Homicide – Page 2 – Can You Relate?

What we talk about when we talk about guns

In the wake of last week’s Navy Yard shooting, we enter another round of the now familiar national conversation about gun violence in America.

Image from Demand Action To End Gun Violence

Mother Jones has an in depth analysis of mass shootings since 1982. According to their criteria, the Navy Yard shooting is the fifth such incident in 2013.

According to another compilation of gun violence incidents by reddit users, the fifth mass shooting of this year happened back in January, and the Navy Yard shooting was #247.

Why the huge discrepancy? Whether there have been 5 mass shootings this year or 247 depends on how you define the terms.

Most of the time, “mass shootings” and “gun violence” are defined by the stories that get the most attention and that get under our skin. The stories that are hard to shake because the randomness makes it feel like any one of us could be a target. Studying domestic violence homicides, I am used to thinking about violence as anything but random. But even I was surprised to find out that 57% of mass shootings (defined as 4 or more people killed) involve domestic violence. More than half.

When I heard that number, I thought how is it I have never heard this before? Domestic violence is actually behind most mass shooting deaths in America and yet it is almost never part of the conversation. Until just recently, most analysis of mass shootings doesn’t include domestic violence. Mother Jones defines the term in a way that excludes shootings that happen at home, even if the same shooting in a public place would count.

The media coverage is different too. We read about the deeper social significance of random, public violence. What it says about our society. Domestic violence rarely prompts the same soul searching. That double standard reinforces old myths. That the “real” danger is outside your home, not inside. That men’s violence against their families is a private tragedy, not a social injustice, not a matter for collective action and public policy.

Focusing on men’s violence against women won’t make the solutions to gun violence easy or obvious. But at least it will help us see the problems more clearly.

Trayvon Martin + Marissa Alexander =?

What do Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander have in common? The Stand Your Ground law, a Florida prosecutor named Angela Corey and, heartbreakingly, no justice. Trying to figure out the legal technicalities and how they collided with race and gender in Florida sends me spinning.

Growing up in southern Virginia I have felt the sting of anti-Semitism from middle-school classmates who called me “Jesus-killer” to adults who felt uncomfortable working with Jews. As a white, Jewish woman I was taught skepticism and understanding of how rules and laws don’t play out the same way for everyone. I observed people in power bend rules and laws to their liking. Whether it was school policy that wouldn’t let me make up a test if I was absent for a Jewish holiday or bank lending practices that prohibited my family and my African-American friends from buying homes in certain neighborhoods.

In neither the Zimmerman or Alexander case was their history of domestic violence taken into account. For Zimmerman, this meant that his documented history of abuse was not admissible in court. Even worse, the legal system didn’t consider if his past abusive behavior was an indicator of possible future violence and take steps to address that, such as taking his guns away.

For Marissa Alexander the past history of abuse from her husband also didn’t count in court, but the outcome was very different. She was denied the use of the Stand Your Ground law in her defense, and was sentenced to 20 years. And she’s not alone. We know that it’s way harder to get justice if you’re a black woman dealing with domestic violence. I asked one of my daughters what she thought of Marissa Alexander and her prison sentence. She said “She didn’t hurt anyone—no one got hurt. She was trying to defend herself. I don’t understand it.”

In my job, I work every day to help create a better world for my children, and yours. I am inspired by Move to End Violence’s call to “create a world that is safe, loving and respectful of everyone’s inherent human dignity.” I can’t give up even when I see how broken our system is. Really, what else am I living for?

Where the danger often is

Have you thought about mass killings when dropping your kids off at school or going to a movie lately? It’s hard not to, given the horrific shootings recently. But do you think of them every time you enter your house?

Most mass shootings occur in private spaces, and involve families. Mayors Against Illegal Guns recently issued a report on mass shootings. In all cases where a shooter killed four or more people, 57% involved domestic violence: meaning the shooter killed their intimate partner, and frequently, their children and other family members.

What surprised me about this report was not the fact that many mass shootings are domestic violence related: we know that from our Fatality Review work. No, what was surprising was to see a mainstream group make this connection: that the deaths of (overwhelmingly) women and children at the hands of murderous (overwhelmingly) men is an identifiable, terrifying pattern and it often has domestic violence at its core. Usually we see the media and officials treating each domestic violence related shooting as an isolated and unpredictable incident.

You and I may have felt frightened by the Sandy Hook or Batman shootings, but if you are a woman in an intimate partnership with a man, especially one who keeps a gun in the house, the odds of being terrorized in your home are higher than the odds of being in a terrorist attack or mass killing committed by a stranger. We know that almost half of women murdered are killed by their intimate partners, and women are more likely to be murdered or threatened with guns when guns are in their homes. The violence most relevant to women and children is the violence committed in their own homes, by a person who should be loving and nurturing them, but we rarely see this connection made so clearly.

Bullets are not a safety plan

June 14, 2013: I can’t believe it’s the six-month anniversary of Newtown. I took a moment to read this blog I wrote a few days after the tragic event. It feels as relevant to me today as it did 6 months ago. The conversations are the same and I feel frustrated and stuck. We simply have to move forward.

