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Hilary Shaw, left, executive director of the Abbie Shelter, and John Buttram, L.C.P.C., a Kalispell counselor.
GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
BY CLARE MENZEL
BREAKING
THE
CYCLE
LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AND SUPPORT GROUPS CONFRONT CHALLENGES IN ADDRESSING AND POLICING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Cat Fisher recently stood in the middle of her room at a humble Kalispell motel, pointing out how she’s made the small space hers. She moved there the week earlier, after spending six months at the Abbie Shel- ter, the Flathead Valley’s primary ser- vice provider for survivors of domestic and sexual violence the last 40 years.
Her walls are decorated with crosses, scarves, artwork, and enough framed photographs of Fisher and her daughter to make any teenager embarrassed. She is brewing her own kombucha and grow- ing three little plants, o shoots from a leafy green plant at the Abbie Shelter, in repurposed marinara sauce jars and plastic cups.
“I have come so far and I am very ner- vous to move out,” Fisher said on the day she left the shelter. “But life is going to be OK.”
For the rst time in a long time, she controls everything. She and her daugh- ter are safe. She has a new job, new friends. She plans to be on track to home ownership and a nursing assistant certi- cation within three years.
BNow, Fisher holds the power.
y all accounts, Fisher’s story is a success. After receiving the care she needed from law
enforcement and domestic violence sup- port services, she is free and healthy. Not all survivors can expect the same experi- ence.FortheoneinthreeFlatheadValley women who will experience physical vio- lence at the hands of an intimate partner in their lifetime, how their story plays out might depend on where they live.
Local police departments are not equal in their approaches to domestic violence, a subject around which there is an ever-evolving body of research and psychological theory.
“Understand that there is a model of domestic abuse. There’s a pattern, a
very predictable pattern,” said John But- tram, a Kalispell counselor who runs a therapy group that every convicted domestic abuser in the valley has had to attend since the state passed a law in 1988 mandating 20 hours (it’s since been increased to 40) of therapeutic treat- ment for o enders.
More than the sum of a black eye, some harsh words, or broken dishes, this particular type of violence is a long- term, goal-oriented pattern of behav- ior with an insidious grooming process. As the abuser establishes control over a partner, their behavior intensi es along a reliable continuum that typically starts with small verbal and emotional aggres- sions and can build to homicide.
From 2000 to 2013, nearly 130 fatal- ities in Montana were intimate part- ner homicides — and during 2013 and 2014, 27 percent of those deaths were in the Flathead, according to the Mon- tana Domestic Violence Fatality Review Commission. In the last two weeks, a Butte man killed his wife before turn- ing the gun on himself, and a Great Falls man was charged with homicide after killing the woman with whom he lived, who was found with signs of strangula- tion and blunt force trauma.
The Montana statute that exists to protect families from domestic vio- lence, formally called Partner or Family Member Assault (PFMA), casts a wide net. It deals with bodily harm and the apprehension of bodily harm between partners, siblings, parents, and chil- dren, so its fundamental focus is not the speci c dynamic of power and control appearing in intimate relationships. It doesn’t require o cers pay close atten- tion to non-physically abusive behaviors appearing earlier in a relationship. But when a police force is educated in ver- bal, emotional, mental, and spiritual red ags, they can intervene before violence escalates.
All law enforcement jurisdictions
APRIL 6, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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