The Job Hunt: What Employers Can Do

I attended a luncheon sponsored by the Arkansas Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Verizon Wireless last week for which the discussion was about what employers can do to support domestic violence and stalking victims.  It seemed timely, therefore, to post thoughts on the subject.  Frankly, employers can tip the balance in this struggle.  Law enforcement, courts, shelters, and legislation are all coming together, and though there is still room for improvement, the level of efficiency, empathy and understanding is leagues better than it was even five years ago.  I believe the next wave will be from the private sector, employers taking a stand for employees under siege and utilizing significant resources to keep each and every employee live safely and and without fear, regardless of whether they are on or off the clock.   The topic is big, as are the consequences, so I've broken this article into two parts.  As always, thank you for checking in...

Unto whom much is given, of him shall much be required. 

Luke 12:48

 My family and I used to run a stable and equestrian center in central Texas, and one summer we had an employee who was maliciously harassed by an ex boyfriend.  We dealt with it successfully, but there were times when we honestly didn’t know what we needed to do.   It was a small but thriving business with a nice mix of high-end Thoroughbreds, Quarter Horses and scrubby little Mustangs, but anyone who has ever been in the stable business knows your clients aren’t the horses--they’re the horses’ owners. 

            And our clients were nervous because the idiot in question kept coming by our place when I was at work, hell bent on following his crying ex “fiancé” around the stables and repeatedly asking her why she wouldn’t talk to him anymore.  Eventually he would throw a profane hissy fit and leave in his pickup fast enough to make everyone jump out of the way and cough dust for half an hour.  The woman was still in her teens, a darling little thing who became one with the saddle and animal when she rode, and who found life’s true joy in working where she knew she was valued and in a place where she could be around horses all day long.  It seemed particularly unfair to rob someone of that kind of happiness by stalking them like you own them. 

            The horse owners were just out there to enjoy nature and be with their animals (who often ate better than I did), and this guy’s little rants were upsetting to them, the ex girlfriend, and to all the horses.  Horses don’t so much like to be upset, and their owners knew it, so it took about two of these scenes before the complaints started flooding in.

            Mind you, these were complaints about our business.  No one blamed us for the problem, but the expectations were understandably high that something be done about it, and rightfully so.  

            We banned him from the property and meant it when we said we’d prosecute him for trespassing if he came back, so he took to waiting one hundred yards outside our gate for her to get off work.  This was concerning because I knew he had access to weapons, and he seemed particularly unbalanced during those hot summer weeks.  This created a unique predicament because as the property owner, I felt responsible for my employee, all of our clients, all of the horses and, of course, my own family.  Our boys were young at the time, and I was honestly scared for them.  Another concern was the fact that our barn was filled with a particularly dry, combustible substance called hay, and I didn’t put it past our idiot to seek retaliation by burning our barn.  It was a prickly, confusing time. 

            The happy ending is that she eventually got a protection order, and he seemed to lose all interest in her after spending two nights in jail for violating the order.  Go figure.  He seemed like such a determined fellow, but forty-eight hours in the pokey resulted in his leaving Texas and moving to one of the Dakotas. 

            The horses seemed most content of all. 

            Consider about the many complexities of our situation:  We had an employee who had every right to be frightened and alarmed; animals that would have been defenseless had the offender gotten it into his head to snipe them with his rifle from the abundant woods around our place; our clients who were annoyed and worried enough that some were considering taking their business elsewhere; highly valuable and easily destroyable property; and most precious of all, our own children toddling about the property, all but oblivious to the tons of horse flesh and hooves, wild animals out in the woods, and the potential maniac who kept trying to drop by.  It was through a combination of good communication, utilization of the criminal justice system, determination that he would not be allowed to continue disrupting all of our lives, and an absolutely loyal stand by our employee that eventually won the day. 

Which brings us to the thematic question for this chapter:  Do employers have a responsibility to offer assistance to an employee who is the victim of intimate partner violence and/or stalking?  If you’ve read this blog previously, chances are your answer is yes.  Your answer will likely be followed by a question such as, “How much should a company do, and how involved should a business be in the private life of any individual employee?” 

