By Lisa Aronson Fontes

Three or more U.S. women are murdered every day by their current or former intimate partner.

That may in part be due to a failure of state laws to capture the full range of behavior that constitutes domestic abuse. The law continues to treat intimate partner violence like a bar fight – considering only what happened in a given incident and not all the prior abuse history, such as intimidation and entrapment.

Research shows, however, that domestic abuse is not about arguments, short tempers and violent tendencies. It’s about domination and control.

Men who kill their female partners usually dominate them first – sometimes without physical violence. Indeed, for 28% to 33% of victims, the homicide or attempted homicide was the first act of physical violence in the relationship.

Most state laws intended to protect people from violent partners and ex-partners do not account for this kind of behavior, which violence experts now call “coercive control.” Yet coercive control is nearly always at the core of what is usually called “domestic abuse” or “intimate partner violence.”

Some states are stepping up to incorporate coercive and controlling behavior, not just episodes of violence, into laws that protect victims. These laws make clear: Intimate partner abuse isn’t about just physical violence.

Behind the violence

Typical coercive control tactics include isolating, intimidating, stalking, micromanaging, sexual coercion and often – but not always – physical abuse.

Abusers inflict these tactics on their partners over time in a variety of ways, ultimately reducing the victim’s ability to live as a free person. Survivors often say that the physical violence was not the worst part.

Forensic social worker Evan Stark’s landmark 2007 book, “Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life,” set the stage for an outpouring of research and legislation on coercive control. Stark changed the conversation from “Why doesn’t she leave?” to “How can anyone survive this intimate torture?” and “How can society protect these victims?”

The concept has also entered popular culture through podcasts and television shows such as “Dirty John.”

I wrote the second book on coercive control, “Invisible Chains: Overcoming Coercive Control in Your Intimate Relationship.” I serve as an expert witness in legal cases in which coercive control might be present, and I research related topics.

Advocates for victims of domestic abuse say that new state legislation on coercive control could substantially change the way domestic abuse is handled by police and the courts. New laws would lead to more prosecutions before the control evolves into physical violence, or even homicide, they say.

And addressing coercive control is important not simply because it will reduce intimate partner homicides; one person should not be able to deny another basic freedom simply because they are married or in a relationship.

Helena Phillibert, director of legal services at the Rockland County New York Center for Safety, said in an interview I conducted: “Legislation against coercive control is critical to broadening the range of abusive behaviors recognized in the law. The advantages to victims and survivors are numerous but most significantly, legislation that recognizes coercive control necessarily expands the understanding of domestic violence beyond physical abuse.”

Since we know most mass killers are men who have also attacked family members, earlier intervention in domestic abuse may also reduce mass killings, making everyone safer.

States taking lead

In the past half-dozen years, new laws in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe have established “coercive and controlling behavior” as a distinct and serious criminal offense, with maximum sentences extending from five years in prison in England to 15 years in Scotland.

In the U.S., about a half-dozen states now incorporate elements of coercive control into their civil and criminal orders of protection. These are court-issued orders that require a person to stop harassing or abusing someone else, and may bar all contact.

Another half-dozen new legislative proposals aim to establish and flag coercive control as an important factor in family court decisions on divorce, child custody and visitation.

California law SB-1141, which was passed in 2020, defines coercive control as a pattern of domestic violence that “unreasonably interferes with a person’s free will and personal liberty.”

The law also recommends against awarding child custody to a person who has perpetrated domestic violence, unless the abuser can prove that he or she is not a risk to a child.

State Sen. Alex Kasser based Connecticut’s Bill 1091 on California’s but added additional examples of common coercive control tactics.

Her bill includes “forced sex, sexual threats and threats to release sexualized images” as well as a section on vexatious litigation, which Kasser defines as “how abusers use the legal system to harass their victims, dragging them to court repeatedly to drain their resources and make them lose their jobs, homes, savings and sometimes their children.”

Kasser emphasizes that the Connecticut bill also protects the children of an abused parent. The bill establishes the physical and emotional safety of the child as the first of 17 factors to be considered in custody decisions. It was signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont on June 28, 2021.

The New York State Senate’s proposed Bill 5650 would establish coercive control as a Class E felony, meaning that a person convicted of coercive control could serve up to four years in jail for the crime. This is more in line with the laws in the U.K. and some other European countries.

While it is still too early to know whether coercive-control laws will predominate in U.S. civil or criminal law, it seems pretty clear that times are changing. I believe victims of coercive-control partner abuse will soon have access to legal protections in many more states across the country.

To view the original article, click here.

By Sergio Bichao

The Highland Park man accused of abducting his 2-year-old son from Rahway on Friday and killing the boy’s mother was once charged with strangling his romantic partner.

But like many domestic violence cases in New Jersey, the strangulation charge was dismissed as a part of a plea deal that kept the suspect out of a prison — even though research has shown that survivors of strangulation are more likely to become homicide victims later on.

Now a family is mourning the loss of 24-year-old Yasemin Uyar, whose body was found late Saturday in a wooded area off Interstate 40 in Tennessee.

Charges against Tyler Rios

Authorities expect to charge Tyler Rios, 27, of Highland Park, with killing Uyar. He is being held in Tennessee, where authorities on Saturday found him with his son, who did not appear to be physically harmed.

The little boy had been the subject of a widespread Amber Alert on Friday after he and his mother disappeared. Police initially found the boy and the father together hundreds of miles away in Monterey, Tennessee, but not Uyar.

Rios so far is facing first-degree kidnapping charges in Union County. Homicide charges are pending and prosecutors expect to announce when he will make his first appearance before a judge in Elizabeth.

Tyler Rios criminal record

Rios has appeared numerous times before judges in the past two years.

