She had called the police on him five times. Filed for protective orders more than once. Walked into an emergency room with a swollen face and quietly begged a nurse for help while he waited outside in the car. None of it was enough to stop what happened on December 17, 1991 — and none of it was enough, later, to keep her out of prison either.
Four Years of Violence, and No Way Out That Worked
Kim Dadou was 25 years old, working a job she loved as a respite counselor for people with severe disabilities, when her relationship with Darnell Sanders turned into something she couldn't escape. He was a large man — six feet tall, around 250 pounds — and by Dadou's own account, charming and romantic in the relationship's early days. That didn't last.
Over roughly four years together, the violence became routine. A slap in front of her mother. A beating triggered by nothing more than being a few minutes late. Dadou had Sanders arrested five separate times for abusing her. None of the arrests led anywhere. She sought restraining orders more than once; she's said he always managed to turn the narrative around, making her look like the aggressor instead of him.
On one occasion, she went to an emergency room with her face swollen and the taste of blood in her mouth, while police officers happened to be standing nearby in the triage area. When a nurse asked what happened, Dadou's answer was blunt: she didn't need treatment first, she needed a bathroom, because he was waiting outside in the car and he would kill her if anyone intervened the wrong way.
The Night Everything Changed
On the night of December 17, 1991, Sanders pulled up outside her mother's house in Rochester, New York. It was the middle of winter, snow everywhere from a recent storm. Despite everything, Dadou was glad to see him — she's said she genuinely hoped things might finally get better between them. She ran inside to grab air freshener for his car, which reeked of weed laced with cocaine, then got in beside him.
They started kissing. Then he wanted more than that, and she said no.
What followed escalated fast. He hit her in the face. He began to strangle her, putting his full weight against her as he did it, telling her plainly that this was the end. She reached under the passenger seat for a gun she knew he kept there.
She shot him six times.
Sanders's body was found the next day, frozen in a collapsed snowbank.
A Trial That Didn't Hear Her Side
Dadou was charged with first-degree manslaughter. On her lawyer's advice, she didn't testify in her own defense — a decision she's since said she regrets, given how the trial unfolded without her voice in it. The judge ruled that the evidence of years of documented abuse — police reports, hospital records, shelter records, even her own diary — was too prejudicial to be admitted.
Protesters stood outside the courthouse during her sentencing with signs reading "Bring justice to battered women: Free Kim Dadou." It didn't change the outcome. In October 1992, a jury found her guilty. She was sentenced to eight to twenty-five years.
Seventeen Years, Five Denials
Dadou spent more than six thousand days in prison. She kept out of trouble the entire time, earned two college degrees — in psychology and English literature — and ran the prison's welding unit. None of it mattered to the parole board, which denied her release five separate times before finally letting her go in 2008, after seventeen years.
She was 42 when she walked out.
Turning a Sentence Into a Cause
Rather than disappear back into private life, Dadou — now known publicly as Kim Dadou Brown — became one of the central voices behind New York's Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, a law aimed at giving judges room to hand down shorter sentences, or alternatives to prison entirely, for survivors who harm or kill their abusers in self-defense. She helped draft the bill while still incarcerated and has spent the years since giving speeches, working with advocacy groups, and pushing state lawmakers to pass it. The law has since been enacted in New York.
Her case and her advocacy work were later featured in the documentary And So I Stayed, which follows several women navigating exactly the bind she describes: punished for protecting themselves, then punished again by a system reluctant to believe their account of why they had to.
Today, Brown works as a customer service representative for the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Rochester. She's spoken publicly about meeting her wife, Annie Bell Brown, in the years following her release.
Asked why the diary entry the court found so damning — a passage about seeking comfort from someone else while Sanders was actively abusing her — should have mattered as much as it did, her response has stayed consistent over the years: writing in a journal while being beaten doesn't make the beating disappear.
Sources
She killed her abuser before he could kill her: After 17 years locked up, she's taking on justice system — Salon (originally published by Narratively) https://www.salon.com/2017/01/07/former-inmate-who-killed-her-abuser-takes-on-the-system_partner/
She Killed Her Abuser Before He Could Kill Her—Then Served 17 Years. Now She's Taking on the System — Narratively https://narratively.com/she-killed-her-abuser-before-he-could-kill-her-then-served-17-years-now-shes-taking-on-the-system/
Criminal: "Rochester, 1991" — WUNC https://www.wunc.org/arts-culture/2017-03-17/criminal-rochester-1991
'Alive, but still not free' — Prism Reports https://prismreports.org/2021/10/01/alive-but-still-not-free/
When Survivors Are the Criminals — DomesticShelters.org https://www.domesticshelters.org/articles/true-survivor-stories/when-survivors-are-the-criminals