Mona Evans fled to North Carolina to escape an abusive relationship, only to find herself serving four and a half years in prison for protecting her child from abuse. Her harrowing experience—from dehumanizing conditions in multiple North Carolina prisons to struggling with reentry—reveals a devastating truth about America’s criminal legal system.
Today, as Community Advocacy Director at Benevolence Farm, one of the state’s few underfunded reentry programs for women, Evans witnesses how her story mirrors a national crisis. Women’s incarceration rates have surged 585% in two decades, with up to 75% of incarcerated women having suffered brain injuries from intimate partner violence—yet most states deny them meaningful self-defense opportunities.
A groundbreaking submission to the United Nations exposes this hidden pipeline that transforms survivors into “offenders,” revealing why international human rights experts are sounding the alarm about fundamental violations happening in U.S. courtrooms every day.