During the pandemic in 2020, Rios spent several months in the jails of two counties. But judges never sent him to prison, always releasing him with conditions of probation.

Court records obtained by New Jersey 101.5 show a history of domestic violence, including a 2018 charge of trying to strangle a victim.

It is not clear how many women Rios has been accused of abusing because court records protect the privacy of victims. But Uyar’s mother in 2019 wrote on Facebook that Rios had once choked her daughter until she passed out. She also said that Rios in 2019 had locked Uyar and their son in a bathroom while in Arizona and threatened to punch her. The mother said Rios broke Uyar’s phones but not before she could text her family to call 911 on her behalf.

In April, Superior Court Judge Colleen Flynn, sitting in Middlesex County, sentenced Rios to three years of probation after he pleaded guilty to third-degree aggravated assault on a domestic violence victim.

The 2018 strangulation charge, for which a grand jury had handed up an indictment, was dismissed as part of the plea deal with prosecutors, court records show.

Court records also show he spent 88 days in county jail in that case. But Rios was back behind bars again in October, this time in Union County.

After spending more than 70 days in jail, Superior Court Judge Joseph Donohue in December sentenced Rios to one year of probation for violating a domestic violence restraining order.

The judge also:

• Ordered Rios to take a drug test
• Ordered him to complete an anger management course
• Prohibited him from buying or owning a firearm.
• And ordered him not to have contact with the victim

In 2019, Rios was arrested in Arizona on charges of assault and unlawful imprisonment, according to records shared online by Uyar’s mother, who at the time candidly wrote on Facebook about her fear that Rios had killed her daughter during the standoff situation.

“I call 911 and give the address and explain the long DV history. I hang up and wait. I pray,” Karen Uyar wrote just a few years before her daughter would be found dead in another state.

“Several calls later from Officer Hunting, she says words that tore at my soul and made me believe my worst fears [may] have happened. ‘The apartment is silent, we can see him walking around occasionally.’ Silent. The apartment is silent. Our only thought is … He killed them.”

Domestic violence strangulation cases in NJ

Nearly half of all domestic violence cases in New Jersey get thrown out. Among the reasons is that victims are often terrified to cooperate or unwilling to press charges against someone who is a part of their family.

Victims’ advocates, however, also say the Municipal Court judges, who often hear many of the domestic violence cases first, are ill-prepared to deal with such a complex matters.

State lawmakers, meanwhile, have been trying to amend the state’s bail reform law to make non-fatal strangulation one of the charges that would allow judges to keep suspects locked up before their trials.

“Strangulation is a unique type of violence,” state Sen. Linda Greenstein, D-Middlesex, a sponsor of the bill, said last year. “Even if it doesn’t result in death, the statistics show that it’s very likely to result in death the next time. And there always is a next time.”

The bill remains in committee after being reintroduced in the latest legislative session.

According to the New Jersey Coalition to End Domestic Violence, someone accused of choking a partner is seven times more likely to kill someone later. And in 43% of domestic violence homicides, the victim had been a strangulation survivor a year earlier.

Helping domestic violence victims in NJ

Law enforcement is well aware of the heightened risk that strangulation survivors face.

In 2019, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office launched a program to alert first-responders about this red flag and train them on how to address the victims.

A victims’ advocacy group in that county reported receiving nearly a dozen calls a month involving some level of attempted strangulation or suffocation.

“What they’re learning across the country is strangulation or suffocation is the last step that somebody will typically take before a murder is committed, before a homicide is committed, we want to really shine a light on this,” Monmouth County Prosecutor Chris Gramiccioni told New Jersey 101.5 at the time.

In 2019, victims advocate Nicole Morella told New Jersey 101.5 that strangulation survivors often experience even more subsequent abuse

“They’re so fearful of this person killing them that they may be reluctant to report it and they may be reluctant to seek out the services to get out of the relationship because they believe the threat that they’re going to be killed,” she said at the time

Who was Yasemin Uyar?

Loved ones began suspecting something was wrong Friday when little Sebastian did not show up for daycare and his mother had not reported to her work shifts.

Police went to Uyar’s Rahway home on Friday to check on the family but found nobody there.

On Saturday night, the family learned the crushing news about Uyar’s death.

Her mother urged people on social media to remember her daughter as more than “just a [domestic violence] victim.”

“She was a Daughter, Sister, Mother, Aunt and Cousin,” Karen Uyar wrote on Facebook. “Her life will be Celebrated as her greatest gift to this world, Sebastian will still need ALL of our love and support.”

To view the original article, click here.

By ANISSA DURHAM

A few years ago, a small group of volunteers came together with a common goal: empowering women affected by substance abuse, homelessness and domestic violence.

The group of seven San Diego County women, most of them Latina and in their 20 or early 30s, are now known as “La Chula Crew.” The organization partners with other organizations in San Diego County and across the U.S.-Mexico border to provide clothing, toiletries, bedding, diapers and other essentials to women in need.

“I have gone through domestic violence, assault and addiction recovery … this is all very personal for me,” said Chelsea Muniz, 28, executive director of La Chula Crew. She started the group in National City in 2017. It become a nonprofit in 2019.

She said it was healing for her to talk to others with similar experiences. Together, she said, they broke down barriers of shame, guilt and stigma.

“They’re like a safe haven,” said Serena Mafnas, 29, a volunteer who joined the original seven in 2018. “They create a safe space where women are not afraid to talk to them.”

Now, the group is looking to expand. Its members host monthly gatherings — hip hop in the park and art therapy classes, for example — where people can drop off donations. And its organizers are seeking to add to a growing list of partners locally and beyond, including Casa de Esperanza — based in St. Paul, Minn. — a resource center organizations working with Latina women and children experiencing domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.

By Macy Moors

By Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office