Grant targets domestic violence

MACHIAS – Washington County is going to get a lot tougher on domestic violence, thanks to a $59,565 federal grant to a coalition of law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, probation officers and domestic violence counselors and educators.

The Stop Violence Against Women funding will allow the Washington County Sheriff’s Department to hire a full-time investigator who will follow up and track the results of every domestic violence case in the county.

Knox County has a similar position and the special investigators are part of a national trend to transfer the burden in domestic violence cases from the victim to the abuser, according to Bahia Yackzan, the coordinator of the Carriage House Coalition.

The Carriage House Coalition is a domestic violence prevention program and Yackzan wrote the successful grant application to the Maine Department of Public Safety Justice Assistance Council.

“The victim isn’t the one who is responsible for the crime and prosecution shouldn’t be their responsibility,” Yackzan said. “A case can be built against an abuser even if the victim is fearful of taking the stand. Murder victims can’t testify, but that doesn’t stop us from prosecuting murderers.”

Yackzan’s Carriage House Coalition, which is headquartered at the Harrington Family Health Center, is one of three domestic violence education and outreach programs serving Washington County. The others are the St. Croix Coalition for Family Peace at the St. Croix Health Center and the Safe Harbors Coalition at the Regional Medical Center at Lubec.

Other members of the partnership are Peaceful Choices, Washington County’s emergency shelter and crisis intervention program for victims of domestic violence; the Washington County Sheriff’s Department, the Maine State Police, the Milbridge and Pleasant Point police departments, the Washington County district attorney’s office, the Maine Department of Probation and Parole, and the Metanoia Batterers Intervention Program.

“The domestic violence network in Washington County has really broadened and that is part of the reason we can take this huge jump,” Yackzan said. “Every partner deserves credit for taking the risks that built the trust levels that make it possible for us to do this.”

Yackzan said the Maine State Police are contributing the in-kind services of a full-time detective who will assist the sheriff department investigator and compile a centralized database of protection from abuse orders, violations and other crimes of domestic violence.

Currently, there is no central repository for that information and that can be a problem for officers when they are responding to a domestic abuse complaint, she said.

And three private organizations – the Maine Seacoast Mission, the Maine Community Foundation and the Dorset Fund of Bar Harbor – are covering the $7,050 operational expenses for the special investigator, Yackzan said.

Statistics prove the need for a coordinated approach to domestic violence, Yackzan said.

Half of the murders in Washington County during the last 10 years have been domestic violence murders and that is true statewide, according to the grant application.

The statistic includes children, who are 15 times more likely to be abused if they live in homes where there is domestic violence, according to national statistics.

Children from domestic violence homes are 60 times more likely to be involved in delinquent behavior and 1,000 times more likely to become abusers, according to the same statistics.

Yackzan added that 75 percent of domestic violence homicides occur within a year of a victim leaving her abuser.

Other activities covered by the grant include countywide cross-disciplinary training to criminal justice, law enforcement and advocacy agencies, she said.

Washington County is administering the grant, which will run from Jan 1, 2001, through Jan. 1, 2002.