Keshia Golden was eight months pregnant when her baby shower, thrown to celebrate the daughter she was carrying, ended in violence. Ms. Golden says that hours after the guests left, her boyfriend, Calvin Sidney, slammed her head into the kitchen counter, over and over. She says she grabbed a knife from that same counter and stabbed him once, to keep herself and her unborn child alive.
Ms. Golden was slapped with a first-degree murder charge in Mr. Sidney’s death up in Cook County Jail on $2 million bail, facing the possibility of giving birth behind bars until a community group scraped together the money to post her bond.
Police had been called to the couple’s home more than 50 times before that night. Advocates point to Ms. Golden’s case as proof that the system keeps failing women who kill the men who beat them.
