Community Coordinated Response to Domestic Violence


The following address was first given by Theresa Zubretsky
Director of Human Services Policy and Planning
New York State Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence
April 27, 1994 - Painted Post, NY

Intro - Thanks to Ann Jones, author of “Next Time, She’ll Be Dead”, whose astute observations are sprinkled liberally throughout this talk

So, I'm here to talk about violence. Everybody's talking about it. People are deeply concerned about it. Violence in our streets -gang and drug-related shootings, jackings, abductions. Acts of hate violence - committed against people because of their race or sexual identification. Violence in our schools - young people afraid to go to school. When I was afraid to go to school, it was usually because I had neglected to do my homework. But these kids are afraid to use the bathrooms or to be alone in the locker room for fear of being threatened or attacked and not just with fists, but with guns and knives. School - a place which is supposed to be conducive to learning.

And violence in our homes. Every fifteen seconds, a woman is battered by her husband, boyfriend or live-in partner. And 70% of the men who beat their female partners also abuse their children. Most abducted children are abducted as a result of domestic violence.

Crimes of domestic violence occur more frequently than any other crime in America, leaving a woman nine times more likely to be assaulted in her home than on the public street. Battering causes more injury to women in America than auto accidents, muggings and rapes combined.

But it's the stranger violence that is most likely to breed fear in the community at large. Because it's marked by randomness. Senselessness. The identity of the victim appears to be arbitrary. In the wrong place at the wrong time, they say. It could happen to anyone.

And so it makes people afraid for themselves and their children. And that fear propels them to do something. Whether that means they're advocating a ban on assault weapons or establishing weapons checks in the schools or ensuring that their children know how to scream "No", run and tell, they take action to protect themselves and their children.

Typically, in discussions about "violence", stranger violence is where the focus almost exclusively ends up. Which is why I'm particularly pleased to be starting off this important community event by talking about domestic violence - the most prevalent and one of the most tolerated forms of violence in our communities. And often the least talked about. The least likely form of violence to incite a community to action. But if we want to have safer streets, we've got to have safer homes for our children and their mothers.

Given its prevalence, it seems rather remarkable that domestic violence has remained on the back burner in general discussions about violence in America and what we can do about it. But if we look at some of the common beliefs that people have about domestic violence, they are beliefs that suggest that there is little that we can do about it, that there is no need for a community response. That the problem, in fact, is not the community's problem.

One of the beliefs that shifts responsibility away from the community is the belief that domestic violence is a problem of personal or individual pathology. A batterer is seen as someone who has a hard time keeping his temper. Or is under a lot of stress. Or insecure. Or provoked. Someone who lacks social skills. A drinker. A drugger. And lately, even genetics is taking the rap. But battering isn't caused by any of those things. It isn't about anger. It's not about stress or insecurity. It's about control.

When we listen to battered and formerly battered women tell their stories, the violence and coercion they endure reads less like a laundry list of social skills deficits and a whole lot more like a list that was put out by Amnesty International of the coercive tactics that are used world wide in human torture - to break someone's spirit. Some of the things on that list are isolation, threats, degradation and induced debility or exhaustion.

Amnesty lists isolation as a mechanism to deprive a victim of social support to decrease the victim's ability to resist. Battered women tell us, Amnesty lists threats as a mechanism to cultivate anxiety, despair and FEAR. Women tell us, Amnesty lists degradation as a way to make the cost of resistance appear more damaging to one's self worth than giving in. And finally, Amnesty lists induced debility and exhaustion as a way to weaken one's mental and physical ability to resist. And please note that physical abuse isn't even on Amnesty International's list. Yet, battered women experience that, too. Along with economic abuse and sexual violence.

Battering is not a series of isolated blow-ups. It is a process of deliberate intimidation intended to coerce the victim to do what the batterer wants her to do. How a man deals with stress, his feelings and conflict depends entirely upon who he's dealing with. These are not by and large men who are generally violent. The majority of batterers are exclusively coercive and violent in the privacy of their homes - with their female partners.

To understand why 20 to 30% of men in America engage in violent and controlling behavior with their partners and other family members, we need only listen to the words of batterers themselves. One man in a batterer's intervention group summed it up when he said, "Why would we want to change when we've got it all already?"

