No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

Since the 1960s, shelters have been the singular option for keeping domestic violence victims safe. Shelters, which number over 3,000 in the US, vary from facility to facility, but most require women and children to walk away from their lives and cut off contact with friends and family members, which is often not a viable option. Shelters also put the onus on the victims to keep themselves safe. In recent years, shelters have begun to hone their approach, allowing women to keep teenage sons with them, encouraging women to keep their jobs, and providing private accommodations for family units. Still, shelters are underfunded and pose extreme difficulties for the victims who must seek safety amongst other traumatized victims.

As Dunne and Dubus worked to change the way society helps domestic abuse victims, they took a hard look at existing shelters and decided that there had to be a better way. Snyder recounts her visit to a transitional housing site in Washington DC run by Peg Hacskaylo, former director of the District Alliance for Safe Housing, to see how it differs from a shelter.

In 2006, there were two shelters in DC with a total of 48 beds serving 1,700 victims of domestic violence seeking assistance every year. In response to the shortage, the city set aside $1 million for housing and invited organizations to develop solutions and apply for the funds. No one applied, and Hacskaylo was dispatched to find out why. She discovered that the existing organizations were stretched so thin that they had neither the time nor the resources to undertake large projects. Hacskaylo decided to form a nonprofit and do it herself, and the Cornerstone Housing Program was born.

Domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness for women, who often face eviction for disturbances or drug use. In 2013, Hacskaylo developed the Survivor Resilience Fund to provide women with money for security deposits, furniture, and groceries—one-time, immediate needs—so that they can stay in their own communities. The Cornerstone transitional housing facility also offers fitness equipment and playgrounds, but most importantly, it offers women and children a two-year respite from housing costs while they get back on their feet, as well as the privacy and resources to begin healing.

Snyder recounts a meeting of the High Risk team with Kelly Dunne and Detective Wile. The review process categorizes about 10 percent of domestic violence as high risk, identifying events like pregnancy or job loss that heighten the danger. The team also strategizes together to keep the victim safe.

There are very few systemic mechanisms in place to provide abuse victims with the breathing room to formulate a plan. An exception is Massachusetts, where the district attorney can request a 58A hearing to assess the danger an abuser poses while holding that person for 180 days. Pennsylvania is the only other state with this kind of “Preventative Detention” statute, and many constitutional scholars argue that they are unlawful.

At the meeting Snyder attends, the team reviews a case involving an immigrant couple whose child lives with the abuser’s family outside the US. The family threatened to keep the child from ever seeing their mother again if the mother pressed charges or the abuser was deported. The team strategizes how to get the abuser convicted without the mother having to testify.

Snyder previously stated that evidence-based prosecution might have saved Michelle Mosure, and she now returns to Casey Gwinn and his battle to get evidence-based prosecution established in San Diego. Gwinn expanded the use of 911 tapes in court and asked police departments to take more photos and recover more evidence at domestic violence scenes; when he began winning cases, he also began training attorneys around the country. In 2004, however, the Supreme Court ruled in Crawford v. Washington that a defendant has a constitutional right to face his accuser in court. Any testimony given outside of a trial is hearsay, which is not admissible. This ruling effectively shut down a victim’s ability to make a statement without having to face her abuser in person and prevented prosecutors from using the statements of victims who later recanted (as almost 70 percent do). Gwinn explains the impact of the Crawford ruling this way: “The barrier to evidence-based prosecution is not about evidence […] It’s not about the viability of winning these cases. It’s about cultural norms and values. And at the heart of it is a stunning amount of misogyny” (239).

Despite the legal setback, Gwinn continues to prosecute abusers and Dunne and Wile continue to train communities across the country. One of the communities that has replicated the High Risk team is Cleveland, Ohio, which had over 70,000 domestic violence incidents in 2016.