This is a gorgeous section of the country. Standing at lookouts on the parkway, we see layer upon layer of hazy ridges, stretching beyond the imagination. We can raft the Nantahala River’s churning white water or hike through the lush peace of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. All year, we live in the unhurried atmosphere of a gracious Southern town.

Some of our residents, though, see a more sinister side of life, hidden under the easy-going image. Burrowed into many homes, the crime of domestic violence breeds in secret, like a rat. It feeds on little intimacies and pieces of broken dreams. It scurries through the debris of hateful words, manipulation, and abuse of trust. Since brutality thrives on private attitudes, many people don’t even realize it’s there, until it bites someone they know.

Although the problem is almost invisible, it affects every one of us. Consider some of the ways:

° Taxes — Shelters and advocacy centers are non-profit. Their funding comes from grants, private donations, and other community resources. Grant money often translates to tax dollars.

° Health care costs — Related injuries cost billions of dollars per year.

° Rising private/group insurance premiums — Even for those with good insurance, millions of dollars per year still come out of the victim’s pocket.

° Law enforcement/judicial costs — Investigating and prosecuting abuse takes expertise, time, and money.

° Incarceration – Housing, feeding, and providing health care for prisoners is expensive. Unfortunately, most abusers never spend jail time.

° Cost to the family — Especially in this district, victims and their families struggle with food, shelter, utilities and clothing. Even with help from relatives, many need the assistance of food stamps, AFDC and Medicaid.

Exposing dangerous beliefs and destroying the nesting places of partner abuse is also pretty costly, and we live in one of the southeast’s most economically deprived areas. Fortunately for victims, we have the 30th Judicial District Domestic Violence-Sexual Assault Alliance. It is waging an effective war without funding from any metropolitan tax base.

Sybil Mann, the executive director of the alliance, explains how.

“Western North Carolina’s best resources are our people.”

This unique program began several years ago when directors of five domestic violence agencies met to compare the difficulties they faced in serving victims. The most common challenge was that law enforcement and court personnel lacked a uniform system for handling violence in the home.
Coordinate-ing confidential, safe social services and health care was sometimes complicated, too.

These five directors wanted to create a flexible, cooperative framework, giving victims maximum benefits and holding abusers accountable for their actions. They invited criminal justice, law enforcement, social services and healthcare representatives to join them in a partnership. The Alliance was born, independent of any one agency, with a board of representatives from all seven counties (Haywood, Jackson, Macon, Swain, Clay, Cherokee and Graham) to choose and advise an executive director.

Mann, then an attorney for the Guardian Ad Litem program in Haywood County, was an excellent candidate for the position. She was known and respected in the legal system, law enforcement and the judicial system. Her enthusiastic commitment to victim safety and prosecution of abusers was contagious. (In fact, this past April, her community bestowed the Peacemaker of the Year Award, recognizing her exemplary community contributions.)

She’s past interim director for the Kids Advocacy Resource Effort, and she serves on the board for Haywood Animal Welfare Association. She maintains her licensure as an attorney but now earns a fraction of her private practice salary. Somehow, she still finds the time to be a wife and mother of three young children.

Mann secured non-profit status for the alliance and turned her attention to creating county-based task forces on domestic violence. These teams were designed to promote collaboration within individual counties, educate their populations, and identify friction points.

As the task forces reported their progress during monthly meetings, Sybil began a gargantuan training effort. The largest common force in the alliance was the court system, the 30th Judicial District, comprised of North Carolina’s seven western-most counties. That network and the law enforcement agencies within it requested training on writing clear reports, and they wanted a reliable tool to assess risk to victims. Judges, court officials, and officers of the law recognized that partner abuse was a problem, but they differed on how to address it. In such a fragmented system, victims were unsure about testifying, and perpetrators took full advantage of the gaps.

Massive outreach and education efforts focused on defining domestic violence, recognizing the dynamics of abusive relationships, and communicating effectively among agencies. Law enforcement learned how to write tight, information-dense reports, giving the judicial system enough facts to pursue a case to completion. Professionals from social services, the courts, attorney’s offices, the faith community, and law enforcement explored how abusers control their partners, and how that personal interaction affects the human service system.

Mann presents domestic and sexual violence topics to a variety of professional audiences. It’s not an easy task, but she does so with the confidence that it’s making a difference. She list skeys to success:
° “Assume that everyone’s trying to do their best, given their present circumstances and resources,” she said. Giving everyone credit for good intentions is the starting point for building a task force.

° “Make educating professional agencies an ‘inside job.’ Recognize that the messenger is the medium,” Mann said. Task force members must have the tools to speak knowledgeably with their peers and to represent their agency’s position to other members of the task force. This two-way communication is particularly important where the climate among different agencies has been “us against them.”

° Having “buy in from the top” is also critical, she said. You need the active participation of someone your audience acknowledges and respects as a leader.

° “Make it accessible and convenient for them to attend,” Mann said of building a collaborative task force. For example, a presentation for law enforcement might be broken into sections, presented over six weeks, at differing times. This way, every member of every shift could attend without sacrificing coverage. Plan for the convenience of the target audience, not your own.

° “Work towards standardizing policies/procedures within agencies,” she suggested. Create a compulsory training module for that specific institution, and repeat that training at set intervals.
° “Finally, stress uniform policies/procedures/expected responses between resource agencies.” A uniform procedure for responding to members within your network ensures effective and courteous teamwork.

“The payoff for your flexibility is greater cooperation, and personal investment in your audience. It helps change how the institution sees the issues, and how they respond to those concerns. Although the training is developed by domestic violence workers and reviewed by the DV advocates, it’s presented from within the target agency, by one of their own,” Mann said.

Efforts to coordinate judicial and law enforcement response are succeeding. More cases are reported, because victims refuse to ignore and dismiss the violence. Prosecution is better, and sentencing is more consistent. There’s more cooperation and understanding between the courts and officers charged with protecting the public. The two systems form a framework of uniform protocols, policies, and procedures for responding to domestic violence.

What lies ahead for the alliance? One new initiative focuses on a connection between partner abuse and maltreatment of children. Studies show that many violated women report that their partner also abused the children. Between one third and one half of children in foster care report domestic violence in their home of origin.

“Child witnesses to partner abuse often develop a myriad of social and emotional problems,” said social worker Ronnie McKay. “Raised in an unpredictable environment, they see adult roles demonstrated through power and control. They’re at increased risk for educational difficulties, including dropping out of school. DV is insidious, and we’re often unaware of its deep impact on the child witness.”

Like vermin concealed in crawl spaces, domestic violence scurries from the light of awareness. As our communities learn to identify abusive behavior, they destroy the nesting sites of manipulation and control. Victims report what’s happening, tearing apart the excuses that feed aggression. Law enforcement and the court system hold abusers responsible for their behavior, cleaning out the debris of ruined lives. As our communities refuse to tolerate brutality, people learn better ways of dealing with life. Without its comfortable bed of lies, deception, and isolation, the rat of domestic violence is exposed and exterminated.

 

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The Smoky Mountain News