While victims of domestic violence can be anyone - including gays and lesbians and to a much lesser degree men who are abused by their female partners - it's no accident that women are the victims of men's violence in 95% of all adult domestic violence. There's a long historical and legal tradition in this country which says it's okay for men to control their family members. Women and children and slaves were "chattel", literally property of men who had fathered or married them. Men were given the legal right to use violence as a means to control, to discipline their wives and children. It was not until 1977 that New York State Law gave married women the right to press charges in criminal court. It wasn't until 1985 that it became a crime in this state when a man raped his wife. And it still isn't a crime in many states.

Despite the recent criminalization of domestic violence, attitudes and beliefs that support violence against women persist. There is enormous support and a high level of tolerance in our culture for men to be violent. And there is enormous support in our culture to hold victims responsible. And until we begin to challenge that status quo, women and children will continue to pay the heaviest price. Domestic violence is not a problem of individual pathology, but a problem that has its roots in a social and cultural legacy of male power over the lives of women and children.

Another belief that effectively shifts responsibility for domestic violence away from the community is reflected in the question, "Why doesn't she just leave?" If it was really that bad, she would. In fact, we're so persistent in asking this question, that it often gets asked even after a woman does leave. See, the notion that women don't leave is a myth. Women tell and women leave all the time. When it comes to leaving, battered women are enormously ingenious, resourceful and courageous.

As Ann Jones points out, "Why doesn't she just leave?" is one of those questions that doesn't call for an answer. It makes a judgment. It suggests that a battered woman has the freedom to choose to leave. That if she leaves, she will be safe. And that ultimately, she is the one responsible for her destiny. She alone must act to stop the violence and to make herself and her children safe.

The truth is that coercion and fear make it difficult, even impossible sometimes, for women to leave or to leave safely. How "free" is a woman to leave when she's been told time and again, "If you leave me, I'll kill you. Or I'll kill the kids. Or you'll never see the kids again." Leaving is by far the most dangerous time for battered women - a time when they are most likely to be assaulted and most likely to be killed. Batterers are the most tenacious of criminals when it comes to the active pursuit of their victims. Every day, four or five men track down and murder women who are trying to get away from them. If fear weren't enough of an obstacle to leaving, what about the enormous financial obstacles many women face in making the choice to leave. If women could solve the violence problem without the system's help, they would have done it a long time ago.

Asking the question, "Why doesn't she just leave?" in one sweeping stroke transforms an immense social problem into an individual responsibility. It absolves us of needing to do anything.

A third common belief that gets in the way of a community response is the belief that domestic violence is a family matter. A private matter. People say, "It's none of my business." Nothing could be further from the truth.

The toll that domestic violence takes on individuals who are victimized is immense. But while the human and social costs may be immeasurable, the economic costs are not. The costs to an already overburdened health care system. The cost to business in terms of absenteeism and lost productivity. The cost to the criminal justice system. The costs in terms of the homelessness it causes. And the costs to our young people. Children of domestic violence are more likely to be involved with alcohol and other drugs, to be teen parents, to be homeless, to be involved with the criminal justice system, to be truant or to drop out of school.

Domestic violence a private matter? I don't think so.

One of the first things that's vital in beginning to coordinate a community response to domestic violence is to replace all of these mistaken beliefs by naming the problem and framing it accurately. This is particularly important when the private issue of domestic violence "goes public" as it were because even then, there are many ways in which we conspire to keep it hidden.

Discussions about "stalking" laws are a good example. There's a national movement under way to enhance the protection of people who are followed, pursued and harassed by someone. But the face that is most often put on stalkers is that of an obsessed stranger, the psychopathic madman. And certainly, being followed by a stranger can be a terrifying experience and we should have laws to protect people from it. But the crime of stalking is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against their female partners. Not strangers. Not crazed lunatics. But batterers. Men who exert power and instill fear in order to control the behavior of their intimate partners.

There's also a disturbing trend in the media to couch domestic violence in the language of love. A man guns down his former wife and her new boyfriend. Reporters call it a "love triangle." A man shoots and kills several co-workers including a woman who refused to date him and the paper terms it "a tragedy of spurned love." A man kidnaps his estranged wife, rapes her, accuses her of an imaginary affair and chokes her to death - all in front of the children. A reporter writes that he "made love to his wife and then strangled her when overcome with jealous passion."

