Denise Brown will release For My Sister Nicole: Love Shouldn't Hurt on Tuesday, Oct. 6, and she is using the book to warn victims about intimate partner violence. Brown, the sister of Nicole Brown Simpson, said she wants to speak to women before it is too late.
“I want to talk to every victim out there, before it’s too late,” she told News’ Diane Sawyer. She also said, “You don’t want to end up like Nicole.” Brown said working to try to save women from intimate partner violence has become her mission.
Brown Simpson and O.J. Simpson
Brown said her warning is shaped by what she says happened in her sister’s marriage. Nicole Brown Simpson met O.J. Simpson when she was 18 years old, and they married in 1985 before divorcing in 1992. Brown and the Browns say Simpson’s rage continued after the divorce.
Brown said Simpson once started taking clothes out of the closet, throwing them down into the foyer, ran back downstairs, grabbed Nicole by the throat, and had her six inches off the ground. Brown said, “Nicole was strangled.” She added, “Strangulation... it is a precursor to murder,” linking that episode to the danger she says victims too often minimize.
Domestic Violence Awareness Month
Brown’s book release comes as Domestic Violence Awareness Month begins. The Violence Policy Center says nearly three women are killed by an intimate partner every day in the U.S., while The Journal of Emergency Medicine says the odds of being killed increase by 750% if abuse escalates to hands around the neck.
Brown also pointed to the distance between fear and escape. The National Domestic Violence Hotline says it takes a woman seven attempts to escape an abusive relationship on average, and Brown said victims tell her about hope, shame and fear. “The hope that things are going to get better, the shame of not wanting anyone to know, and the fear of, ‘Where am I going to go?’ Especially if there’s children,” she said.
For My Sister Nicole
Brown’s account reaches back to the killing of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman on June 12, 1994, outside Brown Simpson’s Los Angeles home. Nicole Brown Simpson was 35 years old and Ron Goldman was 25. Nicole Brown Simpson’s two young kids with Simpson slept inside the home when she was killed.
Simpson was arrested for the double murder and was acquitted of all criminal charges in October 1995. A civil jury later found him liable for wrongful death in 1997 and ordered him to pay millions in damages to the Goldmans and to Brown Simpson’s estate. He later served time in prison for a botched robbery in Nevada and died from prostate cancer in 2024.
Brown’s book release gives her a new public platform to repeat the same message: the warning signs she saw in her sister’s life are the ones she wants victims to recognize sooner, before abuse turns lethal.
