A courageous woman stood up in Guilderland Town Court on June 30.  She had been beaten by her live-in boyfriend, William Beer.

She told of the scars his beating made on her beautiful face that will haunt her for the rest of her life. She told of his previous felony arrests for similar outrages and appended those records to her statement.

She told of how she suffered from depression and insomnia, and of the vertigo and dizziness caused by her injuries. She told of how fearful she is still, two years later, in her own home, waiting like a “sitting duck” for the return of his violence.

We think justice may be deaf as well as blind. Her words were not heard.

The judge sentenced Beer to community service and fined him — no jail time. A spokesman for the state’s Office of Court Administration spoke for the Guilderland judge, in answer to our questions: “I will tell you only that the judge did consider that this defendant has no violent criminal history whatsoever, that this defendant has a job which he almost certainly would have lost, which would have been ancillary damage,” he said.

Beer had been offered a plea deal by the Albany County District Attorney’s Office that would have meant 60 days in jail and three years of probation. It also meant he would have to accept his guilt.

Beer chose a jury trial instead, rare in Guilderland. The victim felt re-victimized by the process but went through it nevertheless. She was determined to leave a record of his guilt so others would not suffer as she had.

The jury found Beer guilty of assault.

Where is the justice in his punishment? How does community service and a fine protect the victim? What message does it send to other men who abuse women? That ancillary damage, like the loss of the assailant's job, is more important than the brutal damage suffered by a beaten woman? What message does it send to abused women who are considering reporting the crime to police, a crime that is most often not reported?

“I guess, when dealing with some women, you don’t even know they’re insane until it’s too late,” Beer told our Guilderland reporter, Elizabeth Floyd Mair, after the sentencing.

Blaming the victim is a typical tactic for abusers. But it shouldn’t be society’s stance.

The statistics on domestic abuse are appalling. Violence against females is one of the most prevalent human rights violations worldwide, according to the United Nations Population Fund, which found “one in three women will experience physical or sexual abuse in her lifetime.” Such violence is not just in foreign places — places with dowry deaths, bride burning, or honor killings; it is right here in our midst.

We’re putting Floyd Mair’s story on our front page in the hopes that our readers will take notice. An onlooker in Guilderland Town Court on June 30 complained about having to listen to a “girlfriend whine about how much she hates her boyfriend.” A man sitting with Beer said repeatedly as the victim read her statement — without being stopped by the judge — “She’s crazy.” This attitude must change if we want to stop the rising toll of abuse — leading to murder as it escalates.

Between 2001 and 2012, during the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, 6,488 American troops were killed. In that same time, 11,766 women were murdered by current for former male partners — almost double the number.

Our newspaper, like those across the country, writes moving tributes on fallen soldiers. Our society has ceremonies — from solemn services to grand parades and cross-state runs, to honor them. We name streets and buildings for them.

But we are silent, by and large, about the massacred women. We need to hear their stories and feel their pain. If we notice bruises on a friend, we need to ask and offer help. We need to support services and specialized courts that will help abused women — and abused men, too — break the cycle. Children who witness domestic abuse are more likely to perpetuate it.

The cost of intimate partner violence in the United States, according to a report from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, exceeds  $5.8 billion per year — $4.1 billion for direct medical and health-care services, and $1.8 billion for loss in productivity.

The Guilderland victim had trouble working after her beating as she suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome. But the financial costs pale before the emotional costs.

She says she felt some clients who knew about the assault withdraw. That’s why we’ve withheld her name — our society punishes victims. She has nothing to be ashamed of. We do.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer