Authorities Get Tough With Domestic Batterers

Their honesty is startling.

“I kicked my fiancee in the mouth,” said Dave, an earnest-looking 27-year-old heavy equipment operator, his boots still caked with mud from a day of hard work.

“I hit my girlfriend, dragged her through the house and threw her in the pool,” said Wayne, a long-haired and bearded 29-year-old employee at a Hollywood studio.

Wayne joked a little through a recent counseling session, but turned somber when he said he was almost glad he was arrested because it stopped him from doing something even worse.

“I threatened to kill my wife,” said Jeff, a well-dressed 38-year-old corporate controller. His two small boys overheard him and his wife yelling in a closed room and passed notes under the door pleading that they stop fighting.

Jeff is here voluntarily, desperately trying to save his crumbling marriage, the dark rings under his eyes a testament to the combination of work and worry.

The other men are here because a judge ordered them.

This Simi Valley group therapy effort is one of five court-approved counseling programs in the county. Most of the participants are men convicted of domestic violence.

Ten years ago these men might never have made it this far in the county’s justice system.

The men in the Simi Valley program, run by an organization called Act, are among hundreds countywide who just a few years might have escaped prosecution or gotten off with a slap on the wrist.

But a series of state laws and changes in how law enforcement officers and prosecutors address domestic violence have forced cases out of the realm of family business and into county police stations and courtrooms.

Now even in misdemeanor domestic violence cases, the guilty are sentenced to at least 53 weeks of counseling as well as probation, officials said.

Also, victims are reporting more cases of abuse, authorities are making more arrests for domestic violence, and prosecutors are winning more convictions and heavier sentences.

All this has led to a big increase in the number of Ventura County residents on probation for domestic violence--up 50% in the past two years from 870 in 1995 to more than 1,300 this year.

“[The increase] has to do with a number of things,” said Karen Staples, who heads the county probation department’s court services division. “Changes in the law, increased awareness after the O.J. trial and changes in how law enforcement handle the cases.”

Staples said the push for more awareness is for good reason.

“We feel very strongly about domestic violence because there is a victim that is smack at the heart of the family unit,” she said. “A lot of research being done shows that the problems within the family result in kids having problems as they go through life. And it becomes a cycle of behavior with young boys learning that it is all right to treat women in that way.”

One in 10 aggravated assaults stems from domestic disputes and about one-third of the homicides in the nation are a result of domestic violence, according to statistics released last year by the FBI.

Ventura County is not immune to that violence.

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Just two weeks ago a distraught Simi Valley man, 44-year-old Ahmad Salman, shot and killed his wife Nabela, 38, and their sons: Yezen, 3, and 5-year-old twins Zain and Zaid.

Since January, six of the 13 homicides in the county began as domestic disputes, investigators said.

The death of JoAnn Linkenauger, whose husband James was convicted of strangling her in January 1993, prodded the Ventura County Domestic Violence Task Force to push for changes in how local agencies dealt with domestic violence cases.

Before her death, Linkenauger had reported her husband for punching her in the face and attempting to strangle her several times.

But despite the husband’s history of domestic violence, sheriff’s deputies decided not to arrest him on at least one occasion before the slaying. The deputies were later criticized for their actions.

The task force--which consists of police officers, deputies, prosecutors and activists--wrote a standard protocol on how law enforcement officers should handle domestic violence calls.

“I think some officers bristled at the inflexibility of the rules, but in general we’ve found that early police intervention, arrest and detention is the most effective method of preventing future incidents,” Ventura Police Sgt. George Morris said.

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The protocol--conceived in 1994 and rewritten last year--has been adopted by all local law enforcement agencies. And stamping out domestic violence has become a priority for police, prosecutors and probation officers, Morris said.

Learned criminal behavior--such as hitting a spouse--can be unlearned, he said.

“I think the feeling is that domestic violence is the root of a lot of other problems,” Morris said.

If a police officer responding to a domestic disturbance call sees any evidence of injury, an arrest is made, officials said, even if the victim has changed her mind about filing charges.

On calls that do not result in an arrest, officers must still fill out a domestic violence incident report on all domestic calls, Morris said.

