County Takes Aim at Abuse in the Family

Stepping up the battle against domestic violence, Ventura County officials Friday unveiled a range of proposals including efforts to create a specialized court for handling domestic violence cases and to draw up community-based blueprints for slowing the spread of abuse city by city.

At the county’s fifth annual Shattered Trust Domestic Violence Conference, hundreds of advocates, law enforcement officials and others gathered for a daylong brainstorming session aimed at fighting what has become one of society’s most chronic problems.

The fifth annual conference, held at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, was also an effort to boost community response to the issue during this, National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

“Domestic violence has finally emerged in the public’s consciousness as the critical issue it has always been,” said Superior Court Judge Colleen Toy White, who presides over family law cases and who delivered the opening remarks at Friday’s session.

“Increasingly, spousal abuse is a problem devastating every sector of society, overwhelming our courts and hospitals, spilling over into our streets and filling our morgues,” she added. “We must all be a part of the solution if we are to address the deadly toll this epidemic is taking.”

In Ventura County, that toll becomes quickly apparent.

Domestic violence calls to law enforcement agencies more than doubled between 1990 and 1995, from 2,733 to 5,620.

At the same time, agencies dedicated to sheltering and supporting domestic violence victims have experienced skyrocketing caseloads. White said those organizations have seen a 50% increase in calls to crisis hotlines, and a 40% increase in shelter services in the last year alone.

Victims’ advocates said Friday they believe those increases are due in part to heightened awareness about spousal battery stemming from the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

“I think that awareness brought more people out of the closet,” said Angela Lawson, volunteer coordinator for the Ventura-based Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence. “It showed a true need that has possibly been there for quite some time.”

The coalition, together with the Ventura Police Department, soon will launch a new program aimed at providing on-scene assistance to domestic violence victims in Ventura.

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Four nights a week, the Domestic Violence Response Team--consisting of a police service officer and two trained coalition volunteers--will accompany officers on domestic dispute calls.

Members of the emergency response team will provide emotional support, help obtain restraining orders and provide shelter for victims and their children. They will also provide follow-up counseling and accompany victims to court proceedings.

The program, funded by a $150,000 federal grant, mirrors a similar effort launched earlier this year in Oxnard. Lawson is currently recruiting volunteers for the emergency response team.

“We’re looking for as many people as we can get because domestic violence exists 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she said.

Indeed, victims’ advocates and others said Friday the number of domestic violence calls received by police agencies represents only a fraction of the domestic violence that occurs.

At the conference, a panel of domestic violence victims told of suffering years of abuse at the hands of people who professed to love them. One woman told of being beaten by her husband, and of being stalked when she decided to leave. Another woman told of being beaten by her grown son.

Through sobs and tears, they shared stories of a slow-moving justice system, of victims’ advocates and judges who rode to the rescue, of the toll of years of physical and emotional abuse.

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The first time Donna Kraft called police was when she wound up in the hospital two years ago with cracked ribs and collapsed lungs.

She was nearly eight years into a marriage that had become progressively more violent. And, although she had tried six times before, she was finally ready to leave her husband.

“I felt trapped in this relationship,” said Kraft, 34, whose husband is serving a six-year prison sentence for felony spousal abuse.

“It’s hard to explain to people why you stay,” she continued. “I believed him when he told me he would never do it again; I believed him when he told me it was my fault. Well, I’m here to tell you it was not my fault. And I’m here to say that the very worst day without him is better than the best day with him.”

The bulk of Friday’s conference focused on finding solutions to domestic violence.

Huddled in smaller rooms, conference attendees gathered to identify gaps in the delivery of services to abuse victims, and to draw up community action plans for bridging those shortfalls.

In Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Moorpark, for example, the lack of shelter beds and bilingual counselors was identified as a pressing problem. Agencies that work with abuse victims are expected to use ideas generated out of the conference as a blueprint for designing strategies to meet those needs.

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Perhaps the most innovative solution was a proposal to set up a specialized court in Ventura County to deal with all domestic violence cases.

Currently, such cases are assigned to a variety of judges, said Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth, who chairs the Ventura County Domestic Violence Task Force.

But under the new proposal--which is yet to be reviewed by court officials--judges would be able to develop a working history of domestic violence cases, becoming well-versed in the issues, getting to know all of the parties involved and being able to directly monitor defendants’ compliance with counseling programs and other provisions of probation.

Rio Hondo Municipal Court Judge Peter J. Meeka, who runs domestic violence court in El Monte, told conference attendees about his tough, no-nonsense approach. He acts as the probation officer on domestic violence cases, meting out sentences and ensuring compliance by regularly hauling defendants back to his courtroom.

If they violate probation, if they batter again or fail to show up for counseling, they are sent directly to jail, he said.

“We make examples out of them,” said Meeka, who has run the program since January 1995. “It isn’t malicious, it’s a type of constructive intimidation. It just takes a commitment by the bench to do something, and doing something is better than doing nothing.”

Henke-Dobroth said time will tell whether such an approach will be adopted locally.

“A judge who is familiar with the particular parties, who is involved with the history of the case, will be able to handle that case more efficiently and more appropriately,” she said. “But it will be entirely up to our court whether or not this is something that we implement. I think this is a starting point, however, to look at it and see if it is workable in Ventura County.”

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FYI

Volunteers are needed for Ventura’s domestic violence emergency response team. Training sessions begin Oct. 28. For information, call the Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence at 654-8141.