            An employer’s responsibility is, first and foremost, to operate a profitable business.  If he or she fails to do this one thing, nothing else really matters.  In other words, if the business fails, no one has a job.  Yes, we hope that all employers, from the two-employee mom-and-pop store to the multinational corporation care about the lives of the people who work for them, but the mission is the bottom line. 

            So, let’s talk about the bottom line.  For the purposes of discussion, let’s pretend that you, the reader, are an employer in a company that sells--I don’t know--light bulbs.  Yes, you’re the owner of the Light Bulb Store, famous in your community for selling the highest quality light bulbs at the lowest prices.  Your logo is a bright yellow light bulb with a huge smile, and your tag line is, “We brighten your day with prices you’ll flip for!” (“Flip” the light switch…made that up myself.) 

            Things are swell and business is booming until you sit down one day with your accountant and learn that a new business is moving in next door.  That business, Ralph’s Toxic Chemical Outlet, has another store in a different part of town.  Ralph’s first store is located next to a business that sells lampshades.  The lampshade business used to do quite well until Ralph moved in, but then customers started getting affected by the chemical fumes, employees started calling in sick more often, or being distracted to the point of inefficiency about such matters as whether the exposure to Ralph’s toxins would be the death of them.  Ralph himself is kind of an obnoxious fellow, often cursing and spitting out on the sidewalk in front of the lampshade store, and the result has been that what had once been a thriving little lamp shade business is now starting to go under because Ralph won’t control his toxins or keep his filthy habits to himself. 

            What would you do if you were the owner of the Light Bulb Store and you learned that Ralph was planning to move in next door?  Would you demand that your landlord stop the deal?  Would you use the courts to bar him from setting up a shop knowing his business will kill yours?  Would you use every law and ordinance at your disposal to keep Ralph in line if he did go into business next door?  This is your livelihood we’re talking about here.  How much are you willing to take from Ralph? 

            Now let’s say the toxins aren’t chemical in nature.  Instead, they are the toxins that spread in the form of fear, hate, and dread.  In this scenario, Ralph isn’t the owner of a cruddy business; now he’s a guy who has lost his wife because he beat on her, threatened her, and generally made her life a living hell while she was with him.  She finally got tired of it, and now she’s moved out.  Ralph doesn’t know where she lives yet, but he sure knows where she works.  And it is that place of employment that becomes his primary focus for regaining control of the very person he cannot imagine not controlling.

            Ralph has two ideas in mind.  First and foremost he is going to make her come back to him because the thought of losing control over someone who he most enjoyed manipulating in the whole world is, to a control freak like Ralph, completely unacceptable.  Second, Ralph is going to make her pay for leaving him, and he probably doesn’t care much about anyone else around her. 

            There are a couple of ways Ralph can accomplish both of these agenda items at the same time.  If he can make her life at work so intolerable that she gets in trouble and gets fired, he has simultaneously manufactured a scenario in which she must once again depend on him and made perhaps the one good part of her life miserable. 

            Generally in cases such as this the Ralph’s of the world will start with multiple phone calls to her place of employment.  I’ve had cases in which these guys will call fifty and one hundred times a day, and not answering the ring isn’t an option because customers call in on those same lines. Imagine trying to operate a business or stay on track with a project if you have to answer the phone literally every two or three minutes. 

            At some point in the day during all these calls, a supervisor gets wind of the fact that an employee is receiving multiple calls from her boyfriend.  The supervisor tells her she needs to stop taking personal calls at work.  This is a nasty rock and hard place.  She knows she’s about to get in trouble, she’s probably very embarrassed to be receiving this kind of scrutiny, and she knows with certainty that Ralph isn’t going to stop calling unless she does what he wants.  Eventually she acquiesces, agreeing to meet Ralph for a talk after her shift if he’ll stop calling her work.  Ralph is happy and stops calling for a while.  Ralph has also learned a new control technique, one that he plans to use many more times in the future to get her to talk to him, get her to have sex with him, and even get her to move back in with him. 

