Click Here to View the Interview with Alliance President Casey Gwinn

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — A three day conference in San Diego aims to prevent violence.

The goal of the 22nd Annual International Family Justice Center Conference is to bring professionals from across the nation together, to discuss how to help victims, minimize trauma and understand it to prevent shootings like the one that happened on Tuesday in Texas.

The sold-out event will host more than 600 professionals from across the US as they try to make real change.

“We can intervene early to stop these kind of shootings,” said Casey Gwinn. “We are just not doing it in most of America.”

Gwinn, the President of the Alliance for HOPE International, and named one of the top public lawyers in the US, says at the root of every crime, abuse, and mass shooting, like the one in Uldave, Texas is trauma.

“We are not identifying kids that have been exposed to trauma and abuse and adversity,” said Gwinn. “And I guarantee you that when Ramos story comes out there’s going to be childhood trauma and probably a level of rage in his life that never got addressed.”

It’s a reality Mildred Muhammad can attest too.

Her ex-husband was John Allen Muhammad, also known as the DC Sniper. Muhammad worked with a teenage accomplice to kill dozens of people, while Mildred was at home suffering domestic abuse.

“There are studies that prove that the shooter starts at home first, as in this incident, the young man shot his grandmother and then he went out to kill children. Most abuses of domestic start at home as in my case, and then spread into the community,” said Midlred. “And it’s important to understand what the dynamics of having a gun is and why it’s the first tool that’s used in order to destroy other families.”

This conference will focus on strategic solutions to early interventions with kids who have underwent trauma, how to go after those who commit the violence, and develop hope-centered practices to help all involved.

“People’s ability after they grieved, after they have gone through unimaginable loss, there has to come a point where they are ready to say, ‘Okay. This is going to matter for some reason in my life, or this is going to allow me to do this, make a difference here’.”

Professionals in therapy, classroom settings, law enforcement, and prisons will spend three days in seminars and workshops discussing how they can re-assess old ideas and techniques.

“Some of the things that used to work, don’t work anymore,” said Mildred.

Gwinn says they will also work together to prevent more violence from taking place, “Pain turns into power. And there will come a day, I hope and pray where this kind of a shooting finally mobilizes people to say we gotta deal with guns and get them away from traumatized mentally-ill dangerous people.”

He furthers, “we have to deal with trauma of children impacted by all kinds of adversity. Because if we don’t we are just going to see the next shooting and the next shooting and the next shooting.”

Gwinn shares that another focus area is on strangulation techniques. He says the majority of mass shooters in the US have a history of strangulation. Attendees at the conference will be learning best practices in identifying behaviors and patterns.

Time and again, Matt Huckabay has read or watched coverage of the aftermath of a domestic violence story – after someone has killed a loved one or mowed down strangers. This is how domestic violence gets defined because this final monstrous act is what the public sees, said Huckabay, who runs a batterers’ intervention program established 20 years ago in Placerville. Counselors in that program and others around the state go deeper with those perpetrators willing to let them in and examine the source of the rage that fuels the behavior. All too often, Huckabay and others have observed, the seed of the internalized rage was planted in childhood when batterers were physically or sexually abused or when they began to see abuse as a normal part of a romantic relationship.

Casey Gwinn, a former San Diego prosecutor who now works with survivors of domestic violence, said that he’s been trying for years to get to the root of the rage that fuels men who strangle their partners. Gwinn described this act as “the last warning shot” because it is the greatest indicator that a violent relationship will turn deadly. Women who are strangled are eight times more likely to subsequently be killed by their partners than victims who were not strangled, studies have shown, and the more times they are strangled, the greater the odds that things will turn lethal.

It’s not just the women in these relationships who face the risk of death, however. Gwinn said that research has begun to link stranglers with familicide, cop killings and mass shootings. “Tons of people have childhood trauma. I’ve got a high childhood trauma score,” said Gwinn, who has written about his own childhood experience of sexual abuse by a stranger. “Lots of us have our issues from childhood abuse, but there’s something different about these stranglers.”

