Battling domestic violence

Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006 | 7:41 a.m.

The first signs that her boyfriend was an abuser came soon after their relationship began in late 2000.

He would grind his elbow into her thigh or his knuckles into her upper arm, claiming he was doing it as a joke.

"He thought it was funny," says Summer, who now resides in a Las Vegas domestic violence victims shelter with her 6-year-old son. "Love taps, he'd call them."

The violence escalated. Aaron started shoving and sometimes striking Summer during arguments. But she refused to come to grips with her abuse until 2004, when he beat her so badly during one incident that she blacked out twice.

Summer, 29, didn't leave Aaron until October - soon after she saw him start the same cruel pattern with Eric, her son from an earlier marriage. By not leaving the relationship, she says, she was single-handedly teaching her son "that abuse was OK."

The number of women like Summer is growing rapidly in the Las Vegas Valley - and the region's criminal justice agencies, from police to prosecutors to the courts, have been struggling to keep up. In some ways, they are succeeding. In others, they are not.

The numbers show the scope of the problem:

Officials say the rising numbers are partly a reflection of the region's fast-rising population, but the figures nonetheless show the depth of the problem today.

"These are scary statistics," says Las Vegas Councilman Steve Wolfson, who plans to propose changes to toughen the city's domestic violence statute. "It's rampant in the valley here, and in the state as a whole. I don't think we're doing enough to fight it."

Victims advocates credit state law, and say local police have been doing several things right regarding domestic violence battery cases - one of the few misdemeanors in Nevada in which an arrest can be made even when police didn't see the crime happen.

Under changes to Nevada's domestic violence laws that took effect in 1998, police are required to make an arrest if they show up to a scene and see evidence of domestic violence on either person. Moreover, a third conviction for domestic battery brings a felony conviction and a minimum of one year in jail.

The new law also expanded the legal definition of domestic violence to cover those accused of harming someone they are dating, had formerly dated or are related to through marriage.

Plus, when an arrest is made, there's a mandatory 12-hour hold for the suspect, mainly so that the alleged victim can file for an emergency temporary protective order, and, if necessary, find safe haven.

And police currently make sure to hand out a blue card - there are versions in both English and Spanish - to every alleged victim, with information about how to get help, and phone numbers for Family Court, jails and Safe-Nest, a Nevada nonprofit group that runs a domestic violence hotline and shelters for abuse victims.

Still, in cases that often come down to "he-said, she-said" standoffs - sometimes, in which both people are showing bruises - police are not doing enough to determine which person is the primary aggressor, advocates say. Instead, they either ignore the situation, or arrest both parties as an easy fix.

Tamara Utzig, supervisor of advocacy services for SafeNest, says women often are arrested unfairly. "There's a lot of victim-blaming going on, and not holding the victim accountable," she says.

Simpson concedes that victims advocates "have not been extremely happy with law enforcement" in domestic violence cases. He also admits that Utzig's arguments sometimes have merit.

"I don't disagree, but I don't agree with it totally either," Simpson says. "We're improving."

Simpson says the 16 detectives in Metro's two domestic violence squads - that number is up from just one detective in 1995 - "go out of their way to get the facts." Five of his domestic violence detectives are women, he says.

Simpson, who also is a licensed marriage and family therapist, says that detectives review every single one of the thousands of cases that come into the office.

Several who work in the system have credited new domestic violence chief Susan Krisko of the district attorney's office with strengthening her unit and making it more aggressive.

Krisko has stepped up specialized training for deputies and sought a greater number of warrants for material witnesses. Those warrants often lead to the arrest of the victim, a step prosecutors say is necessary because victims sometimes become reluctant to testify against the worst abusers.

Krisko says she has six deputy district attorneys assigned to her unit - the first time it has been fully staffed in years.

She posits that domestic violence is consistently worse in Nevada than in most other states for several reasons, including higher rates of gambling addiction, 24-hour drinking, high rates of drug use and a highly transient population.

Las Vegas Justice Court Judge Ann Zimmerman says Krisko has done a good job of "changing the culture over there." It's particularly welcome because Zimmerman says that she and other judges have become frustrated with the growing domestic violence caseload.

The most astonishing domestic violence case she ever saw took place several years ago and involved an Hispanic couple, Zimmerman said.

During a drunken tirade, the abuser stabbed his partner, a pregnant woman, in the stomach, Zimmerman says - killing the baby inside.

In court, the woman's lawyer asked her how much he had to drink before the incident.

"Four," Zimmerman recalled the woman as saying through a court-ordered translator.

"Four beers?" her attorney said.

"No, four six-packs," she replied.

There had been talk several years ago of trying to institute a specialized domestic violence court, but that talk has fallen by the wayside.

Zimmerman was one of 45 Southern Nevada judges who attended domestic violence training Nov. 29 at the Orleans, mandated recently by Nevada Supreme Court Chief Justice Bob Rose.

The seminars, put on by judges, psychologists and other experts with the National Judicial Institute on Domestic Violence, ranged in topic from victim and perpetrator behavior to exercises on decision-making skills.

In that exercise, one of the panelists, Shaun Wardinsky, a Portland, Ore., attorney, asked the judges whether they would grant the request of a victim who had come before them earlier asking for a restraining order - but who now wants it lifted.

"Why shouldn't she be able to have it lifted?" one judge said. Another said that if the man was an habitual abuser, the answer would clearly be no. A third said she would dissolve the order, while letting the victim know she could come back to ask for a new one.

"There is absolutely no easy answer to this issue," Wardinsky told the judges. "The idea is to get people to a point where they're starting to empower themselves."

That's Summer's goal.

She says she stayed with Aaron all those years for several reasons. She loved him - still does, she says - and so did her son.

And there were times when her gut told her only to fight back, not to escape. "I had this feeling that I wasn't going to run from a guy who did this to me," she says.

In fact, though Aaron doesn't know where she is, Summer says she has talked with him a couple of times by cell phone since she moved into Safe-Nest's shelter.

In the end, Summer says she hopes she's strong enough to let him go - completely.

"I want to heal," she says. "I know I don't want to be in a relationship with him again. And I know I don't want to be in any relationship for a while."