            The next tactic often employed by controlling, violent personalities is to start showing up at her work.  In some cases this means being there in the parking lot a few minutes before the start or end of her shift.  Often this means she must endure a torrent of profanities, pleadings, apologies, promises and threats during the walk from her car to the building.  Imagine starting your work day under this kind of pressure, knowing that even if you do make it safely into the building, he’s going to start the onslaught of phone calls right after the door closes behind you. 

            If that isn’t bad enough, the thought of him being out in the parking lot to meet you after work is worse.  In this instance, the woman now has to deal with the fact that she has no built-in excuse for why she can’t stop and talk to him.  She isn’t “running late” for work, so he’ll demand to know why she won’t just “give him a chance.”  The fact that he beat the crap out of her two nights earlier doesn’t register for him because he is a narcissistic bully who is only thinking about the fact that she won’t do what she wants him to do. 

            Worse yet, she now has to contend with the fact that he will most likely follow her when she drives off the lot.  He likely knows where she lives, where her children go to day care, knows her friend, where she buys groceries and does her banking.  There is no real sense that she can get away from him, and in so many tragic instances, that parking lot scene is where her resolve to stay away from him erodes in a pool of despair and fatigue.  She agrees to dinner, during which he will be at least as charming as he was when they first met, and by the next morning they are back together again. 

            Ralph scores another control hit, and the cycle repeats itself. 

            In some cases Ralph’s incessant behavior still doesn’t sway her to meet with him, give him another chance, or get her to come back.  Often this causes Ralph to take his game to a new level.  Many times these guys will call employers and make complaints about her customer service or “inform” her boss that she needs to be drug tested or investigated for embezzlement. 

            Ultimately, if none of these tactics work, some stalkers will take it even one more level, and that may include actual physical attacks on the subject of his obsession, her co-worker, and/or anyone else who happens to get in the way of his objective to make her come back and to make her life miserable in the process. 

            All of these tactics cause problems for an employer.  A supervisor obviously won’t like it if some jackass is calling incessantly and tying up phone lines, causing his employees to be distracted and upset, generating unfounded complaints that must be investigated, or putting the staff in actual physical danger.  This activity wastes time, resources and money, wastes that systematically chip away at the company’s profitability. 

            Given that, an employer has two options:  Get rid of the target employee or help her get rid of the jackass.  It’s really as simple as that, though both options carry unique challenges, responsibilities, and risks. 

Next Post:  The Job Hunt, Part II:  What Employers Can Do

Good Cop, Bad Cop

Recently I've had a case in which the husband of a woman who showed up to the hospital with suspicious injuries works within the criminal justice system.  He's not a police officer, but he is in a position of trust and authority.  The woman wouldn't talk to us, share evidence, or trust us in any significant way.  She told me that she knew we would protect him because he worked with prosecutors, police and judges, and she believed that my fellow officers and I would actually work to help him hurt her and damage her testimony in a pending divorce.  In short, she believed we were all dirty cops, and she had no use for our services.  

I have known a very small handful of bad cops in my time.  Most police officers, however, are extraordinary men and women who live by a code of ethics more precious to us than perhaps anything else save our families.  I’ve never known even one officer who came to work thinking he was going to do bad work and make the world a little worse today.  I’ve never seen a single officer take a bribe, and the one officer I learned had been taking bribes from undocumented immigrants after he terrorized them was caught and convicted and now lives in protective custody in our prison system. 

I’ve seen physical abuse of a suspect by only one officer that occurred after he and I chased a man who had just pulled a knife on a third officer.  It was bad enough that I jumped in between the officer and the suspect and got rewarded with two punches to my own back intended for the bad guy’s head.  That particular police officer is no longer in law enforcement either.   

            I once arrested a cop for strangling his girlfriend.  It was uncomfortable and sad, but he didn't deserve to be in law enforcement any more.  I’d do it again tomorrow if the situation called for it.  Hell yes I’m loyal to my brother officers, but once an officer starts abusing his badge and authority to get away with crimes that could result in injury or death to another human being, all loyalties to him from me are gone. 

