O.J. Simpson Trial Served as a Landmark Moment for Domestic Violence Awareness

Denise Brown, the sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, cried on the witness stand as a picture she took on of a beaten Nicole was shown in court.

In December 1994, investigators from the Los Angeles County prosecutor’s office drilled open a safe deposit box that had belonged to Nicole Brown Simpson. In it, they found Polaroids of her with a battered face and letters from O.J. Simpson apologizing for abusing her.

“The message in the box was clear,” wrote Marcia Clark, the lead prosecutor in the bombshell trial of Mr. Simpson for Ms. Brown Simpson’s murder, in a book about the case. “‘In the event of my death, look for this guy.’”

These pieces of evidence were presented in a trial that captivated the nation, showing the public a pattern of abuse and control in horrifying detail.

“It was kind of like America was learning about domestic violence all at once,” said Stephanie Love-Patterson, a consultant for Connections for Abused Women and Their Children, an organization in Chicago that provides support for victims of domestic violence.

Almost 30 years later, the case has received renewed attention after Mr. Simpson’s death this week. After a monthslong trial in 1995, Mr. Simpson was acquitted of killing Ms. Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman. A civil trial later found him liable for their deaths.

His dramatic trial, which prompted national conversations about race, celebrity, policing and discrimination, also served as a landmark moment in America’s evolving understanding of domestic violence. Media coverage of domestic abuse surged afterward, and the fervent attention encouraged many abuse survivors to reach out for help, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Donations to women’s shelters poured in.

“The murder of Nicole Brown Simpson brought private violence into public view,” said Amanda Pyron, the executive director of the Network, an advocacy organization in Chicago. “It forced people to really reckon with their feelings on relationship violence and the role of law enforcement in keeping women safe.”

Federal data suggests that rates of intimate partner violence against women had been falling around the time of the Simpson trial and continued to fall, slowly but steadily, through most of the 1990s.

According to a 2023 report from the nonprofit Violence Policy Center, the rate of murders committed by men against women in the United States fell between 1996 and 2014, when around 1.1 out of every 100,000 women were killed. But it began increasing in 2015, with a sharper uptick during the pandemic, when lockdowns kept many women at home with their abusers, reaching a rate of 1.3 per 100,000 women in 2020. The vast majority of those women knew the men who killed them, the report said, and most of them had been in intimate partnerships.

Mr. Simpson’s trial rocked the nation in the 1990s. Before her death, Ms. Brown Simpson had tried to get the police to intervene multiple times, but they rarely took substantive action. In 1989, officers found her badly beaten and arrested Mr. Simpson. He was convicted of spousal abuse, but was let off with a fine and probation. The couple divorced in 1992, two years before Ms. Brown Simpson’s death. But in October 1993, Ms. Brown Simpson called 911, saying, “He’s back.” In June 1994, she was killed.

The Simpson case came at a time when attempts to raise awareness about domestic violence were already gaining traction, said Emily Sack, an expert on domestic violence at the Roger Williams University School of Law.

Mr. Simpson’s acquittal in the criminal trial was viewed by supporters of victims as a setback, but it also caused a powerful backlash that helped change public perception around domestic violence, Ms. Sack said.

Shortly after Ms. Brown Simpson’s death, the Violence Against Women Act gained final approval in Congress and became law, and her sister, Denise Brown, helped save it from budget cuts the following year. In recent years, some states have broadened their definitions of abuse, incorporating things like identity theft and the notion of coercive control, a form of manipulation that can be more subtle than physical abuse, into their legal definitions of domestic violence.

Since the trial, courts have been increasingly allowing evidence of a pattern of behavior to be admitted in domestic violence and sexual assault cases, legal experts said. In Mr. Simpson’s case, it was not clear at first whether prosecutors would be allowed to present what they had found in Ms. Brown Simpson’s safe deposit box. But the judge agreed with their argument that Mr. Simpson’s history of stalking and violence had shown motive.

The trial also drove home two important lessons, Ms. Sack said. One: Abuse does not necessarily end when a relationship does. And two: One’s public persona and private behavior do not always match.

“Abusers are some of the most ingratiating and charming people,” Ms. Sack said. “I think that was quite a revelation for people.”

But Ms. Love-Patterson said she was troubled by some of the takeaways from the trial. Some people blamed Ms. Brown Simpson for the abuse she endured, while for others, the swirl of fame and money surrounding the case made the Simpsons’ turbulent relationship seem like part of a distant world.

“There was so much focus on the celebrity of the situation that it didn’t narrow its way down to the reality of what happens for so many domestic violence survivors,” Ms. Love-Patterson said.

While the trial shed some light on domestic abuse, it also ended in the acquittal of a man who had been able to afford excellent legal representation. “It showed the mountain that victims are up against,” said Joanna Otero-Cruz, president of Women Against Abuse.

“Today, victims continue to have so much stacked against them,” Ms. Otero-Cruz added. “And unfortunately, in 30 years, I don’t think that has changed.”

The trial also placed the focus squarely on law enforcement and what it had done, or not done, to intervene. As a result, there was little attention on how to prevent violence in the first place. Federal funding would be more effective if it was funneled toward prevention initiatives, because so many victims of abuse do not want to involve the police, Ms. Love-Patterson said.

During and after the trial, a barrage of tell-all books and interviews scrutinized Ms. Brown Simpson’s behavior and private life, and did little to dispel sexist attitudes.

“It was a missed opportunity to address a culture that often views women as the property of their partners,” Ms. Pyron said. “Even now, we see a tolerance of violence against women persist, from Hollywood to sports arenas to communities across the country.”

Paige Flink worked at a domestic violence shelter in Dallas at the time of the trial. “No one knew what we did, and suddenly people knew what we did,” she said. At the same time, Mr. Simpson’s acquittal was “a gut punch” for the women she served.

“She had called for help,” Ms. Flink said of Ms. Brown Simpson. “If she couldn’t survive, how am I going to survive?”

Hope Woodson, 57, said she watched the Simpson trial thinking it was an open-and-shut case. “They had the evidence, the witness accounts, the 911 tapes, the photos — I honestly thought that he was going to go to jail,” she said.

Soon after the verdict, Ms. Woodson met a man who later abused her, and she stayed married to him for 10 years, she said. “I couldn’t talk to anybody,” she said. If the Simpson trial had raised awareness, it was not enough. “There was no #MeToo movement,” Ms. Woodson said.

If more attention had been paid at the time, she added, “there would have been countless lives saved.”

Jacey Fortin contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.