| Tracy Thurman v. City of Torrington | |||||||||
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United States District Court for the District of Connecticut |
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| Decided October 23, 1985 |
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| Holding | |||||||||
| Local police of the City of Torrington ignored domestic violence reports pertaining to the husband of Tracy Thurman and further failed to enforce a court ordered restraining order. The court further finds that the City of Torrington did not maintain a standard policy of legal discrimination against all women. | |||||||||
| Court membership | |||||||||
| Senior District Judge Blumenfeld | |||||||||
| Case opinions | |||||||||
| Laws applied | |||||||||
| Connecticut Family Violence Act of 1986 | |||||||||
Thurman v. City of Torrington, DC, 595 F.Supp. 1521 (1985) was a court decision concerning Tracey Thurman, a Connecticut homemaker who sued the city police department in Torrington, Connecticut, claiming a failure of equal protection under the law against her abusive husband Charles "Buck" Thurman. After Tracey Thurman was attacked, stabbed, and nearly killed by her husband in 1983, a subsequent civil lawsuit judged that the local police had ignored growing signs of domestic violence and had casually dismissed restraining orders and other legal bars to keep Buck Thurman away from his wife.[1]
The Thurman lawsuit brought about sweeping national reform of domestic violence laws, including the "Thurman Law" passed in Connecticut, making domestic violence an automatically arrestable offense, even if the victim does not wish to press charges.[2]
Tracy Thurman's story was later made into a 1989 television movie, entitled "A Cry for Help: The Tracey Thurman Story", starring Nancy McKeon as Tracey, Dale Midkiff as Buck, Bruce Weitz as Tracy's lawyer Burton Weinstein, and Philip Baker Hall as presiding Judge Blumenfeld.