Or the media reports in such a way that murder becomes trivialized and minimized. Take the case of the mail bombings in western New York. This man murdered five family members of an ex-girlfriend who had left. The headline in the New York Times read "Family quarrel seen as motive". Other remarkable insights that get offered up regarding motives are "A family member stated that the couple had been having marital problems." "The incident appeared to stem from a marital dispute." These descriptions don't even begin to explain the horror of these murders or why these men killed their partners. And they make the murders sound like they're isolated incidents of violence. But what these descriptions masquerading as explanations do is that they allow people to nod and say. "Oh, of course. A marital dispute".

And people have a strong personal investment in having the media explain these hideous events in these terms. It's very reassuring to delude one's self that domestic violence is about someone else. That it could never happen to me. But as hard as some researchers have tried, no one has found anything about battered women that makes them different from non-battered women, nothing that explains why this violence has happened to them - not their personalities, not their childhood history, not their levels of self-esteem, not their psychological profiles - nothing. There's only one thing that makes battered women different from non-battered women - the fact of their battering. Becoming a victim of someone else's choice to use violence and coercive behavior can happen to any woman. We need to get to a place where we understand that "it can happen to me".

In almost all of the reported domestic homicides, the victim had a history of being battered by the man who ultimately murdered her, most often she had left him, most often she had an order of protection. And very often she knew in advance that she was in great danger but when she tried to mobilize the system on her behalf, she met with the all too familiar refrain, "He hasn't done anything yet."

Domestic violence homicides are not inexplicable occurrences, although the media seems to struggle very hard trying to explain them. They are predictable outcomes of an uninterrupted escalation of violence and terror. And it's precisely because they're so predictable that they are also the most preventable homicides.

Stories like I described in the media are very powerful in the messages that they give the community. By explaining the violence, they excuse it and tell men that it's understandable - that rejection and jealousy can make a person so distraught, so overwrought, that it's understandable how he can just go berserk and commit a crime of passion. And it therefore tells men that it's okay. These stories tell women that they won't be safe. No matter who they tell and how hard they try, they won't be safe. And they encourage the community to question why she didn't do something earlier to prevent this from happening.

The question we really need to ask is "What is it about our systems, about our community, that allowed this man's violence to escalate to the point where he felt he could just up and kill his wife?" We need to not only broadcast that domestic violence is totally unacceptable in our community, as Ann Jones says, we need as a community to act as if we believe it. To act as if we believe it.

There's no quick fix here. A problem which has been such an ingrained and longstanding American tradition requires not only individual change but systemic change. That, by its nature, is a long-term process which includes community-wide education, it requires swift, consistent and effective intervention and a program of comprehensive prevention. And in that process, there is an important role for everyone.

The goals that ought guide the implementation of effective community coordinated responses are really rather straightforward and simple. SAFETY for victims. And ACCOUNTABILITY for batterers. There has to be agreement on these two goals. It is long past the time for us to simply stop blaming victims and assume appropriate responsibility for our role in stopping violence and in affording protection for all of our community members. If we can reach consensus about the community goals of safety for victims and accountability for batterers, then we'll have the necessary foundation for making change.

Perhaps the most critical player in a community change process is the criminal justice system. Domestic violence is after all a crime. When we fail to treat is as a crime, when we treat it less seriously or vigorously than we do stranger assaults, not only do we fail to provide victims with equal protection under the law, not only do we fail to hold perpetrators accountable, but we send a message to the entire community - which includes our children - that domestic violence isn't such a big deal after all. We reinforce a message to young boys that it's acceptable behavior. We reinforce a message to young girls that the world may be an unsafe place for them, but they'll have to deal with it on their own.

There's what I think is a helpful analogy between the role of the criminal justice system in creating a "no-violence" standard in the community and what has happened in creating a "no-tolerance" standard for drunken driving in our communities. Twenty years ago, before the incredible advocacy efforts of groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, drunken driving was a common occurrence but it was perceived as a relatively minor infraction against the rights of the community.