            Yes, there is bad policing out there, but it is nowhere near as rampant as one might assume based on how our profession is often portrayed in film and television.  Shows starring an actor portraying a private detective almost couldn’t exist without the premise that the police in the private detective’s town are too incompetent, corrupt or lazy to get the job done themselves, thus forcing the victim to hire someone to solve the crime out of desperation.  How many donut jokes can there be out there?  And folks, let me just clue you in:  raising your arms in mock surrender and announcing, “I didn’t do it,” when a uniformed officer walks by may seem like the funniest, most original jest in the history of comedy, but I assure you that the officer has heard that joke several hundred times and is only smiling so he doesn’t have to punch you in the mouth.  Imagine how you’d feel if you were told the same knock-knock joke several times a day, every day, for twenty years. 

            The point is that Hollywood stereotypes and our culture’s general lack of ease with authority figures leads to a situation in which it is easy and amusing to assume that police officers in any particular city are incompetent and ineffective.  The drawback to this is that this very attitude just widens the chasm between citizens and the people sworn to protect them.  In a real sense, police officers experience a type of bigotry every time they don a uniform or announce their profession.  All of us have been hated, literally hated, simply for the profession we’ve chosen and the clothing we wear.  If you believe that police work is s type of culture, which it is, then it is a simple jump to see that officers are often mocked, despised, pre-judged, and disregarded simply for their participation in that culture.  Substitute a race or a religion for my profession’s culture, and you can see how entirely inappropriate this all is. 

            One of the most significant problems this creates relative to domestic violence is that women who are systematically being beaten down by their partners often find part of the difficulty in seeking help is that they simply don’t feel they can trust police officers to do the job they were hired to do.  For many people trapped in an intimate partner violence nightmare, the thought of reaching out for assistance from a group of professionals trained, equipped and intended to protect them is too big a leap because failure on the part of the police could well mean the death of the victim.  If a victim has grown used to the idea that cops are just a bunch of lazy idiots, how on earth can she trust them with her life or perhaps the lives of her loved ones. 

            One of the objectives in writing these articles is to dispel some of those myths in which officers are portrayed as uncaring or ineffective.  In the last decade there has been a huge push across this nation for police agencies to take domestic violence and stalking more seriously than has ever been the case in the past.  In some cities units specifically assigned to investigate and address abuse in the home are called Homicide Prevention Units, because there is a clear correlation between aggressively using the criminal justice system to combat this type of crime and a lowered homicide rates. 

            Think about that for a minute; police agencies are assigning officers and detectives to uncompromisingly pursue cases involving domestic violence, and the outcome tends to be that the homicide rates in those cities go down.  When you consider that at least fifty percent of all homicides are done by people who know each other and have lived together, this seems to make a lot of sense. 

            We are all used to police agencies reacting to a crime.  An offense gets reported, an investigation ensues, perhaps an arrest is made, and we go on to the next case.  An argument can be made that the suspect can be rehabilitated or “learn his lesson,” but for the most part these actions constitute a slowing mechanism on crime rates with a dash of deterrence thrown in. 

            Something bigger happens when a police agency takes on the responsibility and dedicates manpower to addressing domestic violence crimes.  Every major study in the last twenty years clearly shows a direct link between solid police work and aggressive prosecution (including mandatory jail time in conjunction with batterer’s intervention programs) and decreased homicide rates, decreases in repeat offenses within the same home, lower incidences of officers getting hurt, and increases in the confidence levels the general public has for their police departments.  In essence, while there is still a strong presence of law enforcement, these units also become a crime prevention tool. 

            In my opinion, this is simply good police work and good government.  Governments, and by extension the executive branch as represented by every police officer across this land, have as their most important function the protection of the citizenry.  There is no more important or sacred duty of government than that.  Yes, governments get bogged down in bureaucracy and, in some cases, outright inefficiency, but when it gets right down to the base objective, taking care of the safety and welfare of each other is what it’s all about in a government of and by the people. 

