberg fired into Turner—and the accounts from acquaintances of what kind of people Greenberg and Turner were.  Turner carried around guns, said that he lived by his own "golden rule"—he who has the gold, rules—and had told his brother and friends that Greenberg couldn't be trusted out of his sight.  Turner's former stepmother, who had been sentenced to prison for killing Turner's father—whom, she said, had threatened her children by a previous marriage—lent some weight to the defense's theory that  abuse was the norm in the Turner family.

The prosecution elicited from friends and coworkers that Turner was an easy man to work for, that he was kind to them, and was especially kind to his dogs, which he loved. This prompted Len Tauman to comment in a strategy session with lead defense lawyers Robert Klein and Doug Carden that Tauman's mother, a Holocaust survivor, used to observe with some bitterness how nice the guards were to their dogs. "Patting the dog" is no indication of a way one human will treat another.

The descriptions of what Turner did to Greenberg—his contempt for her as a human being, his sadism, his sexual perversion—made one think of Nazis who, in the treatment of Jews if not their dogs, were unaccountable for their actions, at least until after World War II.  Greenberg testified that Turner beat her, tied her up, forced her to lie in her own excrement, showed her an open grave and told her that's where he would bury her, and forced foreign objects, including his gun, into her vagina and anus.

At one point, however, Turner paid for a round trip ticket for Greenberg to visit her parents, who had since moved to North Carolina.  Why did she not simply stay with them, was the pertinent question of the deputy district attorney.  Greenberg  responded that Turner said now that he knew where her parents lived, he would kill them if she did not return.  Kaser-Boyd opined it is not unusual for victims of domestic abuse to remain under the control of their abusers, even at great distances, so thoroughly frightened are they.

The shooting occurred after the couple moved to Placer County in Northern California.  Judge Couzens was unwilling to believe Greenberg's story in every detail, and said he could not therefore support a finding of innocence.  However, the semen on the bed and the repeated number of times that the gun had been fired, suggested to him that Greenberg had been forced to have sexual relations against her will. He said voluntary lovemaking does not so quickly turn to such pronounced violence.  Therefore, he said, rather than murder in the first degree, Greenberg was guilty of manslaughter, a crime for which she had already served the requisite amount of prison time.  The district attorney's office appealed the judge's ruling, but it was sustained by a higher court. 

Freed from prison, Greenberg moved to North Carolina, where she is engaged in the difficult task of rebuilding her life.  As the documentary was being wrapped up, she was working as a dog-walker, not a very satisfying job for her, but a job nevertheless.  She expressed the hope that now that people know what she went through, they will accept her into the community.

Any good documentary will leave you thinking, and this one made me wonder how much any of us know about the youngsters we engage to serve as babysitters to our children. Would Greenberg's terrible life saga been avoided if her parents didn't innocently entrust her in the neighbor boy's care?  It is a very sobering thought.