Brigitte Harris case

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Brigitte Harris
Born (1981-06-06) June 6, 1981 (age 43)
Staten Island, New York, U.S.
OccupationFormer JFK Airport security guard
Criminal statusIncarcerated at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. Released on August 13, 2012.
Conviction(s) Second-degree manslaughter
Criminal penalty5 to 15 years in prison

Brigitte Harris (born June 6, 1981) is an American woman from Queens, New York, who was convicted of manslaughter in the killing and castration of her father, Eric Goodridge, in her Rockaway apartment. [1] Both Harris and her sister, Carleen Goodridge, claimed to have been raped and sexually abused by their father since childhood. [2] Due to her abuse allegations, Brigitte received an outpouring of support from public figures including U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and state senators Diane Savino and Eric Adams. [2] [3] Harris was sentenced to five to fifteen years in prison, [1] but was released after serving three years.

Contents

Early life

Brigitte Harris was born on June 6, 1981, in Staten Island, New York, to Liberian immigrant parents. She lived in an apartment in Park Hill with her mother until age 2, at which point she was abandoned by her mother and subsequently moved in with her father, Eric Goodridge, in Bay Shore, Long Island. [4] When her father later moved back to his home country, Brigitte moved around with relatives. Harris reports being physically abused by her grandmother and sexually abused by a cousin. [3] During a family trip to Liberia, Harris confronted her mother about the abuse at Eric's hands, but Eric denied the allegations and claimed that his daughter was mentally ill. [2] Harris moved out at age 17 and, at the time of the incident, was working as a security guard at John F. Kennedy International Airport. [3]

Crime

After several years of estrangement from her father, Harris was contacted by her sister, Carleen Goodridge, who claimed that Eric wanted to talk to them. When Harris arrived, she saw one of her nieces sitting on Eric's lap, leading to an argument with Carleen considering his past abuse of the sisters when they were children. Eric informed Harris that he had decided to take his granddaughters with him back to Liberia against their will.

On July 28, 2007, Harris confronted Eric in her Rockaway apartment and attempted to convince him not to take the girls. After the conversation became heated, Harris handcuffed her father to a chair, gagged him with a towel to prevent him from screaming, and throttled him to death. She also cut off his penis using a scalpel; investigators believed that he was already dead when this happened. [5] She later threw the severed penis under the Rockaway Boardwalk in Far Rockaway. [4] Upon dialing 9-1-1 and informing the operator of Eric's condition, Harris claimed that she was on her way to the police station, but never showed up. [2] Instead, she contacted Carleen and told her what she had done; Carleen advised her to come to her home instead of turning herself in. When Harris arrived, Carleen called an ambulance. After seeing Harris with the scalpel in hand and still in shock, the sisters decided to check Harris into the Richmond University Medical Center psychiatric ward. [3]

Carleen hired defense attorney Arthur L. Aidala to represent Harris, [2] who subsequently told him about the sexual abuse she and her sister suffered by Eric. She explained how, in some African cultures, fathers are entitled to taking their daughters' virginity: "He said he was doing it because he loves me and that is how fathers show love to their daughters," Brigitte said. Carleen admitted that she was sexually abused by Eric as well, but had been too afraid to say something. She set up a website called savebridget.com to raise money for her sister's legal defense. [6]

Ultimately Aidala, a highly respected attorney who normally charges a top fee, believed in Brigitte Harris's case so strongly that he took it on pro bono, and even convinced experts who testified in her defense to waive their fees as well. [7]

Investigation

After being discharged from the psychiatric ward on August 16, 2007, Harris was charged with second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter [8] and was held at Rikers Island. [1] Harris, who had referred to herself as "Lady Vengeance" and "The Original Dark Angel" on her MySpace page, [8] claimed that she had not intended to kill her father. [4] "I felt that I had to stop him," "take away his weapon". [4] [9]

Trial

Two years after her arraignment for second-degree murder, Harris went to trial in September 2009. Testifying in her own defense, Harris stated that she had researched the 1993 castration case of John and Lorena Bobbitt. [9] Prosecutors maintained that Harris' actions towards her father showed premeditation. [9] Harris argued that her motive for the killing was not revenge, but an act to prevent Goodridge from taking his granddaughters to Liberia and likely molesting them.

On September 30, 2009, the jury found Harris guilty of the lesser included offense of second-degree manslaughter. One juror reported that, "None of us felt that she deserved to get any murder charges or anything. So we decided on second-degree manslaughter." [10] Despite jury letters, Queens Supreme Court Judge Arthur Cooperman sentenced Harris to the maximum of five to fifteen years in prison. [4] After serving three years, she was released on parole on August 13, 2012.

