About - Free Battered Texas Women

Our Story

Our Cofounder & Executive Director Dr. Cathy Marston birthed the idea of FBTW from inside the Texas prisons, where she served 9 years related to acting under duress from abuse as she advocated for criminalized abuse survivors from the inside. When she came home in 2014, she met our Cofounder & Board Treasurer US Army (Ret.) SFC Cheryl Craig, MA, who is also a formerly incarcerated survivor who served 90 days in prison for acting in self-defense. FBTW’s mission is rooted in what Cathy and Cheryl needed as criminalized survivors but didn’t have: creating survivor-advocates is the heart of our work.

FBTW presented 7 public education events from July 2024 to July 2025 – including our exhibit of 4 formerly incarcerated survivors, Acting Under Duress, Surviving With Resilience. Since 2017, the 1^st Unitarian Universalist Church of San Antonio has been the site of annual holiday mailing parties to our incarcerated and released sisters. Most Januarys since 2017, we host a panel or film screening for Dream Week San Antonio.

Our Values

We hope to continue to spread love, hope & advocacy skills. We will continue working to get women out of prison and advocating for stopping arrests of survivors and clearing their names. We will be known for making a difference in changing how women who are convicted of “domestic violence offenses” are thought of: the humanity of these survivors will be seen with the context of their actions under duress. We want to challenge the violent/nonviolent dichotomy in criminal legal system reform, as well. Ideally, the police would never again arrest a survivor who acted under duress from abuse and our allies in reform would include survivors who acted under duress in all policy – instead of carving out only for persons convicted of “nonviolent” offenses.

Our Story

Our Values

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month