Feminist Freed

Foat triumphs in court

It is the sort of ghastly hallucination that countless women have: one day, the long-buried secrets of a misguided, misspent youth are dug up, dusted off and flung into full public view. But in Ginny Foat's case it was all too real, and far worse. Along with revelations about her barmaid-and-battered-wife past, Louisiana police dredged up a warrant for the robbery and murder of an Argentine businessman near New Orleans 18 years ago.

Foat, a former president of the California chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), was accused by her alcoholic ex-husband John Sidote, a convicted murderer. In exchange for immunity, Sidote had agreed to name Foat as his partner in the crime at the trial that ended in a New Orleans suburb last week. Foat denied she had any connection with the murder. The jury of six men and six women took less than two hours to support her over her former husband and return their verdict: not guilty. A couple of the jurors even jostled among the throngs of supporters to get Foat's autograph after her acquittal. She claimed the outcome was a victory for all women "who have a plight in life."

Despite the prosecution's insistence that the trial was simply about a long-forgotten murder, the case had a deeper significance. Some supporters viewed Ginny Foat as a martyr, an example of a woman who had overcome the degradation of domestic violence only to be prosecuted for her political prominence. Other feminist leaders, including some officials of NOW, seemed embarrassed by her checkered past and shied away from supporting her. Foat said, "They looked at me as something that might dirty the corporate image." But no California nightmare is without its elements of the American dream: Foat now plans a book about her ordeal and a film company is already working on turning the tale into a movie. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.