Counselors Ride Along to Help in Domestic Disputes

It’s the kind of urgent plea the police get every night:

“Please help! My parents are fighting and I’m scared.”

That was a recent call that Maria Vidal answered in Fullerton.

Except Vidal isn’t a cop. She’s a family counselor who goes on weekly ride-alongs with the police.

Domestic disputes take up a sizable share of a police department’s time. Santa Ana and Fullerton have been leaders in taking professional counselors with them when they show up for these emergency calls.

Now Fullerton is expanding its ride-alongs to concentrate on helping the children in these tumultuous families. It recently signed an agreement with FACES, a nonprofit family counseling program, which has joined its weekend ride-alongs on family-dispute calls. It concentrates on counseling the whole family, not just the abused spouse.

“The children are the most impressionable victims of domestic violence,” said Fullerton Police Chief Patrick E. McKinley. “Without these efforts, the children are too often left behind as the unintended but highly traumatized victim.”

The counselors don’t expect to solve problems at the scene.

“There’s too much anger,” said Mary O’Connor Harris, executive director of FACES, which stands for Family Assessment, Counseling and Education Services Inc. “Our goal is to cut down on repeat 911 calls by convincing these people to call us instead of the police when things get out of hand.”

With grants from the Alliance Health Foundation of San Diego and the Orange County Community Foundation, FACES can provide free follow-up counseling to the victims of these 911 emergencies.

The FACES counselors are a welcome addition to the ride-alongs, said Roberta DeArman, head of Fullerton’s Emergency Response Team. The team is made up of officers trained to handle domestic-violence cases and counselors from the Women’s Transitional Living Center, which helps victims of spousal abuse. It’s been providing ride-along counseling for both Santa Ana and Fullerton the last few years.

“Our concentration is on the abused spouse,” said DeArman. “But children are victims too.”

Vidal has a master’s degree in family counseling. Her partner, Laura Lefer, holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology. They’ve been riding weekly with the police since December.

When I asked Harris if the police officers welcomed the counselors, she responded, “They’re becoming more user-friendly. There was an adjustment. They have a serious job to do, and at first they saw us as sort of touchy-feely.”

DeArman and the two FACES counselors on the ride-alongs say any discomfort the officers might have felt has been replaced by real teamwork.

“Quite often, the officer will deal with the perpetrator, and I’ll take the victim, or the children, off to the side to talk with them,” Vidal said.

A goal is to persuade the parties to come in for follow-up family counseling. Sometimes it works so well that everybody in the family wants individual counseling. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all.

“For some, this constant fighting and violence is a way of life; it was the way they were raised, and they just repeat the cycle,” Vidal said.

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You have to understand, Harris says, that many people the police must pull apart have enormous problems:

“They’re living eight people in a two-bedroom house. Someone in their family has been shot, there’s no money, half the family might live in another country. The pressure gets to them.”

Harris watched it for years as a mediator in divorce cases for Orange County Superior Court. She helped found FACES 11 years ago, dealing primarily with divorced families, on a shoestring budget.

Its grants have grown over the years to where it has a staff of 20 with some 50 volunteers for a myriad of counseling programs. It takes referrals from courts, the police, churches and county social workers and by word-of-mouth.

The ride-alongs idea came last fall, when Harris and her staff wondered aloud whether they shouldn’t concentrate more effort on prevention. So they approached the Fullerton police with the idea.

McKinley was enthusiastic, but he wanted the FACES counselors to first take 40 hours of training in domestic violence that the Women’s Transitional Living Center provides. Lefer and Vidal were chosen for the training because they’re bilingual.

Once they began their rides, there was no shortage of work, said Lefer:

“Every night there’s something, whether it’s a runaway teen or a husband out of control; sometimes it’s the wife or girlfriend who’s at fault.”

Though the situations vary, the two women see certain patterns: Drug or alcohol abuse is often involved, and the perpetrator is almost always someone suffering from low self-esteem.

“They’re usually in denial,” Lefer said. “They act surprised that anyone would call the police.”

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Though the FACES follow-up counseling is free to victims, Lefer said it’s “hit or miss” whether the families she sees on the ride-alongs agree to sign up for one of its programs. About half ignore her, she said. But enough do come in to convince her the effort is worthwhile.

“Some of these people who call 911 feel like they’ve just completely bottomed out, that there’s no hope left,” Lefer said. “What we do is show them that there is hope.”

The Fullerton police are reserving judgment so far. Lt. Dan Becerra, who oversees investigations, said the agreement with FACES is still in its infancy.

“But domestic-dispute calls are a top priority in our department,” Becerra said. “The more resources we have out there, the better off we are.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Monday and Thursday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling (714) 564-1049 or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com