Has that ever changed. Today, if you're drunk and you get behind the wheel of a car, and you get caught, you can expect with a high degree of certainty that you will pay the price. Law enforcement agents across the country now respond swiftly, predictably and effectively in enforcing drunk driving laws. Their response promotes a message of non-tolerance as a mechanism to not only protect the safety interests of the community, but to serve as a strong deterrent to future offenses.

Even before police had the additional cooperation of prosecutors and judges and probation officers, their response in the drunk driving change process made a significant difference.

Think about the potential for change if we had a similar approach to intervening with domestic violence. Because even though domestic violence is a crime in which the risks of the victim being revictimized are greater than for any other crime, the law enforcement response has often been to treat the crime less vigorously, less seriously than stranger assault. The extent of many law enforcement responses in domestic violence has been to advise the perpetrator to cool down and take a walk around the block. Even when the officers express a willingness to make an arrest, they require the victim to press charges in order to effect that arrest. And when the victim refuses - usually out of fear of retribution - she knows he'll be out in a couple of hours and she knows who he's going to be looking for when he gets out. So when she "refuses to cooperate", the police shake their heads and think "See, you try to help these women and they just don't want your help."

It's a very different picture in communities where police have adopted pro- arrest policies on domestic violence. When police arrive at the scene of a domestic call, they separate the parties, question them separately about the events, collect evidence which may include a victim's statement but might be independent of a statement such as physical signs of injury, property damage, state and demeanor of the parties, etc., and based on that information, if they have probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, they effect an arrest. That's it. They handcuff him and they take him down to the station. And, as required by state law, they provide the victim with a palm card complete with agencies and phone numbers she can contact for emergency assistance. They advise her when her partner is likely to be arraigned before a judge and be released and they encourage her and offer her assistance in planning for her safety and that of her children's.

And there is absolutely nothing to prevent any community from adopting pro- arrest policies and practices. Not only is it consistent with the purposes and practices of law enforcement in general, but there's an additional incentive - to protect police from liability. Lawsuits have been filed and won by battered women who charged that the police treated them differently than they did the victims of stranger assault - that they were not receiving equal protection under the law. Arrests in stranger assaults do not require the victim to press charges. Arrests are made based on probable cause and the state becomes the complainant. The state uses its power appropriately to protect its citizens. Arrest alone sends a powerful message to batterers. Some men who've been arrested say it was the first time it had ever even occurred to them that hitting their wife was wrong.

Also critical to the development of a strong criminal justice response is the prosecutor. Prosecutors need to adopt a vigorous and affirmative pro-prosecution policy in domestic violence cases, including violations of orders of protection. Victims should not have to be in the position of initiating or managing their own cases, nor should it be the decision of an individual victim whether a case proceeds or is withdrawn. It's the responsibility of investigators and prosecutors to be skilled in proving cases in court even when a victim is a reluctant witness, understanding that when a woman says she can't testify, she's not being uncooperative. She's negotiating for her safety, maybe even for her life.

And upon entry of a guilty plea or when a batterer is found guilty by the court, judges have a very important role in ensuring that batterers take the system seriously. A judge can order a presentence investigation. Probation officers can then incorporate information regarding the history of the violence and the battered woman's wishes into their presentence recommendations to the court. Judges then need to impose appropriate sentences which can include imprisonment and/or the imposition of fines. The sentence can also be stayed if there is an appropriate batterers intervention program into which the offender can be mandated as a condition of probation.

Batterers intervention programs can ensure that batterers have the information necessary to choose non-violent, non-controlling behavior. They are not and should not be used as an alternative to incarceration. In fact, experience tells us that batterers intervention programs that don't operate in the context of a strong criminal justice system response don't work. We don't yet know how or if we can get batterers to motivate themselves to change. We do know, however, that we can impose consequences which can serve as a powerful external motivator for change.

Working together, a coordinated criminal justice response communicates loudly and clearly to batterers that their violent behavior won't be tolerated and in fact, that there will be consequences for such offenses now and in the future. It also communicates to victims that the system can and will work to help them be safe. In communities where such a coordinated response is in place, domestic homicides have been significantly reduced or eliminated altogether. And the problem of "resistant and non-cooperative battered women as witnesses" has been all but eliminated. Because battered women are abundantly more likely to work with the system when the system shows that it is willing and interested in working with them.