Huckabay noted that staff counselors at his nonprofit have learned that many batterers, both male and female, had few interactions as children with adults who could model healthy relationships or who could have taught them how to cope with the abuse or violence they had experienced. “They lack really significant close relationships with caring adults,” said Huckabay, executive director of the Center for Violence-Free Relationships. “Most of the people that they grow up around are also dysfunctional in a variety of different ways, so they learn coping skills that are rooted in violence, usually physical violence, certainly emotional violence.”

CHILDREN WITNESS DOMESTIC ABUSE

Researchers who looked at 300 cases where men strangled their wives or girlfriends found that, in four out of 10 cases, children were present at the time the victim was being strangled. If children living in abusive households don’t recover from these and other traumas, they pack their baggage into adulthood, Huckabay said. They may end up finding a partner who is there for them, who validates them and who loves them in some consistent way – even if it’s consistent in an unhealthy way For instance, they may find someone who will do drugs with them or who expresses affection in a way they have needed it, Huckabay said, and they believe they’ve found a perfect match because, even if there’s dysfunction, they can both navigate it. He recalled one man whose partner called him at the times he set, and he relied upon that constant connection, that reassurance as validation of his power and control. If his partner didn’t make the call, then he was certain she was cheating on him.

It didn’t enter his mind that his partner took 10 minutes longer calling him because she couldn’t get away. Her failure to call had to be centered around the two of them. Time and again, the batterers’ partners are going to find that there isn’t enough time in a day to offer enough reinforcements to satisfy someone with such an emotional deficit, Huckabay said. “It’s just a never-ending hole that can never be filled with enough phone calls, with enough gifts, with enough showing up, with enough sitting close to (them), with enough doing everything except being in their space 24/7, and even then, that won’t be enough,” he said. “It’s coming from that place of individuals who have a history of having been rejected by the primary people in their lives.”

BATTERER WANTS TO CONTROL PARTNER

Even if they have no evidence to justify any suspicions, batterers still operate with the belief that their partners are doing something to harm them because that is their experience, Huckabay said, and they will employ physical violence, mind games, stalking, verbal threats or whatever else is needed to quash what they suspect.

Gwinn prosecuted physical and sexual abusers for 20 years but has since co-founded the social change organization Alliance for Hope International where his team works on strangulation prevention, intervention with abused youth, and support for adults who survived domestic violence or sexual assault. Alliance for Hope runs Camp Hope America where counselors focus on healing and offering hope to minors who survived sexual or physical violence or who lived in households where there was domestic violence. They run one of the camps in the Sacramento region in collaboration with the Sacramento Regional Family Justice Center. “Our toughest kids at Camp Hope are kids who have experienced child sexual abuse,” Gwinn said. “The rage in them is very different. When I deal with a kid who’s really just filled with rage, he’s almost always the child sexual abuse survivor. By the way, that includes girls, too. Both boys and girls that have real rage issues at camp almost always turn out to be child sexual abuse survivors.” Gwinn has written two books in which he presents case studies examining stranglers who have killed the people they love, friends, coworkers, strangers, law enforcement officers. “People think these guys are monsters all the time, and they’re not,” he said. “They’re not. There are socially moderating influences on them. … As long as there are laws and some consequences, I do think it’s a moderating influence in their lives, so they can’t just do what they want whenever they want to whomever they want.”

Source Credit: Cathie Anderson, The Sacramento Bee. Link to original article. 

David Mora Rojas, a father of three, provided Sacramento residents with a grisly example of why those who study strangulation in domestic violence cases describe it as a dress rehearsal for murder. On Feb. 28, Mora gunned down his three young daughters and their chaperone at a Sacramento church, then killed himself. But long before that date, Mora revealed the true target of his rage was his former partner, the mother of his three girls. The Bee has not named her because she was a victim of domestic abuse.

In a passage from an April 2021 request for a restraining order, she said: “He threatened to kill me if he ever caught me cheating. He called me a whore and said he wanted to kill me. He has choked me in the past.” While allegations of choking are often lumped in with those of threats, insults and other physical assault in domestic violence cases, former police officer Joe Bianco said, more than two decades of research have revealed that strangulation “is the calling card of a manipulative, controlling, dangerous man.”

