InvestigateWest Cites Widener Law Commonwealth Professor Michal Buchhandler-Raphael on When the Law Should Excuse Abused Parents
Widener University Commonwealth Law School Professor Michal Buchhandler-Raphael was recently interviewed by Kaylee Tornay for an InvestigateWest report examining "failure-to-protect" laws, the statutes that can hold a parent, usually a mother, criminally liable for failing to stop abuse committed by someone else in the home. The piece links to her forthcoming article, "Excusing Abused Parents," set to be published in the Ohio State Law Journal in 2027, which critiques the criminal legal system for ignoring a parent's own history of abuse when weighing their culpability. She proposes a designated affirmative defense that would account for trauma and reasonable fear, one that could absolve a parent of criminal liability if they believed that intervening would lead to serious harm to themselves or their child.
The article builds on Buchhandler-Raphael's broader body of scholarship on the relationship between victimization and offending, which draws on behavioral psychology to argue for expanding legal defenses available to domestic violence survivors caught up in the criminal legal system. At Widener Law Commonwealth, she teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Evidence and Family Law.
Her scholarship recently earned her the law school's 2026 Douglas E. Ray Excellence in Faculty Scholarship Award, one of Widener Law Commonwealth's highest academic honors, for her article "Police Minimalism in Domestic Violence," published in the Arizona State Law Journal.