            To that end, it makes sense that when programs that are repeatedly shown to be effective in better ensuring the safety of the community are identified, the resources and support of police chiefs and elected sheriffs fall behind them.  More and more, that is what communities are getting.  I’ve said for years that twenty-first century policing has an opportunity to do a better job for those we serve than at any time in this nation’s history, and programs such as Homicide Prevention Units (or whatever name is given to units assigned to combat domestic violence) can and should be a big part of that.

         As for the woman who could not find it within her to trust us…my message to her is that there are trustworthy and safe options available for the asking.  We’ll be here when you’re ready. 

Anger Management: Myth of the Rage-A-Holic

The following is an excerpt from an interview I did with a man who had just beaten his girlfriend and her six-week-old infant.  This portion of his statement came in a little over an hour into the interview.  He’d lied about almost everything to this point, but eventually he got tired and knew we knew he was lying.  He finally threw in the towel hoping he’d get credit for “being honest:” 

Williams

So, what was going on in your head right at the moment you smashed the baby through the wall?

Suspect

I don’t know.  I just lost it.  I was trying to get her to drink some milk or something.  I don’t know.  She just kept crying, and I wanted her to shut up.  I just lost it…

Williams

You lost it.  The baby was crying too much, and…so are you saying you lost what…your temper?  Control?  What did you lose?

Suspect

My control, I guess.  I go into these rages, and I don’t remember nothing.  I just lose it sometimes when I get that mad. 

Williams

You’ve lost it with the baby before, haven’t you?

Suspect

Yeah.

Williams

How many times?  What’s the most number of times you think you’ve lost control while you were taking care of the baby?

Suspect

I don’t know.  Maybe six? 

Williams

The baby is six weeks old.  So are you saying you go into a rage and lose total control about once a week, every week for as long as that baby has been alive?

Suspect

Not every week.  Sometimes it was like two or three times in one week, so that adds up to six pretty quick. 

This guy’s statement wasn’t so very different from a lot of others I’ve heard over the years.  Loss of control due to rage is pretty handy as an excuse for having done inexcusable things.  This guy literally shoved that six week old baby thorough sheetrock, and the only thing that stopped the child from going all the way through into the next room was the stud in the wall.  I asked him about the hole in the wall during the interview.  I’d already seen it, but he didn’t know that.  Specifically, I asked him about the size of the hole.  His answer:  “About baby size.” 

            Here’s what tripped him up in terms of his whole, “It’s not my fault because I don’t have control over my rages,” defense.  After he was done nearly killing the baby and then beating and threatening the baby’s mother for good measure, he had her call 911 for an ambulance because the baby had stopped breathing.  In the background he could be heard whispering, “Tell them she fell off the couch.”  Oh, and that hole in the wall I mentioned a second ago?  He had the wherewithal and control to actually pin a poster over the damaged sheetrock before the ambulance crew arrived.  It was a picture of a red dragon, something I found intensely ironic. 

            Now, given that he had the ability to quickly manufacture a lie, rehearse the lie with the mother of the baby, feed her lines to say as she spoke with dispatchers, cover evidence of his crime, and initially tell an almost convincing story to the paramedics and police officers, how much do you believe that he lost all control due to some rage impulse just minutes before?  

When it was all said and done, we cut a large section out of the wall and submitted it as evidence so that we could show the actual “baby-sized hole” at trial.  We never had to, though.  He ended up taking a plea bargain for ninety years in the pen.

Miraculously, the baby healed well and was fine, and let us be thankful she was too young to remember the monster that was her father. 

I’m sure that there are real instances of human beings losing total control, Dr. Jekyll style, and causing all sorts of mayhem and nastiness.  In most cases, however, it’s been my experience that loss of control due to rage is a weak excuse offered by the bad guy when he knows he’s caught. 

Why doesn’t he “lose it” with his demanding boss who rates his work as substandard, his probation officer who insists on yet another pee test, the unarmed police investigator accusing him of horrible crimes in an interrogation room, or the judge who sentences him to hard time that will take up a big portion of the rest of his life?  Surely all of those people served to rile him up, stress him out, or otherwise just piss him off and, yet, he doesn’t lose control with any of those people¾just the one with whom he lives, has sex and children, breaks bread, and shares dreams (not to mention, the ones who are significantly smaller and weaker). 