Like many of you, I’ve been sad for days, affected by the horrible events in Newtown. I haven’t been able to talk much about it. One because I have an almost 4-year-old who just doesn’t need to process this, and two, because I can’t be very articulate when I am a sobbing mess. But yesterday something happened that made me speak up. A college friend posted on Facebook that she refused to live in fear, and was planning to get her concealed weapons permit.

I was a bit shocked to hear this from this particular friend. Although I grew up in the South where we have lots of experience around guns, this friend didn’t seem like one to go for the firearms. I was clearly wrong. And I was immediately scared for her and her family. I begged her to do her research and let her know that statistics show that owning a gun does not make you safer. In fact, areas with more guns have more murders. Combine that with the fact that most gun-related homicides are not found justifiable in the eyes of the law (that self-defense plea you were banking on isn’t all that solid), and it seems clear that having guns around makes you less safe.

But what about the fear? How are we supposed to feel powerful and able to protect our families? After a tragedy like this, it’s hard to reconcile the senselessness and sit with the fear. We want to fix it. Be bigger and stronger than it.

I know that a lot of survivors of abuse feel this way every day. Firearms play a big part in the lethality of domestic violence situations. In Washington State, the majority of domestic violence homicides are committed with firearms. Domestic violence victims are five times as likely to be killed by their abuser if that abuser owns a gun.

Gun violence has something else in common with domestic violence: most of the perpetrators are men. Why? This ad pretty much sums that up. Assault rifles are glorified in the media and marketed to men. This is a real ad for a Bushmaster assault rifle that says “Consider your man card reissued.” Feel like you lost your man card? Going out and using this should make you feel better! That’s what this ad is essentially saying. We have to change the course of this gun toting ship we are on. Something has to give. For the sake of the people we love and the communities we live in.

The Powells

As the children’s justice coordinator at WSCADV, I’ve spent years partnering with the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) on how to address children’s safety when domestic violence is an issue. I’ve worked with some wonderful people, and we’ve accomplished some great things together. And we have a long way to go. The work is incredibly hard because so much is at stake. We all want what’s best for kids. No one wants to tear kids from their parents if we don’t have to. And sometimes we have to.

DSHS has released the report from their Child Fatality Review on Charlie and Braden Powell’s horrific murders by their father, Josh Powell. This report is supposed to help all of us—community members, child welfare workers, police officers, judges, and policy makers—understand how these boys lost their lives while the state was in charge of them, and what we need to do to avoid such tragedies in the future.

The headline DSHS put out on their press release implied nothing could have been done to change the outcome (“Despite solid work by all involved, nobody could anticipate that Joshua Powell would murder his sons”), but the report doesn’t actually say that. It says the committee “did not draw conclusions about whether any actions by Children’s Administration, law enforcement, or the court could have prevented Mr. Powell’s actions.” Having served on commissions, committees, and task forces, I can tell you that this is committee-speak for “even after days of discussion, we did not reach consensus: some of us absolutely thought this was preventable, and some of us didn’t.”

The good news is the committee did come up with 4 recommendations; concrete steps to take based on what they learned. How can we not do everything in our power to make sure these happen?

Most of the press coverage has focused on the first recommendation, which encourages social workers to communicate more with police when there’s an active criminal investigation. In this case, police were clear that Josh Powell posed a potential danger to his kids. The report notes that if they had known that he was being given visitation in his own home they would have expressed “concerns.” Child welfare workers and the visitation supervisor, however, apparently did not share these concerns. The visitation supervisor has said she did not have a feeling of “danger, alert, murderer” about Josh Powell. Case notes pointed to Josh’s compliance with all orders and appropriate parenting during his supervised visits. (Please. Is it really news that abusers and murderers can be socially appropriate when it serves them?) Should social workers talk to police (even if they’re not required to) so they have a chance to give their input? Absolutely. But let’s get to the heart of the problem: until DSHS (and the general public) sees that the pattern of violence and coercion a parent uses against their intimate partner is a huge factor in figuring out if kids are safe, they’re going to keep missing the point, and kids will be endangered as a result.

It is so hard for me to understand how this connection is not obvious. How can someone think: “Yes, this person is probably responsible for his wife’s disappearance—it’s likely he killed her and hid her body—but that doesn’t mean he’s not a good dad.”? (I know, he wasn’t charged with murder (yet), but everyone involved knew that he was the only person under suspicion.) The competent and well-meaning social workers assigned to this case didn’t make the connection that the likely murder of his wife (and the possibility that a pattern of abuse existed before the murder) should be a factor in thinking about how much access he should have to his kids, and where.

Fortunately, the Child Fatality Review Committee did see this connection and found that DSHS had not trained its workers adequately on domestic violence (for some reason, this has received virtually no press attention). The committee noted that DSHS has a policy of screening all intakes for domestic violence (asking, “Has anyone used or threatened to use physical violence against an adult in the home?”). In this case, that question was answered “No.” Because of this, social workers did not follow DSHS policy to conduct an in-depth domestic violence assessment. The committee found that enough information was available to answer this question “Yes.”

