State Continues to Struggle With Domestic Violence

In the past few years New Hampshire has made strides to reduce domestic violence.

Coordination among law enforcement, social service providers and health care officials are much more extensive than it was a decade ago.

Niki Miller, Executive director of the New Hampshire Task Force on Women and Addiction, says one of the things that has made these efforts more effective is that people can now agree on a common sense definition of domestic violence.

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1:20 Whether you are a child, a boy, or an adult woman, are you in fear in your house. Are you growing up with violence, are you in an intimate relationship with someone...you live with fear. That's as simple as I can say it.

To help reduce the worst form of domestic violence, murder, the state created the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Committee in 1999.

The group's purpose is to analyze each case to see if a murder could have been prevented.

But with so few cases, committee member Sandra Matheson says it's difficult to tease out trends.

Matheson says those low numbers point to the progress the state has made.

32:13 when you look at the 5000 protective orders that are filed each year, and the 13 homicides, the system has worked for a lot of these people. You can't prevent every single death. But look at the number seeking help, leaving the situation. We can't lose the sight of the fact that we have 13 deaths, and one is too many. But we've had 5000 other people who have used the system and the system has done their work in assisting them escaping violence.

If Matheson has any frustration it's that the legal system only has a fixed number of tools that it can apply to these situations.

For the 4987 people that aren't murdered, their lives don't magically improve because they got a restraining order.

Simply, people's relationships are too complex for public agencies to effectively intervene and keep them safe.

A woman we'll call Jodie dated a violent man for 7 years.

She remembers the first time a man we'll call Doug, attacked her.

She had just come home from a concert, a little drunk.

And she says so was he.

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2:00 ... I walked through the door and I get accussed you were sleeping with this person, what were you doing, and at that time,...it was then that I ended up getting my shirt ripped, I got head butted maybe 15 times, I got open handed smacked......I was grabbed by my hari and thrown back into the bedroom where I was slapped up some more... When I woke up the next morning I had a huge softball on the top of my head. A purple stripe down my nose, which matched across my face and across my lips, and I was told to put some lipstick on b/c your lips are a little fat...and they look ugly.

Jodie went out and got a protective order.

But shortly afterwards she withdrew it.

She said Doug's family promised this type of thing wouldn't happen again.

Jodie said she wanted to believe that. She also wanted her son to have a father. To make matters worse, she was addicted to alcohol and drugs and relied on Doug to keep her supplied.

Jodie and Doug's relationship is not simple or easy to describe.

Doug in his own right has sought a restraining order against Jodie.

And for the better part of a decade she had a protective order against him.

Their story is typical in that substance abuse is a common part of abusive relationships.

If Jodie was to point to one place where more complete services are needed in would at the intersection of addiction and domestic violence.

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2:21 when I was in detox, I never had anybody say, why are you drinking, what happened to you, how can we help you. I never had anybody acknowledge that, I was just pushed through. In order to have somebody change their life they have to get new tools on how to change.

Victims advocates say many people like Jodie don't have good options.

Sally Wuellenweber is with the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.

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:04 ... They don't have a safe place to go on a long term basis, where they can get the kind of care they need. There aren't places where they can ptu their children into respite care, where they can treat their addiction and be in a place where their abuser can't show up.

Over the past 15 years, the mantra for reducing domestic violence has been to open up the lines of communication among the different players who might come in contact with the victims.

A lot of this is geared toward identifying households with problems as early as possible.

Victims advocate Niki Miller says sometimes the warning signs can be found in some surprising places.

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1:00 ... Often the batterer will threaten the dog. A huge percentage of women won't leave b/c the dog, or family pet will be killed. And this is documented. And what several states have done is they have started cross reporting, cruelty to animals to police and dv people. b/c there is a very good chance, if the pet is being abused it is a precussor to some very bad instances of dv.

But no matter how early agencies and non-profits try to intervene, there are limits.

They are still outsiders trying to influence very private matters.

Jeff Strelzin heads up the Homicide Unit at the Attorney General's Office.

One of his frustrations is that sometimes the people closest to the problem do little to bring it out into the open.

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3:05...I had a case where a group of adults who were not related, had come into a home, saw a woman on the floor, her relative was nearby, left the home, and didn't report it to the authorities, even after hearing gun shots. b/c they felt it was a domestic violence situation, a private situation and they didn't want to get involved.

It's another example of how the intricacies of people's lives makes it so difficult to prevent violence.

As counselors and police officers have wrestled with these intricacies, they've come to question some of their most basic assumptions.

Scott Hampton is the director of Ending the Vioelnce, a batterers intervention program.

15:05 we used to tell women all the time, if it's just that bad, leave. And what we ddin't realize is that we may have been encouraging her to place herself in greater danger. From the batterers perspective this is the ultimate slap in the face, and his decision is to say well, if I can't have you, no one can. Or to take seriously this notion of death do us part.

Another long held belief, says Hampton, is that the men who beat their wives did not know how to deal with their anger.

Hampton likes to ask the men a simple question.

11:44 ...what would happen if you were standing in court someday and the judge did something to make yyou angry, would you go up and hit the judge. And they say of course not. I say why not, and he says well my you know what, would be you know where, you are not entitled to do that, the baliff would come after youi...what they are telling me is that they can do a cost benefit analysis and can decide whenever they want to, not to lose their temper. So they have all the skills necessary when they choose to use them. But somehow when they walk inside their home, they go through this anger management rinse, and they don't have any control.

Perhaps the most daunting lesson learned in recent years is that some domestic violence cases can never be fixed. Jody recently had a chance encounter with her estranged partner after they had spent several years apart. She was with her fiancé and there was a brawl.

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:14 ... So that tells me, if I am by myself, I am at risk for his behaviors, and god forbid if he is high on coke, or drunk, b/c that is when he becomes really violent, but if I am with my fiancé I am safe. But I can't be with my fiancé 24/7.

Some of the time, the state's efforts can treat abusive relationships the way doctors deal with an acute illness. But in other cases, the more accurate comparison is to a chronic disease.

And the hope is that the disease will never be fatal.

For NHPR News, I'm Dan Gorenstein.