CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Brown Supports Program Against Domestic Violence : She criticizes Wilson’s record on the issue. His spokesman says he opened seven women’s shelters and appropriated $30 million for them.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Brown on Thursday endorsed a comprehensive program against domestic violence, which she described as a deadly problem that threatens to tear apart the fabric of society.

“Domestic violence is a crime against our most cherished institution, our family,” Brown said during a campaign appearance at the Daybreak Women’s Shelter in Santa Monica along with state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-North Hollywood) and Los Angeles City Atty. James Hahn.

“We must not continue to accept domestic violence as an unpleasant part of modern society,” Brown said.

Brown, the state treasurer, endorsed legislation being sponsored by Watson and Friedman to require training in domestic violence for both police and judges and creation of emergency response teams to provide victims with psychological, medical, financial and legal help.

Brown said it was unfortunate that it took the “tragedy” of the O.J. Simpson case to focus national attention on the problem, but predicted that the campaign against domestic violence would gather momentum much as the campaign of Mothers Against Drunk Driving did against drunken driving in the 1980s.

“MADD did much more than change the law,” Brown said. “They changed society’s attitude.”

Brown and the legislators criticized the record of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, Brown’s Nov. 8 election foe, on the issue, saying that California has more dog shelters than shelters for victims of domestic violence.

They did credit Wilson with approving a $30-million appropriation for new shelters in the new state budget, but noted that it came only after the Simpson case focused public attention on the problem in an election year.

In response, Wilson campaign spokesman Dan Schnur said Wilson had not created any dog shelters during his first term, but had opened seven shelters for battered women and increased the annual appropriation for them from $2.8 million to $30 million.

Schnur cited other actions and said, “Pete Wilson cared about and worked on this issue long before it was politically popular. And he’s been in the trenches fighting to make the fundamental changes we need so that women are safe in the streets and in their homes.”

Schnur noted that Brown had made no mention of domestic violence in the 33-point anti-crime program she proposed last fall.

In her remarks, Brown said that domestic violence resulted in the murders of 253 women in California last year.

“If we do not do something for the family of California, to intervene and break this cycle of domestic violence, we will never be able to build enough prisons for the children who become the next generation of batterers and the women who become the next generation of victims in this horrendous cycle of violence,” she said.