This study documented women's experience of enhanced services and advocacy in the context of the three special session domestic violence courts in Connecticut. The study conducted 60 in-depth interviews with women whose current or former partners were arrested for domestic violence and who appeared in one of the three special session courts. The questions were designed to elicit information from women about the meaning and context of intimate violence in their lives generally, their assessments of the risks and options available to them and their children from family, friends, and other institutions, their strategies for maximizing safety for themselves and their children, the meaning of the arrest incident in their overall experience of their relationship with their abusive partner, and the impact of the court experience on their plans, sense of options, and understanding of the abuse they had experienced.