DAWN: Fighting secrecy, shedding light on domestic violence

The mood at the Kent Regional Library last month was upbeat, but on the brink of somber.

The participants filing into the library meeting room Oct. 24 were of both genders – although there were more women overall.

They came in business suits or slacks and sneakers, bearing keys to sports cars as well as old clunkers.

They may have differed in many ways, but that afternoon they had something in common.

A single focus.

The Domestic Abuse Women’s Network, also known as DAWN, had organized an official “Hour of Remembrance,” focused on drawing attention to the incomprehensible – someone dying at the hands of an intimate partner.

This particular event was dedicated to seven local women who lost their lives this year - for no other reason than that they loved someone incapable of loving them back.

Nancy Floren (64, Kent), Debra Lynn Bonilla (38, Beacon Hill), Stephanie Campeau (48, White Center), Tracey Creamer (48, White Center), Baerbel Roznowski (66, Federal Way), Eldora Earlycutt (46, Central District) and Jane Kariuki (42, Kent) died this year due to domestic violence.

“Where there once was a future, that is replaced by hopelessness,” King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg told the audience, of the nightmare of being trapped in an abusive relationship. “Betrayal is what makes it such a deeply hurtful personal crime.”

The true measure of success in combating this elusive crime (often the victims don’t report it, or later recant) is to keep providing the assistance to give them a place to heal and be protected, Satterberg said.

“It has to be longtime crime protection,” he explained, noting such change comes when society as a whole refuses to ignore what is going on behind what are often closed doors. We don’t tolerate three-martini lunches or smoking – and that kind of societal expectation is what needs to happen when it comes to domestic violence, he noted.

Lee Dreschel, executive director of DAWN, spoke emphatically about not forgetting these women.

“We cannot bring these women back, but we can commit to ending domestic violence,” she said. “It’s a cultural problem and we have a lot of myths.”

Myths, as well as difficulty in getting straight answers, is my response.

As a representative of the press who sat in attendance at this meeting, I can attest to the problematic nature of this crime – and of reporting on it. Too often there is a sensational element to such a story, and what that can mean is a victim becomes victimized yet again – this time in print. Very often a reporter, working on deadline, will have limited time to sketch out a person’s life, outside of the last agonizing moments of it. The details of a death can overshadow the years of a life – often a life filled with promise. And that, too, is another tragedy.

Elusive story

But what compounds the issue is just how difficult it is to put a finger upon this crime – let alone point one. Under privacy laws, it’s close to impossible, unless the person has died, to learn how a victim of trauma – of any kind of trauma – is doing in a hospital, or if they’ve even been treated there at all.

And due to the extreme emotions involved in domestic violence, stories change, people change, sometimes whole families can disappear into the night, to escape the predations of a loved one. The less known, the better.

In that vacuum, the press can only grasp at snippets of it, usually in a police report. And sadly, those snippets are often the end result – the death of the victim.

That is what makes domestic violence so horrific.

It is a silent killer. Behind closed doors, knotted in a fist, hidden in the turmoil of angry silence.

It is a crime laden with shame, in spite of its overt, and sometimes terribly final, ending.

It’s a war of secrecy.

There is no easy answer. But in the years ahead, I can only wish that organizations like DAWN will continue to shed a light of hope to victims in the darkest places of family secrecy, and for our prosecutors to continue offering victims a way to fight back. That’s the only way society can move forward and refuse to tolerate family violence.

The press can cover those things, too.

To learn more about DAWN, visit www.dawnonline.org, or call

877-465-7234.

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