Obviously I’m not a big fan of the blind rage excuse.  I am, however, a supporter of the mentally ill, and I consider myself to be a long-time advocate for better treatment of those suffering from mental illness from police officers and jail staff.  I believe strongly that we, as a society, don’t do enough preventive treatment for people suffering from severe mental illness, and as a result we end up having to feed and house them in our prison systems for years after they commit crimes while ill.  At least sixty percent of the men and women in our prison system suffer from a severe mental illness such as bipolar or schizophrenia and I have to wonder what kind of positive effect increased preventative care would have on our national crime stats. 

            I’m not really talking about that type of severity when I speak of the people who use blind rage as a crutch when they get caught, though.  If they were truly psychotic, that rage would not simply go away as soon as they got their way, and common sense would dictate that it would come bubbling right back as soon as stressors such as challenges to their authority or loss of freedom became a reality. 

            Along these same lines, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the phrase, “He’s a nice man when he’s not drunk.”  Look, mean drunks are just mean people who mask their asshole-ness most of the time, and only lose the façade when alcohol or drugs cause their defenses to drop.  I don’t drink much, but I tend to be fairly happy when I have a beer or two.  In fact, one of my hard and fast rules is that I don’t drink when I’m sad.  How pitiful is it to cry in ones beer, after all?  Yes, I certainly understand that alcohol is often used to numb the pain of…whatever…but I also know it sucks to be sad and drunk simultaneously. 

            My point is that I’m an essentially cheerful person.  Cheerful people who choose to drink (and not drive) tend to be fairly cheerful when they quaff a few with their friends.  Conversely, the “angry drunk” is most often an angry person who only shows the world his or her true spirit when the spirits allow them to do so.  And, presto, the guy who gets drunk, gets mad, and gets violent has a built-in excuse for his actions:  “I lost it because I’d been drinking.” 

            What a rectum. 

This distinction is important when we talk about prevention and changing patterns of violent behavior.  We hear the term, “Anger Management Program” often when we discuss how best to get a batterer to stop hurting those with whom he lives, but truly that is only one portion of the puzzle when we’re talking about getting a violent person to stop being so violent.  If we can agree that such a person really can control and manage his anger, then we have to acknowledge there is more to it than just sending a guy through a class for six weeks and believing he’s a changed man. 

There is a high probability that a batterer grew up watching one person in his home batter another.  He may well have been the victim of such abuse, and so there is a valid argument to make that he simply doesn’t know any other way.  It is also likely that he hates that part of himself, and there is a portion of him that doesn’t like being the bully.  This is why I lean heavily in favor of Batterer’s Intervention Programs. 

Batterer’s Intervention Programs differ from Anger Management Programs in that they strive to focus not just on the anger, but also on the patterns and cycles leading to abusive situations, the history of abuse within the individual, and effective strategies for having successful relationships.  It is a much broader picture than just addressing the anger.  The anger must be taken into account, by all means, but it is only one chair at the table. 

Because Batterer’s Intervention Programs invest in so much more, they tend to be much longer programs.  Anger Management style classes tend to average around six weeks, whereas Batterer’s Intervention Programs may be as long as six to nine months. 

I find a real analogy in this area with a person who earnestly wants to quit using an addictive substance.  There is little reason to believe an addicted person will quit simply by saying, “I’m not going to use that substance any more.”  The person might be more successful if their friends and family support them in their goals, and then their success could be even more possible if they seek treatment with a physician.  To take it to the next level, that person probably needs to explore the emotional reasons for having tried the drug in the first place, and the back-story behind falling into an addictive lifestyle.  Is there depression involved, an obsessive/compulsive disorder, or a series of destructive behaviors that must be dealt with?  Maybe there is an issue with that person growing up watching the adults in his or her life abusing the same substance, and that person never learned that there is life beyond the substance. 