What difference would the domestic violence assessment have made? It would have prompted social workers to gather more information—from friends, relatives, or court records. They could have learned from Susan’s friends and family that they had been concerned about physical violence as well as Josh’s controlling tactics like hiding her car keys and attempting to deny her access to bank accounts. When police told social workers they thought Josh had killed Susan, but they just didn’t have enough information to arrest him, the assessment could have helped them use this information to assess danger to the children.

The assessment also looks at the impact of domestic violence on the children. It helps social workers see how a parent’s actions (like how Josh abused their mother and collected child pornography) can indicate their ability to think through how their choices are impacting their kids and if they are capable of putting their children’s needs ahead of their own. And understanding domestic violence means realizing that when a batterer starts losing control of their family (like when Josh began losing his custody battle to Susan’s parents), it often means increased danger.

WSCADV was thrilled when our partnership with DSHS resulted in their implementing the Social Worker’s Practice Guide to Domestic Violence. However, DSHS did not take effective action to ensure that every social worker had basic competencies around domestic violence, how it relates to child safety, and the changes in investigation and case planning suggested in the Practice Guide.

I don’t think this case was about an individual failure on the part of the social workers involved. In my opinion, this is about our systems failing to recognize that we have to look at a history of domestic violence when trying to figure out if a person is a safe parent. The fact that DSHS has a policy in place with the Practice Guide is a great start. But their failure to fully implement it by providing training to support its use has to be addressed. If it had been, would we be telling a different story about Josh, Charlie, and Braden Powell today? I will go out on a limb and say I certainly think so.

Dirty laundry

In the wake of the murders, the Northwest Network gathered to display the Clothesline Project―an art installation created collectively by hundreds of GLBT survivors of domestic violence. All evening people stopped, read the messages of strength and survival, mourned the deaths, and talked about how to make the community stronger.

On August 11 in Seattle, 29-year-old Eric Cooper and his 3-year-old son Cooper Chen were brutally murdered. Louis Chen―Eric’s partner of over 10 years and the boy’s other father―has been charged with their deaths.

In my role as the coordinator of the Domestic Violence Fatality Review, I pay attention to news reports about domestic violence homicides. This death struck me in a different way.

I had the reactions I always do when I read about someone killed by an abusive partner: sorrow for the loss to family and friends; grief at the terror the victims had to experience; and outrage that another life has been lost at the hands of an abuser.

This time I had another set of reactions too. As a queer parent, I worried that the publicity around the murder would fuel homophobic, right-wing arguments that gay men are sick or crazy, that gay parents are unfit, that GLBT families are unnatural.

I’m sure people from any community can relate to the fear that airing our “dirty laundry” will be used against us. That if we acknowledge that domestic violence happens in GLBT relationships, we’re providing ammunition to people who want to paint us as sick and deviant.

As I watched the news coverage unfold though, I think the opposite is true. I believe that naming what happened to Eric and Cooper as domestic violence helps us understand their experience. The evidence suggests that domestic violence happens at about the same rates in gay couples as in straight couples. Honestly talking about abuse in the gay community makes it possible to confront it, to respond, and to prevent it.

Up to Us

I’m really excited this week because the release of our final Fatality Review Report is getting a lot of attention in the media. But it’s hard to be excited about the report itself. Studying domestic violence homicides has shown that many of the systems we expect will help are not reliable. And honestly, this is not a big surprise to me. Maybe I’m jaded by all the stories I’ve heard from survivors of how the legal system, or the welfare system, or even sometimes the domestic violence shelters, failed them.

But I want to talk about something else. The Fatality Review data also showed that victims turned to family and friends for help long before and far more often than they called police, got a Protection Order, or went to a shelter. And yet, still their lives ended at the hands of their abusers. My hope in this new year is that if you’re the one person that someone turns to for help, you’ll know what to do. Just knowing that anyone can call a domestic violence program and knowing a bit about what might happen when you do goes a long way. Domestic violence can end, but we all must be a part of the solution.

Finding comfort, if not answers

Vanda Boone was murdered this month.

By a man.

On a trail where I ride my bicycle all the time.

Though I did not know Vanda, this feels personal. Another woman, just like me. In the place so many of us go when we need to be outdoors.

Ribbon Pole — The ribbon pole where 25 names have been tied since 2005 when the Moments of Blessing first began

Yesterday’s heat did not deter 80 of us, mostly strangers, from gathering for a Moment of Blessing. Interfaith Works brings people together when someone is murdered in our county to reclaim the place of violence.

These events help me with the sadness and the big questions I’m left struggling with. What is so deeply wrong with us? Why do men murder women who are total strangers, and murder women they profess to love?

I have found few answers to these questions in my 30 years of working to end violence against women. I guess this is what draws me to the spiritual comfort of the Moment of Blessing. In standing with others, I am not alone in being deeply moved. It consoles me to form a circle, cry with others, and speak of life and love.

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this: