You Got the Real Story (For Once), But What's With the Cover?

DEAR EDITOR: Boy, the police can't win for losing ["Victim Without a Voice," Oct. 31]. They try to take domestic violence seriously by arresting the perpetrators rather than regarding it as something for families to "work out," then they are faulted for breaking families up. "The victim is not listened to" sounds absurd to me, when the cops take the victims' calls for help more seriously than the backpedaling that happens later.Abused women benefit from automatic prosecution, and those who insist they were crying wolf should remember: "If you call them, they will come."

DEAR NINA SHAPIRO: Thank you for exposing what really happens with the system if you are involved in domestic violence.

I was a victim of domestic violence. Jim, my fiancé, and I have been together since March 2005. The incident occurred in July 2006. After the incident, I was subjected to badgering and bullying by the investigating officer. Did he listen to me? No, he did not. I was basically told that they were going for a conviction with or without me.

Since there was a no-contact order in place that I did not want or support, I called my "victim's advocate" in the prosecutor's office. I was told that I could not speak at Jim's arraignment, but that she would express my wishes of having the no-contact order lifted. I was also told that the prosecutor would not speak to me directly and that all communication would have to be done through the advocate. What does that say to a "victim"? It's pretty clear that the advocacy is on the prosecution's behalf and not on the side of the victim at all.

Sentencing was Dec. 29, 2006. At that time, the judge still refused to lift the no-contact order despite my pleas for it to be removed. I had to request another hearing and work through my fiancé's public defender to get on the court docket. After the third attempt, the order was finally lifted in February. I believe the only reason it was lifted was because I was able to articulately express my feelings about the incident and the fact that I had sought individual counseling on my own. I got more help through my company's human resources department and employee assistance program than was ever offered by the "advocate" program.

Due to the charges that were filed and the fact that Jim was basically forced to plead guilty, he lost his job. We have lost our car to repossession, and I have had to file Chapter 13 just to save our home. I consider us lucky, though. I do have a good job, and both Jim and I are committed to each other despite the system's every attempt to keep us from being together.

I choose not to be labeled by the system or anyone else. I have a mind, a voice, and strong convictions of what is best for me and don't need people that haven't a clue as to who I am telling me how I should act, who I should be in a relationship with, or what is best for me and the course of my life.

DEAR EDITOR: Bravo to Nina Shapiro.A very good start in documenting the systematic paternalism practiced by the courts and a number of prosecutors' offices.

The "justice" system was designed to reach a "relative truth" through the adversarial process. As an adversary, no prosecutor wants his main witnesses living with the accused, which is exactly what happens in most DV cases. Hence that no-contact order—which is couched in terms of "helping the victim"—is really just good strategy to win the court case. Unfortunately, many judges follow lock-step with the prosecutor.

Judges also remember that in 1984 the Legislature adopted the King County Prosecutor's Sentencing Reform Act. Instead of retraining police on DV or creating some diversion program, the Legislature simply took away police discretion and ordered them to arrest someone—anyone—at every domestic violence call. Fighting DV had become a "cause," and causes, as we all know, produce a certain insidious form of zealotry whose disciples usually shoot first and ask questions later.

Today, all those boutique DV courts and special DV calendars with very special DV judges and quite special DV prosecutors, together with the hordes of "victim advocates" (who actually work for the prosecutor), have gone a long ways towards producing the troubling disconnect Nina Shapiro observed. Take anybody and feed them DV horror stories 24/7 and soon they will be lopsided in their thinking.

Certainly when the prosecutor and the judge and the advocates and the police can "all just work together," well, yes...umm, the system is more efficient. But, what is the message to a family?

Most of the victims I have interviewed are overwhelmed at the amount of pressure asserted by advocates and prosecutors to convict. They are routinely told that they must "stop the cycle" and fedlines to use in court, even though a virtual divorce and a degradation of their husband's ability to find work is often the very last thing that they want. Contrary to the thinking of a lot of twentysomething prosecutors, many couples do want to try to stay together and work it out. Maybe the rule should be that DV prosecutors should have 25 years of marriage under their belt.