Kim Lee could hardly contain her emotions in the auditorium at Capital Normal University on Nov. 25, where she had eloquently shared her story of bravery with students just a few seconds prior. Staring at the signatures and blessings on heart-shaped greeting cards presented to her by students in an ornamental box, Kim Lee burst into tears. Following an interim of silence, audience members passed a box of tissues to her seat.

Life has turned upside down for Lee in the past few months since her celebrity husband Li Yang, the magnate founder of Crazy English language training centers, knocked her to the floor, slamming her in the face in front of their three-year-old daughter. Pushed over the limit, she called police and posted pictures of her swollen forehead and bruised legs on Weibo (China's equivalent to Twitter).

The photos shocked netizens all over the country, who largely knew Li as the educator who invented the iconic "yelling" strategy to memorize English phrases and sentences.

In the media circus that ensued following the allegations, Lee found, as a victim, she had no more advantage than her husband. In a TV interview, Li claimed his American wife and the children from their marriage were part of an experiment conducted for his career in English teaching and cross-cultural communication. He also argued that the controversy stemmed from Lee's misunderstandings of Chinese culture, which have led some to believe that he expected his wife to accept the violence and remain silent.

In her Weibo, Lee said she could not bear her husband using the media spotlight as an opportunity for self-promotion, which she said hurt her even deeper than her physical injuries.

"I'm American and Yang is Chinese that is not the problem, the problem is violence," Lee said.

"If I can help to change the concepts that domestic violence is 'common, acceptable, should not be disclosed, the fault of the wife, and part of Chinese culture', then I feel both honored and obligated to do so," Lee said in an email to the Beijing Fan Bao Culture Development Co. Ltd, a anti-domestic violence organization in Beijing. "Domestic violence is not culture. Domestic violence is a crime."

11月25日，在首師大的會議廳內，僅僅幾秒之前，李金還在和學生們分享著她的勇敢和辯才，而現在她卻無法抑制自己的情感。看著那一片片由學生呈上的，裝在裝飾盒中寫著簽名和祝福的心型賀卡，李金不禁哭了。全場頓時安靜下來，席間的聽眾將一盒紙巾遞到了她的座位上。

在過去的幾個月間，生活變得一團糟。李的名人丈夫，瘋狂英語的泰斗級創始人，李陽，將她甩到地上，并在他們三歲女兒的面前，扇她巴掌。忍無可忍之下，她報了警，并將她腫起的額頭和淤青的雙腿拍成照片，傳到微博（中國的Twitter）上。

舉國的網友看到照片后大為震驚，在他們眼里，李陽就是那個發明了標志性的“喊英語，記詞句”的教育家。

在控訴之后，媒體蜂擁而至，然而，李發現，作為一個受害者，她與她的丈夫相比，沒有任何優勢。在一次電視采訪中，李陽聲稱，在他的這次婚姻中，他的美國妻子和孩子是他進行英語教學與跨文化交流試驗的一部分。他還爭論到，他們之間的爭議源于李對于中國文化的誤解。這引得一些人認為李陽希望自己的妻子在遭受家暴后保持沉默。

在她的微博中，李表示她無法接受丈夫利用媒體的聚光燈做自我的宣傳。她說，比起那些身體上的傷痕，這對她的傷害更深。

“我是美國人，李陽是中國人，這不是問題的所在。真正的問題是暴力，”李說道。

“如果我能幫助改變關于家暴一些概念，如家暴是‘尋常的，可接受的，是不可外揚的，是妻子的錯誤，是中國文化的一部分’，那么我會為此自豪，并知使命重大，”李在給北京帆葆文化公司的一封電子郵件中寫道。該公司是北京一家反對家庭暴力的組織。“家暴不是文化，家暴是犯罪。”