A number of Sacramento County law enforcement agencies and domestic violence advocates have put to work protocols recommended by Bianco and others who work at The Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention, and some have documented a steep increase in strangling reports that they link to the improved tools. Men with a history of strangling women are one of the deadliest threats to U.S. law enforcement officers, killing 75% of those who died in the line of duty in 2017, according to an analysis by the social change organization Alliance For Hope International. “We’ve correlated stranglers to mass shootings,” said Casey Gwinn, a former prosecutor and president of Alliance For Hope. “We’ve correlated stranglers to familicide, which is what Sacramento is, where he killed his family. We’ve correlated stranglers to cop killers, and we’ve correlated stranglers to men who kill women in America. And the majority of all women in America who are killed have been strangled before they’re killed.” Along with another former prosecutor, Gael Strack, Gwinn set out on a mission to support children and adults who survive domestic violence following the deaths of two young San Diego mothers. Casondra Stewart and Tamara Smith had been killed by their intimate partners. In prior calls to police, both had reported being “choked.” Strack led a review of Stewart and Smith’s deaths to find out whether police and prosecutors could have done anything to save their lives. Once she realized both women had been strangled, she culled through thousands of San Diego police reports to see how often other victims of domestic violence had reported it.

Strack’s curiosity and doggedness led to what one leading physician in emergency medicine described as landmark research that ultimately reshaped laws, medical protocols, the direction of scientific research, police procedures and victim advocacy.

CHANGING PRACTICES IN SACRAMENTO

Strack and Gwinn helped to educate change-makers through two organizations they co-founded: the Alliance for Hope and the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention. Launched with the financial backing of the U.S. Department of Justice, the training institute organizes courses for first responders and others working in the field of domestic violence. Strack’s studies and findings from other researchers dispelled a number of myths and provided new insights into just how dangerous stranglers are. In 2001, for instance, when Strack’s first papers were published in a medical journal, doctors had no idea that the vast majority of strangulation victims survived the ordeal. Later research would reveal that stranglers are by no means specialists who torment only their partners, Gwinn said. Men who strangle women have an internalized rage, he said, that leads them to also target their children, their family pets and people outside the home.

Gwinn pointed to Mora Rojas who was charged with assaulting a law enforcement officer in Merced County less than a week before he killed his daughters Samia Mora Gutierrez,13, Samantha Mora Gutierrez, 10, and Samarah Mora Gutierrez, 9, and their chaperone Nathaniel Kong. Strack and Gwinn amassed a trove of research, case studies, best practices and more into an advanced training course that counted Joyce Bilyeu of the Sacramento Regional Family Justice Center among the registrants in 2018.

After soaking up all the information, Bilyeu said she returned to the capital on fire to train more staff and transform how the family justice center was handling the intake of new clients. She added a number of new tools to assess strangulation victims, including: A card showing signs and symptoms of strangulation, key actions to take, directions on when to transport the victim for care and a warning about what could happen if care was delayed. And 20 questions to assess the risk that a victim will be killed.

By early last year, when Mora’s partner arrived at the justice center seeking a restraining order, the staff knew to ask her about whether her partner had any history of strangling her and to include that history in her request for a restraining order. ‘IT CAN’T JUST BE ONE OR TWO COPS’ The family justice center saw a dramatic increase in clients reporting strangulation after the staff introduced procedures and tools recommended in the advanced training course. “In 2016, we had 29 cases. In 2021, we had 660 cases,” Bilyeu said. “So from 2016 to 2021, it went up 2,175% in reported cases of strangulation. And I don’t think it’s because strangulation was on the rise. It could be, but I think it’s because we are doing really great assessments here in Sacramento.” Bilyeu, however, did not stop with the changes at her own organization. She enlisted individuals from the criminal justice system, hospitals, social services and other fields to develop a countywide strangulation protocol they could all use to identify and communicate evidence-based practices and standards of care for strangulation victims.

She also successfully appealed to the city of Sacramento to fund a training institute course for hundreds of first responders, medical personnel and others who support strangulation survivors. By the time that event was held in December 2020, Bilyeu was able to share the strangulation protocol with the attendees. Two months later, Bilyeu presented the protocol to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors and received their endorsement.

