Featured Excerpts from the book, “Hope for Hurting Families: Creating Family Justice Centers Across America,” by Casey Gwinn, J.D. and Gael Strack, J.D. Reprinted by Permission of Publisher Volcano Press 2006 www.volcanopress.com 1-800-879-9636

Chapter One, Page 11:
I Have a Friend…

It is a familiar story. Domestic violence murders happen regularly. Murder-suicides often dot the pages of newspapers across America-- “Domestic Dispute Results in Death of Woman” is the headline in the local paper. “Domestic dispute results in death.” What an absurd statement! A domestic dispute occurs when my wife and I cannot agree where to go for dinner. No one dies in a domestic dispute. But the phrase still populates media accounts of domestic violence murders.

My theory for such inaccurate media reporting is this: It is our way to minimize the violence, blame the victim, and even minimize the killing itself. If it is a marital spat, it is the fault of the disputants. If it is a domestic dispute, it is not something we need to spend a lot of time reviewing. It’s only a domestic dispute. It is not as if a stranger killed an innocent woman. This woman is part of the problem. This is a woman who “made her bed hard” and became part of such a “sick-dance” relationship. It is easy for us to move on after reading about deaths from domestic disputes. If the headline read, “Loving Wife and Devoted Mother Murdered by Cold-Blooded Killer,” that would trouble us, wouldn’t it? Why did she deserve to die if she was a loving person? Why was he not stopped before he killed her? Who let him avoid accountability? How could someone possibly kill someone in cold blood? What could we have done to stop him? If that were the headline, we would have far too much personal and professional work to do. If that were the headline, we as a local community might have to get involved.

It is played out on the pages of our lives day after day. Women die in domestic violence homicides. Children die. Sometimes men die at the hands of their children. The problem, of course, is that we don’t know most of those who were killed. And if the story is about some juvenile who has committed a serious crime, we simply condemn the juvenile criminal and bemoan what is happening in our culture. We don’t look into his background. We don’t end up visiting the 13 year-old in juvenile hall who vandalized the auditorium at the middle school. We don’t sit down with him and find out he has been witnessing violence in his home for the last 10 years. We don’t actually employ the woman who ends up dead from a domestic dispute. Though millions of women and children are victimized each year in this country, we don’t usually interact with many of them. They are TV stories, they are newspaper articles, they are statistics – they are not our friends and family members.

Sadly, as we distance ourselves from the actual family violence going on all around us, we don’t have to engage in the debate. After all, most of us are not police officers, prosecutors, judges, or emergency room doctors. We are not experts in family violence. We don’t really understand the issue, and, therefore, we feel little reason to get involved. And even if we do work in the field as I do, we still don’t talk about it often enough or specifically enough with those around us.

Chapter Eight, Page 119-120
Helping Children Caught in the Crossfire

James didn’t pick his family. He never had the chance to say that he did not want to be exposed to violence and alcohol abuse during his growing-up years. He was a victim, a child caught in the crossfire of family violence. By seven years old, he had experienced the pain of open hands, closed fists, screaming rage. He often went to bed scared for his mother and terrified of his stepfather. By the time he was 14 he was hitting his girlfriend. By 20, he was a father and was already abusing his girlfriend and her two young children. At 22, he was in the San Diego Municipal Court being prosecuted by the San Diego City Attorney’s Office for spousal abuse.

I met James in court. His defense attorney said he was a really nice guy who needed someone to cut him a break. I was advocating locking him up for two years. But before one of the court hearings in the case, I agreed to meet with him in court and nothing I said would be used against the prosecution if the case went to trial.

Within 10 minutes of meeting James, I was almost moved to tears. He was a scared, angry man only three years younger than I was. But he carried baggage that I didn’t have. He wept in my presence as he admitted that he did not know how to stop his violence. He told me about his home when he was growing up and how much he loved his step-kids. He knew he was making terrible choices, but didn’t know how to stop. It was a powerful education for me as a new domestic violence prosecutor. Putting James in jail for two years was not going to solve anything. He had already spent a week in jail at the outset of the case, and he did not want to go back. He was willing to go to counseling, perform public work service, pay a fine, and do anything else required of him, but he begged not to have to go back to jail.

At first, I was not sympathetic to James. I thought how tough he must have acted when abusing those he claimed to love. And now, here he was, weeping and begging for mercy. I saw him as more pathetic than sympathetic. But as I listened to him and looked into his eyes I was moved by what I heard and saw. There was good in him. There was potential. He did not want to lose his construction job by going to jail. He wanted to provide for his family and he swore that he did not want to keep doing to his kids what he had experienced as a child. I did not demand jail time when the judge sentenced him.

Today, James is the labor relations manager for a large union. He is 15 years past his criminal prosecution, and the generational cycle of family violence in James’ family has been broken. James is currently volunteering his time to help develop Camp Hope, the San Diego Family Justice Center’s camp for victims of family violence and their children. He has served as a spokesperson for the domestic violence movement and continues to freely share the day-to-day temptations and struggles he faces because of the painful baggage he carries inside him. But he is a messenger of hope and living testimony to the healing that children of family violence homes can experience. He has overcome powerful forces that could have destroyed him. James’ story is the perfect starting point to understanding the issues surrounding domestic violence and children before they face the criminal justice system as teens or adults.