Task Force Takes First Step to Try to End Spouse Abuse

She was remembering.

The first time he beat her was before they were married. They were in Glendale, and he was drunk. After he had knocked her to the ground, people rushed over to help her up. He went for a walk around the block, to cool off. Later, he cried and told her he was sorry. She believed him. She felt sorry for him. She forgot about her black eye and about her bleeding ear. Shortly afterward, they were married.

Pamela Kramer, a former Los Angeles housewife on welfare, on Wednesday was sharing with nearly 100 San Diego politicians, dignitaries, police chiefs and civic leaders her world of domestic violence, and they were listening.

“This is only a beginning, but it’s a beginning of the end of this violence. May we all work together until home is sanctuary for every family member,” she told them. It was exactly what they wanted to hear.

This was the kickoff meeting of the San Diego County Domestic Violence Task Force, a newly formed conglomeration of civic leaders, police, lawyers, doctors, social workers, counselors and former victims that will try to help battered and battering spouses help themselves.

Members have something in common. Through different venues, each tries to help victims of spousal abuse and reform the abusers. That’s not an easy job. Last year, more than 15,000 cases of domestic violence were reported to the city’s law enforcement agencies.

But before they can be effective, community and legal agencies must first get their own act together, representatives say. The purpose of the task force, then, is to repair the system.

“We still need to find a better way of (stopping domestic violence). There are too many men and women falling through the cracks,” said Ashley Walker-Hooper, a director of the YWCA’s Battered Women’s Services program, which she founded in 1978. “Most women have to have intervention by the system. They can’t get out on their own. But you’ve got to have a system that cares and works effectively.”

Coordination Lacking

The problem is not lack of concern or effort, but little coordination and communication between shelters, counselors and the legal system, task force members say. The most difficult step a battered woman has to take is reporting the violence, either to police or a shelter. But once within the system, they may face confusing paper work, changing policies and bureaucratic runaround.

In the end, the lack of coordination among victims’ resources may continue the problem as much as victims’ reluctance to report it.

“There are resources for victims, but they are scattered, and not as efficient as they should be,” said Walker-Hooper. “We need to find out how we can systematically help each other.”

It would be one of three times Kramer would be hospitalized from the attacks. It seemed her husband always beat her after he had been drinking. One night, she and a girlfriend picked him up at a bar, because his friends wouldn’t let him drive drunk. As she drove home, he began to spit on her and slug her. And when they arrived in front of their house, he dragged her from the car and beat her until she was unconscious.

Founders of the task force say their main goal is to improve and make consistent the response to domestic violence cases countywide by integrating community and law enforcement services. So when representatives of as many as 60 agencies meet each month for the next two years, they will share information, question one another’s counseling procedures, criticize their own methods and try to develop standards for the system.

Eventually, organizers say, members hope to introduce legislation and influence city and county budget decisions about resources for victims and abusers.

But the broad makeup of the task force, with input coming from as many as 80 people, may present the group’s biggest obstacle: avoiding the bureaucracy and lack of coordination that prompted its formation.

Challenge Seen

“It will be a challenge. We could get lost in all of it,” said Joyce Faidley, director of family violence prevention at the Center for Women’s Studies and Services. “But I think it will work if we keep our eye on victims’ rights and victims’ stories.”

Casey Gwinn, a founder of the task force and head of the city attorney’s child abuse and domestic violence unit, was more optimistic.

“If we can’t make progress toward a systematic, integrated response to county domestic violence now, then we never will,” said Gwinn, who has handled spousal-abuse cases for three years. “We have the policy makers at the top committed to supporting the task force, and we have agencies who directly serve the victims committed to working on it.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be very far away from the victims, or from the victims’ perspective,” said Gwinn.

On Wednesday, they were close to Pamela Kramer, who had spent 14 years in an abusive marriage.

After years of breaking her ribs, nose and front teeth, her husband finally agreed to see a psychiatrist. It didn’t help. The doctor told him it was permissible to show some control over his wife. The beatings continued, until she tried to kill herself. She survived the drug overdose--and went back to her husband for another year.

Kramer, after counseling and help from the system, finally left her husband and divorced him. Today, she is head of the Los Angeles city attorney’s victim-advocate program, which helps the courts screen and process domestic violence cases. She also is remarried.

“This task force can work, because all of the people here will spread the word to their friends, neighbors, boyfriends and girlfriends. They’ll spread the word everywhere,” said Kramer. “If they learn how to work together, they can stop the cycle of violence.”