Aftermath

Harris has reiterated that she did not intend to kill her father, and expressed a desire to work with the advocacy group STEPS to End Family Violence when she was released from prison. [4] Her case was profiled on the Oxygen Network series Snapped in November 2010. The program features interviews from Harris, her attorney, Arthur L. Aidala, and her supporters. Her case was later profiled on the Investigation Discovery (ID) program Deadly Women in the episode "Parents' Peril". [11] Her case was also profiled on the TV One program Payback, with Harris's name serving as the eponymous title of the first season's second episode.

See also

Related Research Articles

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Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which a male loses use of the testicles: the male gonad. Surgical castration is bilateral orchiectomy, while chemical castration uses pharmaceutical drugs to deactivate the testes. Castration causes sterilization ; it also greatly reduces the production of hormones, such as testosterone and estrogen. Surgical castration in animals is often called neutering.

In criminal law, irresistible impulse is a defense by excuse, in this case some sort of insanity, in which the defendant argues that they should not be held criminally liable for their actions that broke the law, because they could not control those actions, even if they knew them to be wrong. It was added to the M'Naghten rule as a basis for acquittal in the mid 20th century.

The abuse defense is a criminal law defense in which the defendant argues that a prior history of abuse justifies violent retaliation. While the term most often refers to instances of child abuse or sexual assault, it also refers more generally to any attempt by the defense to use a syndrome or societal condition to deflect responsibility away from the defendant. Sometimes the concept is referred to as the abuse excuse, in particular by the critics of the idea that guilty people may use past victimization to diminish the responsibility for their crimes.

Castration anxiety is an overwhelming fear of damage to, or loss of, the penis—a derivative of Sigmund Freud's theory of the castration complex, one of his earliest psychoanalytic theories. The term refers to the fear of emasculation in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phallic stage</span> Freudian psychosexual development

In Freudian psychoanalysis, the phallic stage is the third stage of psychosexual development, spanning the ages of three to six years, wherein the infant's libido (desire) centers upon their genitalia as the erogenous zone. When children become aware of their bodies, the bodies of other children, and the bodies of their parents, they gratify physical curiosity by undressing and exploring each other and their genitals, the center of the phallic stage, in the course of which they learn the physical differences between the male and female sexes and their associated social roles, experiences which alter the psychologic dynamics of the parent and child relationship. The phallic stage is the third of five Freudian psychosexual development stages: (i) the oral, (ii) the anal, (iii) the phallic, (iv) the latent, and (v) the genital.

The castration complex is a concept developed by Sigmund Freud, first presented in 1908, initially as part of his theorisation of the transition in early childhood development from the polymorphous perversity of infantile sexuality to the ‘infantile genital organisation’ which forms the basis for adult sexuality. The trauma induced by the child’s discovery of anatomical difference between the sexes gives rise to the fantasy of female emasculation or castration.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electra complex</span> Jungian psychological concept

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Zambito, Thomas (November 7, 2009). "Black Friday deals for Target, H&M, Forever21, Old Navy, Radio Shack and more". Daily News. New York. Archived from the original on June 14, 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Brigette Harris". Archived from the original on 2012-04-02. Retrieved 2013-10-21.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Arinde, Nayaba (2012-08-09) [2007]. "Senator to hold meetings in wake of Queens incest slay". New York Amsterdam News. Vol. 98, no. 33. p. 3. 26234096. Archived from the original (DOC) on 2013-10-21. Retrieved 2013-10-21– via EBSCOHost.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Spencer, Peter N. (2009-11-08). "Childhood hell, then revenge -- as described by Brigitte Harris". silive.com. Retrieved 2013-10-21.
  5. ↑ "Murder-Castration Was Revenge, Cops Think". CBS News . 31 July 2007.
  6. ↑ "Helping Brigitte Harris: savebridget.com Set up to Raise Funds for Legal Defense". Coalition of Concerned Liberians Forum. 2007-08-02. Archived from the original on 2012-04-02. Retrieved 2013-10-21.
  7. ↑ https://resident.com/interviews/2016/03/28/56216-2
  8. 1 2 "Dark Angel'Charged In Father's Slaying". The Wave. 2007-08-24. Archived from the original on 2013-10-21. Retrieved 2013-10-21.
  9. 1 2 3 Zambito, Thomas (September 22, 2009). "Sexually abused killer Brigitte Harris gets 5-15 years for penis-severing death of dad". Daily News. New York. Archived from the original on June 14, 2012.
  10. ↑ "Jury Returns Guilty Verdict In Brigitte Harris Trial". NY1 News. New York City, New York. 2009-09-30. Archived from the original on 2012-10-05. Retrieved 2013-10-21.
  11. ↑ "DEADLY WOMEN | Parents Peril | S6E2". Investigation Discovery. 19 October 2015. Retrieved 3 March 2017.
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