This is a murder story. It is also a story of how a victim, Melinda Glenn, used a system that failed her.

Her hair is yellow and curly. Her eyes are wide and blue, sad and frightened. She is thin, and her 31-year-old face already is creased with worry. She doesn’t have a car — she had to leave too quickly. A deputy took her away from her home without a car, without clothing, without her children’s toys, without her daughter’s favorite blanket. She has nothing that is familiar to her, and neither do her children. She is in a place with well-meaning strangers, but she has no privacy, nothing but her children that she can call her own. At least here, at least for now, she and the children are safe.

She is at the shelter because her husband threatened to kill her and her children. He held a gun to her head, told her that he would kill the children, then kill her and then kill himself. The children heard it all, saw it all.

She listens to the counselors at the Safe House. This time, she knows it has to be different. This time she has to be brave enough to resist his pleas; she has to stand up to his threats. She needs to brace for the fight; she needs to be strong.

She calls the lawyer and hopes she will help one more time. Last time she wasn’t strong enough, she went back to him before it was over; his threats had worn her down. The lawyer gave her strong advice. “You’ve got to be strong; you’ve got to stay away from him; you can’t let him convince you that he has changed; you know better, and you can do this; we’ll help you make a life without him.”

And she does. With the help of her family, the safe home, her community and a lawyer from the South Carolina Centers for Equal Justice, she makes a home. She manages to get a place to live in the other end of the county from him; he doesn’t know where it is. She gets clothing and toys for the children; someone even donates a computer so the children can do school work and play games. This time she is strong. She stays away.

She goes to magistrate court for a restraining order. He is arrested for violating it. She goes to court and testifies each time, but the magistrate lets him go, repeatedly.

She goes to Family Court for a divorce, a permanent restraining order and a division of property. He is allowed visitation with the children, and the judge orders him to keep the children safe, but he doesn’t. During one visitation he gives the children an overdose of over-the-counter medication, and dropped them off with Melinda, who rushes them to the hospital. He is never prosecuted.

Another court order, this time saying that he is to stay away from her and the children, but he doesn’t. He calls. On Dec. 30, 2002, he calls 11 times between midnight and 8 a.m. She doesn’t answer, but lies awake listening to him threaten her through the answering machine.

One day as she is driving to Anderson with the children in the car her family gave her, Mr. Glenn, traveling in the opposing lane, changes lanes in an effort to collide with her head-on. She swerves out of his way. A police officer witnesses it and arrives on the scene almost immediately. He arrests Mr. Glenn, takes him to jail; he stays there two days, and the magistrate lets him out, again.

The family court judge orders that she can have her things. The lawyers arrange a time for pick-up. He isn’t supposed to be there (he’s living in Georgia now), and she is assured he’s going to stay away from her. But he doesn’t. She asks a police officer to accompany her on the pick-up, but he won’t. She arrives on the property with her brother. She sees Mr. Glenn jump out from the shadows, sees the gun, and turns to run, but it’s too late.

David Wayne Glenn Sr. had an 11-page criminal record, with convictions for malicious damage to real property, grand larceny, assault and battery with intent to kill (twice) and other crimes — and yet he was free to walk the streets of Anderson County and somehow managed to get a gun.

He had eight criminal charges pending at the time, including malicious damage to real property, simple assault, four separate counts for violation of an order of protection, receiving stolen property and criminal domestic violence.

His wife is dead, and their children are now parentless. Victims of domestic violence, and the children who live in terror in their homes, will never be safe unless criminal laws and restraining orders are enforced, and sentences with incarceration are imposed.

Ms. Johnson is the managing attorney at the Anderson Center of the South Carolina Centers for Equal Justice.