Joshua Helton, a 16-year law enforcement veteran and a trainer in strangulation prevention, said that steps like the ones Bilyeu took – developing protocols and educating a broad group – help to develop a knowledge base that ensures victims will get the right response all the time. “It can’t just be one or two cops that know how the policy works, or maybe half a dozen cops that think it’s important,” Helton said. “The implementation of the policy has to be so ingrained in how the organization does business when it comes to this type of thing that when those original influences … are no longer available, … the organizational knowledge still carries response forward.”

If a battered woman is strangled even once by her partner, research has shown she is 750% more likely to eventually be murdered by him,.Strack and Gwinn said. “If you’ve been strangled repeatedly, then that number is only going to go up,” Strack said. “So at the end of the day, we have figured out that the strangled victim is the high risk victim, and the strangled victim is suffering coercive control as part of that relationship. By the time you get to strangulation, it is the ultimate form of control. The next thing is death.” The vast majority of survivors do not die by strangulation but rather in subsequent attacks with guns, often within a year of an attempt to flee the relationship, Gwinn said. It’s why the team at the training institute refers to strangulation as “the last warning shot.” Dr. Caroline Giroux, a psychiatrist at UC Davis Health, described strangulation as “almost a symbolic way to annihilate a person, basically cutting the spirits of the person in all sense of the term: the air one is breathing, the life energy. It’s very symbolic and very scary.” Victims often have grown accustomed to violence and will minimize what they are experiencing by describing it as choking, Gwinn said. but they are actually being strangled: Someone is somehow applying external pressure to their necks, cutting off their airflow, their blood flow or both.

“Choking is when you get food caught in your throat,” Gwinn said. “Victims don’t mean food got caught in their throats. They mean he strangled them. They just don’t call it strangulation.” Some survivors lose consciousness and wake with no memory of what happened, Strack said. Upon realizing this, the former prosecutor said, she was disquieted by the thought of the victims she had labeled as uncooperative because they told her they didn’t remember what happened to them. During training institute classes, she said, she’s watched as police officers, doctors and prosecutors come to similar types of realization. “To this day, there is a sense of shock, and some of the professionals are actually pissed off,” Strack said. “They’re going like, ‘Why didn’t somebody tell me this, like 30 years ago? Generally, that (response) is coming from practitioners who’ve been working with victims all this time. And then there’s like this sense of guilt that, ‘Oh, my God, how many cases did I miss? How many cases did I mishandle? How is it that I don’t know this?’”

There’s been no evidence yet that Mora’s partner called police immediately after being strangled, said Gwinn, so her allegation of choking appeared only in the restraining order and there would be no medical documentation there of those injuries. Many women who have survived strangulation may find themselves in similar circumstances, he said, and the only answer that the family courts provide to them and their children right now is supervised visitation. Mora was supposed to be having such a visit with his daughters when he shot them. “The decision was made that somehow these children will be safer if they were in a church, and an unarmed civilian observing would somehow make them all safer,” Gwinn said. “In retrospect,…that’s just uninformed public policy. He wasn’t any less dangerous in the church that day than he was the day before or he was two months ago.” In a review of 300 strangulation cases, Strack and her research peers found that children were present when the victim was being strangled in four out of 10 cases. In 10 of the 300 cases, the strangulation survivors were pregnant. One miscarried 24 hours afterward. Gwinn has written case studies on a number of stranglers who slaughtered their entire families. From his own research and that of others, he said, he’s increasingly finding that many stranglers experienced sexual abuse as children but were not believed when they reported it to their mothers. That childhood trauma is not an excuse for their actions, he said. Rather, it’s an explanation for the misogyny that fuels their rage.

No one will ever be able to conclusively say why Mora didn’t wait until he could kill his wife, Gwinn said. “He clearly killed the children in order to leave her with a wound that she will carry for the rest of her life,” Gwinn said.”I can’t even fathom life after my children have all been murdered.”

Source Credit: Cathie Anderson, The Sacramento Bee. Link to original article. 

Domestic violence experienced by Native Americans and Alaska Natives is an extension of the harmful effects of colonization.

Domestic violence and dating violence happens when an intimate partner uses a repetitive pattern of abuse to maintain power and control over their partner. The abuse can physically harm, arouse fear, prevent a person from acting freely, or force them to behave in ways they do not want. Physical, emotional, financial, sexual, digital, cultural and spiritual abuse tactics are often used in combination by the abuser.

