More than a Crime

About this book

One survivor's inside-out argument that domestic violence demands more than justice-it requires healing.In this memoir, Alli O'Malley takes readers inside an experience that rarely gets told. Not the sensationalized moments that make headlines, but the ordinary terror, the complicated love, and the invisible barriers that make leaving so much harder than outsiders imagine. O'Malley offers what she calls an inside-out perspective: the view from within, told with raw honesty and compassion by someone who has lived it. It's a perspective rarely found in the broader conversation about domestic abuse-one forged through her own journey from survivor to advocate, leader, and CEO of an intimate partner violence organization committed to breaking intergenerational cycles of abuse.More than a Crime is not simply a story of survival. It is an argument. O'Malley challenges the way we've been taught to think about domestic violence: as a criminal problem best solved through prosecution and punishment. She makes the case that justice and healing are not the same thing, and that confusing the two has left too many survivors behind. Her conclusion is both urgent and hopeful: domestic violence is not inevitable. It is preventable. And the systems built to respond to it will keep missing the mark until they learn to see survivors not as cases, but as people.Whether you're a survivor seeking your own way home, a loved one trying to help, or a professional working to change the systems meant to protect survivors and hold offenders accountable, More than a Crime invites you to rethink everything you believe about domestic violence and what true healing requires.