While we know that an effective community response to domestic violence begins with the criminal justice system, it doesn't end there. We need to be able to provide battered women with adequate residential and non-residential direct services - 24-hour hotline and crisis intervention, emergency shelter, legal advocacy, peer support, and housing and financial assistance. Where there were no shelters for battered women and their children until the mid-1970's, there are now over 1200 shelters nationwide, about 70 in New York State alone. Even so, for every woman who received shelter in New York State last year, another was turned away, primarily due to a lack of available space. It's a curiously perverse reality that there exist three times as many shelters for homeless animals than there are for homeless battered women and children.

Domestic violence programs save lives and their value in making our communities safer for victims and their families cannot be overstated. But it's also true that the majority of battered women do not access domestic violence services. They may not be aware that the services are there. They may think that they are eligible for services. They may think they'll have to pay for services and they have no money. They may attach a stigma with reaching out to such services. Their partner may know where the shelter is.
Even when a woman does call a domestic violence program, it is usually not her first attempt to get help. It is an almost sure bet that she has had some contact with some other community system or individual prior to that request for help. There are countless opportunities for intervention with battered women, yet most of them end up as lost opportunities.

As in the health care system. Most battered women who sustain injuries seek treatment for those injuries. Somewhere between 22% to 35% of women seeking care for any reason in emergency departments and 23% of pregnant women seeking pre- natal care are battered women. Without protocols and staff training, fewer than 5% of these women are identified as battered. Instead they're patched up and sent home with prescriptions for tranquilizers, only to come back years later suicidal, depressed or addicted to alcohol or other drugs.

Likewise, we know that there is a huge overlap between child abuse and wife assault. If a child is a victim of abuse, there is a 60 - 70% chance that the mother is a victim of abuse as well. But our models for dealing with these issues are completely different. Some approaches common in responding to child abuse cases, such as family counseling, are inappropriate in responding to battering. It is unrealistic and in fact, dangerous to expect a battered woman to sit in a room with her abuser and tell the truth about what is going on in the family. Battered women report being brutally beaten after couples and family counseling sessions for what they did say. Or even what they didn't say.

We need to create new models within the child welfare institutions that will work to not only keep children safe, but will work to keep all family members safe.

Battered women and batterers often seek help from the addictions treatment system, who often fail to identify the domestic violence at all. And even if they do, they frequently operate from the mistaken notion that with recovery will come a cessation of violence. So, they rely upon the recovery process to keep women safe. And it doesn't work. Battered women consistently report that not only doesn't recovery stop the violence, often the violence gets worse.

In the mental health system, battered women are failed yet again. Instead of receiving safety and material support, they are often psychoanalyzed, psychiatrically labeled with such misdiagnoses as "paranoia" and "hysteria" and they are medicated.

Battered women often turn to their clergy person or minister for assistance. And rather than being met with a response that says that safety is the first priority, they're often met with a response that says that the preservation of the marriage, of the family is the first priority. Women are encouraged to stay and to work it out. A woman who leaves is seen as the person responsible for the disintegration of the family.

There is a role for every one of you in making this community a safer place for women and children and a place better suited to raising all of your children.

Developing the structure necessary with the participation and commitment of opinion leaders and change agents from every community sector is a formidable task. When placed in the context of local politics and personalities, the challenge becomes even greater. It helps to stay clearly focused on safety and accountability as your consensus builders and to stay focused on systems, not individuals. When agency policies are developed with community-wide input, there is also subsequent community-wide support. It's important for policies to be written and to be made public. But it's also important for them to work. And that requires ongoing monitoring and evaluation of how things are working and a process by which the community holds each system accountable. That's the stuff of community coordination.

Interagency coordination is a little like international diplomacy. It requires negotiation, personal communication, attention to the interests and constraints of participants, and procedures for resolving disputes. Community coordination is a very tough process. But creating an environment in which women and children can be safe is the right thing to do. There is extraordinary potential in communities and in the justice system to make constructive changes. We've seen it happen. And it can happen here.

I applaud you for your participation in today's conference and I'm pleased to be here among you. I applaud you for taking the time out of busy and demanding schedules to come here and by your presence to say that you're concerned about violence in your community. But I think the challenge is greater than that. It's not enough to say it, to think it or to feel it. The real challenge is to act as if you believe it.

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