BANGOR – The words “domestic violence” don’t jump off the pages of the newspaper this week, but the sad stories of relationships gone tragically bad are there.

A Machias man reportedly shot his girlfriend and her friend to death on Wednesday in Marshfield, and a LaGrange man, charged with fatally shooting his wife on Nov. 29 as she hid under their bed, was awarded bail conditions on the same day.

Officials at Spruce Run, the domestic violence project serving Penobscot County, are more than aware that both fatal incidents are a result of domestic violence.

“It’s very hard” to look at the newspaper, Francine Stark, training coordinator for Spruce Run, said Friday. “One thing we know … most people who get away [from abusive relationships] aren’t killed. Women given services do get away.”

Spruce Run has been around for 35 years providing services to people who are involved in abusive relationships. The agency, which grew from discussions by a group of women who were going through divorces, nowadays has a $500,000 annual budget to provide a 24-hour hot line, emergency shelter, transitional housing, advocacy, counseling, training and education, support groups and children’s services.

The 1972 group of divorcees “found out a lot of them were in abusive relationships,” said Ann Schonberger, a longtime Spruce Run steering committee member who also is director of the University of Maine’s Women in the Curriculum and Women’s Studies Program.

The following year the women’s group created and incorporated Spruce Run.

“We did not really know what to do except that we wanted to help women in crisis,” founding mother Kay Lucas stated in a 1998 article in Voice, a newsletter published by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Lucas died several years ago.

A lot of things have changed since the agency’s beginnings.

“Spruce Run was the third such program created in the United States,” Stark said. “Prior to that … there was a complete dearth of programs and services available to people.

“There have been dramatic changes in the law, dramatic changes in the response by law enforcement and dramatic changes in community attitudes,” she said.

In addition to Spruce Run, there are nine similar programs statewide.

When Spruce Run first started, people would call the hot line and ask “if what they were going through really constituted abuse. Today, we rarely get a call like that.”

People have become more educated over the last three-plus decades and are more aware abuse is not only physical, but also can be verbal or emotional. In many cases, the abusers use power and control techniques to separate the victims from friends or family, and oftentimes try to blame the victims by shifting the responsibility for their own behavior onto their victims.

It’s all about control, Bangor police Detective Sgt. Paul Kenison said Wednesday.

“‘If I can’t have you, nobody is’ – that’s often the mentality” of abusers, he said.

Homicide figures clearly show Maine has “one of the highest homicide rates involving domestic relations,” Kenison said.

“It’s definitely one of the most difficult jobs a police officer is asked to do,” he added.

Abusers use various tactics to control their partner’s actions and feelings, but education can empower victims and the people who love them into action and that is why it is a key component of Spruce Run’s philosophy, Stark said.

“The more quickly people are able to name the problem, the more quickly they are able to find ways to address it,” she said.

As the training coordinator for Spruce Run, Stark is very busy educating people, businesses and other organizations about identifying abuse, domestic violence laws and rules and what to do when people encounter situations they believe involve abuse.

“I can barely keep up on the training [requests] to help people figure out how to create policies,” she said. “This is very exciting. It’s part of what we’ve been building over the decades.”

With the agency’s 35th anniversary, Spruce Run is honoring those who work quietly behind the scenes at the nonprofit. At the annual meeting on Jan. 30, the organization will honor Schonberger, who has volunteered at Spruce Run since 1978, and Dr. Eric Brown, who educates people to recognize domestic abuse through his work in Eastern Maine Medical Center’s family medicine program.

The agency also will recognize Schonberger, Mary Cathcart and Susan Kominsky for their work over the last five years to build up the endowment fund from $265,000 to nearly $1 million, Stark said.

While the agency has made major strides in the last 35 years, more needs to be done.

“On the one hand, I feel like … things are getting better,” Stark said. “On the other, we serve more and more people every year. When I started [20 years ago], we served 500 people in the course of a year and now we serve 2,000.

“It’s still such a big problem,” she said, adding a glimpse at this week’s newspapers drives home that point too well.