In the past year, the Ventura and Oxnard police departments have set up special domestic violence response teams to accompany officers on domestic dispute calls.

Probation officers, abuse counselors and civilian police employees are all dispatched to offer help, take pictures, tape-record interviews with victims, fill out reports and provide counseling referrals--or take victims to area shelters if necessary.

All officers have some training in dealing with domestic violence calls, and each department has officers trained specifically to deal with domestic disputes.

Once arrested, the batterer will very likely spend a few hours or a day in jail, officials said.

In the past, a man convicted of domestic violence could have his record wiped clean after two years of probation and a few counseling sessions. Now the conviction remains. And the batterer must attend 53 group counseling sessions within 56 weeks.

If the batterer fails to show up at sessions, or a counselor determines he is making no progress, he can be sent back to jail and will eventually have to resume the sessions.

Depending on the severity of the case and the batterer’s history, a felony domestic violence conviction carries a maximum penalty of two to four years in prison, as opposed to a mixture of probation, counseling and shorter periods of jail time for misdemeanor convictions.

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Probation officers now keep a close watch on offenders, who know that if they hit their spouses or girlfriends they will end up in jail, said Cindy Lompart, a probation officer in Oxnard.

“Having that hanging over their heads is an important deterrent,” Lompart said.

Probation officers also make spot visits to homes to check on victims, she said.

Despite the tougher enforcement, there are more calls now reporting domestic violence, leading to an increase in cases.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, which has the most current data, has seen the number of domestic violence reports rise from 474 in 1993 to 1,485 in 1996.

With increased awareness due in part to the attention surrounding the O.J. Simpson trial, other departments in the county have recorded similar increases, officials said.

Lompart compared awareness of domestic violence to the rising anger over drunk driving in the 1970s.

But despite such progress, many cases of abuse still go unreported.

Allison is a case in point.

Her husband had hit her before, but the part-time hairdresser and mother of two young children had always believed she was tough enough to take it.

Her husband, a mechanic with his own garage, was bigger and a lot stronger. She figured at least he loved her and he had never raised a hand against the kids, so she might as well stick it out.

“It was a control thing, I guess,” she said. “His first marriage he found his wife in bed with his best friend and so he had this total control issue with me.”

Allison, 30, who asked that her last name not be used, figured the beatings were just a normal part of marriage.

“It’s not like I’m a victim or anything,” she said. “I look at myself as a pretty strong person, so I tried to laugh it off, and he would follow me around and around and hit me. He started driving really fast and said he was going to just crash the car right then with us in it. That’s when I knew things had to change. When he hit me again I called the cops.”

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Allison’s husband wound up in the Act counseling group. He spent a night in jail and was sentenced to a year of probation.

“He’s a changed man,” Allison said. Her husband is on his 48th week of group counseling, and recently took her to Las Vegas to renew their vows.

“I think he understands what he was doing was wrong, and at least he has this thing hanging over his head so he doesn’t want to screw up,” she said.

During the court-ordered counseling sessions, the men are forced to admit what they have done.

Often it takes weeks before they can take responsibility for their actions without minimizing it, said Scott Barrella, a counselor with the program.

“We often start with a tremendous amount of denial and rage,” Barrella said. “We need a good amount of time to get the process working, and some will never change, but many others do . . . we begin to have open and honest discussions about what is going on. It can get pretty intense.”

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Abuse Counseling Programs

There are five court-approved counseling programs in the county. The organizations also have programs for men and women who enter the counseling programs voluntarily.

* Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, 2064 Eastman Ave., Suite 104, Ventura, 654-8141.

* Interface, Children, Family Services of Ventura County with offices in Camarillo, Oxnard, Santa Paula, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Ventura, 646-9724.

* Ojai Valley Domestic Violence Program, 530 Ojai Ave., Suite 208, Ojai, 805-646-9724.

* Act, Domestic Violence Program, 3695 Alamo St., Suite 200, Simi Valley, 581-5398, Ext. 14.

* Intervention Institute--Violence Intervention Program, 501 Marin St., Suite 103, Thousand Oaks, 379-3611.