After decades of research, investigators have documented the presence of IPV across ethnic and socioeconomic groups. It has also been shown that the economic and social marginalization of African-American women is associated with elevated rates of both IPV victimization and perpetration. As a result of the frequency and severity of violence in their lives, African-American women have the propensity to use aggression to protect themselves and their children or in retaliation against intimate abusers. Consequently, a disproportionate number of African-American women may be categorized as mutual combatants, or even primary aggressors, and later arrested. The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of African-American victim-defendants. It begins by presenting an integration of both the family violence gender symmetry perspective and the contextual perspective to review the literature on African-American women’s use of violence within heterosexual relationships, and introduce the concept of bidirectional asymmetric violence as a result of that integration. It then explores possible factors that may contribute to African-American women’s overrepresentation in the legal system. The paper then describes the experiences of one African-American female victim who was arrested after using physical aggression to defend herself against an abusive boyfriend. Lastly, strategies for advocacy and intervention are offered. References