Violent behavior can appear at any time in a relationship, though possessive, controlling and other alarming behavior often reveals itself as the relationship becomes more serious.

While it is impossible to predict what an abusive partner might do, in most abusive relationships the tactics of an abusive partner will escalate over time. This can make abuse seem normal and can happen in a way that a victim-survivor doesn’t notice as the abuse increases.

According to the National Institute of Justice, more than 4 in 5 Native Americans have experienced violence in their lifetime and more than 1 in 2 Native women (55.5 percent) and 1 in 3 Native men (43.2 percent) have experienced physical violence by intimate partners in their lifetime.

Strangulation

Strangulation is the act of using pressure around the neck or throat with enough force to affect the victim’s breathing. A common method used is manual strangulation where one uses their hands around the other person’s neck or throat. Some people may describe their strangulation experience using the word choking or choked. Choking, however is an internal obstruction in the upper airway which affects breathing.

Strangulation is one of the most serious forms of physical abuse.

● Strangulation is a significant predictor for future lethal violence.

● If your partner has strangled you in the past, your risk of being killed by them is 10 times higher.

● Strangulation is one of the most lethal forms of domestic violence: unconsciousness may occur within seconds, and death within minutes.

Additionally, homicide is a leading cause of death for Native women. (CDC)

The Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention lists many symptoms of strangulation, here are a few to be aware of:

● difficulty breathing

● drooling

● a sore throat

● difficulty swallowing

● neck pain

● hoarseness

● bruising on the neck or behind the ears

● discoloration on the tongue

● ringing in the ears

● bloodshot eyes

● dizziness

● memory loss

● nausea or vomiting

● incontinence

● a seizure

● a miscarriage

● changes in mood or personality, like agitation or aggression

● changes in sleep patterns

● changes in vision, such as blurriness or seeing double

● fainted or lost consciousness

 

If you’ve been strangled, we recommend that you consider seeing a doctor as soon as possible because it is possible to show no symptoms at first but experience potentially fatal symptoms as much as days later.

 

Safety Planning

Working with an advocate to create an individualized, practical safety plan that includes ways to remain safe while in an abusive relationship may help.

If a violent encounter seems imminent and unavoidable, there are a few options to consider to keep you safe. These tips cannot guarantee your safety, but by using your experience and intuition, along with these tips, you may be safer. You are the best person to judge your safety.

● Remove necklaces, ties or scarves if you feel the violence is escalating as these may be used to strangle you.

● Say or do whatever you can to de-escalate the situation.

● Be aware of your surroundings. Think about what you could use to shield yourself when your partner becomes abusive.

After the Strangulation

After a violent encounter, it can be difficult to process what has happened, take time for yourself to recover and reconnect with yourself. Consider documenting the violence and abuse. Take pictures and write descriptions of the abuse in a journal or open an email account and email them to yourself. If there are any medical or police reports documenting the abuse, keep the records. Make sure your information is kept in a safe place. Keeping documentation will allow you to have an option to pursue legal action in the future.

Participating in self-care activities like exercise, eating healthy, counseling, journaling, knowing when and how to emotionally check out during times of duress could be helpful. Be gentle with yourself mentally and physically. Practice your spirituality by smudging, praying or sitting with your traditional medicines if this helps heal your spirit.

Help is Available

You have the right to live free from violence and abuse.

StrongHearts Native Helpline is a culturally-appropriate and anonymous helpline for Native Americans impacted by domestic, dating and sexual violence. Advocates offer peer support and advocacy, personal safety planning, crisis intervention and referrals to Native-centered domestic violence service providers. Visit strongheartshepline.org for chat advocacy or call or text 1-844-7NATIVE (762-8483) 24/7.

Source credit: Red Lake Nation News, link to original article.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – A 19 News investigation found legal loopholes are putting domestic violence victims in extreme danger.

Leslie Terry is a domestic violence survivor, and she said the system failed her.

“All out of nowhere, the yelling, cursing, calling me out my name,” Terry recalled. “I mean, that all started and that’s when I started getting afraid.”

The Cleveland mother told 19 News she was silent for years. She kept the pain bottled up. Her former boyfriend beat her over and over again, left bruises on her body, and even put her in the emergency room more than once.

