Not This Time, She Said : Battered woman finds relief, thanks to good LAPD work, concerned judge

Domestic violence is a staggering problem in Los Angeles, accounting for 40% of all calls for police service. Last year 42,700 of those calls resulted either in investigations or arrests. This is commendable and noteworthy: Too often, one hears about battered spouses who stay with their tormentors out of fear or misplaced optimism, about authorities who take such cases lightly and about a lenient and ineffectual judicial system.

Not this time . So said a North Hollywood welfare mother, Claudia Clark, who claimed that she had endured several beatings by the father of her child. The last attack, in December, started when a kitchen knife was plunged into a pillow inches from her face. He choked and pummeled her for 45 minutes and then led police officers on a half-mile foot chase. Later, as always, he asked her for forgiveness. Not this time . “This time,” she said, “ he was going down. Not me.”

Clark’s is a story of courage and persistence, of breaking the cycle of violence. Much of her monthly $490 welfare checks went to baby-sitters and for bus fare to and from court, where often she would hear that her case had been delayed again. Her phone was cut off because there wasn’t enough left to pay the bill.

But she was undaunted, and ultimately her testimony was compelling. Last month it took a Municipal Court jury just two hours to convict Jose Maria Martinez on four misdemeanor counts of spousal abuse, false imprisonment, making threats to kill and resisting arrest. Martinez had been convicted of beating Clark in 1991 and had gotten off with 30 days in jail, some obviously ineffective counseling and probation.

Presiding Judge Lloyd Nash wasn’t going to let that happen again. He vindicated Clark’s efforts by leveling what is believed to be the stiffest penalty yet in a Los Angeles misdemeanor domestic violence case: four years and 11 months of imprisonment. “Some cases cry out for the maximum sentence,” Judge Nash later told a reporter in chambers, “and this case is one of them.”

As for Clark, she has some advice for others in her situation: “You can’t let them keep beating on you and beating on you. Because, one day, they’re going to end up killing you.”