Regardless, it is clear that the more inclusive and supportive a substance abuse program, the more successful the addicted person will be in getting and staying sober.  I believe the same holds true for abusive domestic partners.  The more open they are to exploring the fundamental reasons for their anger, their actions, and their responses to stress, the more successful they can be in their own lives and in the important relationships in their lives. 

Batterer’s Intervention Programs are growing in number across the country.  They can be court ordered, or they can often be found offered by mental health facilities, through some churches, or through referrals from domestic violence shelters.  If you are a loved one of a victim or even of a batterer, it is important to know the distinction between “controlling” one’s anger and learning patterns that will allow a lot of that anger to finally be released in a positive way.  One is simply an excuse for unacceptable behavior, and the other is an actual path toward a life in which peace and quality relationships can become a reality.

Threat Assessment

We talk in professional Domestic Violence circles about the threat of homicide when a woman stays in a domestic violence setting.  Frankly, any time a person lives amidst violence they are more vulnerable to attack, injury and even death.  I’ve heard it said (and I’d give them credit if I could remember where I heard it) that there are two groups of people living within the borders of the U.S. who KNOW they will be physically attacked from time to time:  Cops and domestic violence victims.  Cops tend to rise to the challenge and even enjoy a good wrestling match from time to time.  Domestic violence victims just have to live day to day in fear, knowing it is a fight they can’t win and could result in serious injury or death. 

There are two considerations when considering the threat of homicide.  The first is that living in a violent home makes one more likely to be a homicide victim.  The second is that leaving a violent home ALSO makes it more likely that a person will become a homicide victim. 

Look, leaving is dangerous.  There’s no delicate way to put it.  A man who is controlling and who is willing to use violence and death threats to get his way tends to lose his mind when the person he most wants to control tries to leave.  It is a dangerous undertaking best approached as a team effort including friends and family, law enforcement, shelters, physical and mental health care providers, legal services, and a host of other options that could include alarm systems, self-defense instruction, and relocation assistance.  Leaving and living safely can be done, but it has to happen with support and strategy.

So, let’s go back to threat assessment.  What constitutes a threat?  We find that some people have managed the stress of a violent home for so long that they can miss critical clues as to the rising danger levels.  How can friends and loved ones best assess the threat level from the outside and then communicate their fears in a way that the domestic violence victim finally understands how bad it is getting? 

Let’s start with a list of situations that statistically show a greater risk for homicide:

• History of weapons use
• Unemployment of the abuser
• Substance Abuse
• Previous History of Violence (Especially if there has been Strangulation)
• Abuse During Pregnancy
• Ignoring Court or Lawful Orders
• Killing of a Pet
• Violence Toward Children
• Suicidal Ideations

Any one of these factors in a violent relationship is a red flag that a homicide and/or a homicide & suicide is a real possibility, and when you factor in two or more it gets exponentially more dangerous.  When we see one or more of these factors in a case, we tend to take that case more seriously and go into “homicide prevention” mode.  I’m not a big stat guy, but let’s take a look at a few hard-core stats to make the point.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), a woman is TWENTY TIMES more likely to be murdered if she’s been threatened by an intimate partner with a knife or gun, and its almost FIFTEEN times more likely if he’s ever made a death threat.  Take a look at DOJ’s top five pre-homicide risk factors, and note the ugly increase in risk noted after each factor: 

• Ever threatened to use a deadly weapon against victim? (20.2x)
• Ever threatened to kill or injure victim? (14.9x) 
• Ever tried to strangle (choke) the victim? (9.9x)
• Has abuser ever forced victim to have sex? (7.6 x)
• Is abuser violently or constantly jealous? (9.2x)  

What does this all mean to a friend or loved one of a person living in domestic violence? It means the risk is rising when one or more of these factors are present. It means she needs help, even if she can’t accept that right now. Stay with her, offer her support, strength and options. Be patient, even when you are terrified, and love them even when they aren’t seeing the danger. It may be the next conversation when you show her some of these stats that is the very one to finally guide her into an environment in which professionals are willing, able and equipped to help…and that could make all the difference in a lifetime.