She first met him in 2002 and it wasn’t until nearly a decade later that she finally found the strength to walk away. There were times she thought she wouldn’t survive.

“Oh, yeah, I was afraid it was twice, twice,” Terry said. “I was choked so bad, where I lost conscience. I was choked, almost to death.”

Terry says over that decade dozens of people tried to help her.

“My job even tried to get me help because we have an employee assistance program,” Terry explained. “They tried to give me shelter. I didn’t take it, didn’t want it.”

Terry says after years of emotional and physical abuse she was so battered she was afraid to even press charges against her abuser.

“I don’t think they do enough to help us women that’s in this situation and I believe they look at it too, ‘Oh, she’s gonna go back. She’s gonna go back.’ Some laws need to change,” Terry said. “Because no way I had so many police calls and so many ambulances to every address – police calls, police calls, police calls, and they should have seen you know, it repeats, we out at this address again, we out to this address. Something’s not right.”

Terry feels like since the police had the evidence, they should have pressed charges against her abuser anyway.

“I felt that they failed me,” admitted Terry. “I mean, I went to the police headquarters one time they took a picture of my whole body. They took a picture of my whole body. I was bruised, I was black, I was blue scratches, scraped up. But they had the photos, they had the photos. They saw I was scared, and I didn’t press charges.”

Finally, one day, something changed.

“I just woke up one morning and I was like you know this is not working. It’s not worth my life.”

Terry channeled her pain into a book to help other women who are going through the same thing. But she was one of the lucky ones. In the past two years, as we discovered, the number of people murdered in domestic violence-related incidents in Ohio increased by 62%.

“Like I used to get beat in my head all the time,” Terry said. “And it takes one blow to the head that can kill her. There’s too many females out here that’s being killed because of their boyfriends.”

But based on past cases in Ohio, even if a domestic violence victim files a protection order against their abuser – that doesn’t guarantee their safety.

James Kimbrough was recently charged with murdering his ex-girlfriend Milenna Lopez in Sheffield Village.

“Domestic violence is real, you know, a lot of people they don’t like to talk about it, but it’s real,” said Lopez’s mother, Jessica Mojica. “We’re living it you know.”

Court records show Kimbrough’s ex-girlfriend had filed nearly a dozen orders of protection against him. In four years, records show at least eight separate domestic violence cases, five of them related to violating a protection order. The most recent one was filed just a couple of months before Lopez was shot and killed.

More than three years ago Shaker Heights mother and teacher Aisha Fraser was brutally murdered by her ex-husband.

“I helped to raise her,” said George Fraser. “She was born the year I got married, 45 years ago.”

Aisha was George Fraser’s niece.

“When she was murdered it was like someone murdering my daughter,” Fraser said.

For nearly two years, lawmakers have been working on Aisha’s Law. The bill was passed by the house last fall. Now, all it needs is to be approved by the senate.

Representative Janine Boyd has been pushing for the state to put victims first. She says if this law had been in place, then, Fraser might still be here.

“I cannot imagine if the lethality screening tool that had been administered to her, if it could have been administered to her had been considered evidence, the kinds of responses she would have given to those questions we know would have elevated law enforcements concern, the court’s concern,” Boyd said.

As we discovered, Aisha’s Law would do several things including requiring police to screen victims of domestic violence using something called an evidence-based lethality assessment screening tool.

“The other thing that the bill does is it creates a new protection order and emergency protection order that can be implemented anytime a day, anytime or night,” explained Boyd. “You know, on holidays, on weekends, we didn’t have that access before.”

The statistics are scary. 131 people died in Ohio from domestic violence from July 2020 to June 2021. At least 20 attackers had previously been charged with or convicted of domestic violence before the murder.

What the law would not include is — convicted domestic violence abusers would still be allowed to keep their guns.

“The number of firearms they found, and they all meant that he was likely going to hurt more than her at some point,” Boyd said.

After pleading guilty in 2015 to domestic violence for a 2014 assault on Fraser, former judge Lance Mason, her ex-husband, still owned a number of firearms.

19 News has learned that domestic violence murders in Ohio increased by more than 60% between 2020 and 2021. In nearly 90% of those murders, guns were used.

Source credit: Kelly Kennedy, Cleveland 19 News (WOIO). Link to original article.