A Roundtable Discussion On Domestic Violence

PARTICIPANTS

Rocky Robinson, moderator,
is president of the Houston Bar Association and a partner at Andrews Kurth L.L.P.

Cassandra Thomas
is the senior vice president for the Houston Area Women’s Center.

The Hon. Carol Davies
is judge of the 177th Criminal District Court.

Walter Mahoney
is a family law practitioner in Pasadena.

The Hon. Doug Warne
is judge of the 311th Family District Court and the administrative judge for the nine family
courts in
Harris County.

Jane Waters
is chief of the Family Criminal Law Division of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

Sgt. Jan Meanix-Garza
is a sergeant with theHouston Police Department and has been in the Family Violence Unit
since it was established in 1991.

Capt. Dale Brown,
the newly-appointed captain of the Homicide Division of the Houston Police Department,
attended as an observer.

Stewart Gagnon
is a family law practitioner with Fulbright& Jaworski L.L.P. and chairs the Supreme Court’s
Task Force on Protective Orders.

MR. ROBINSON: One of our focus areas this year is domestic violence awareness. We have convened this roundtable today, and I appreciate each one of you being here to discuss those issues.
I would like to begin with an open question. What has happened in the area of domestic violence in the last five or ten years, from your individual perspectives? Have you seen an evolution in society’s awareness of the issue or the problem?

MS. THOMAS: I think we’ve seen a tremendous change in our society in the last ten years. People talk about domestic violence now. Before, people were not willing to even get involved. Companies were not involved. Police departments were going to the scene, but they weren’t really arresting abusers. Not many were prosecuted. Things are very different now. Companies have policies and procedures. The media’s play is different. People take this problem seriously, which can be both a blessing and a curse. Now that they know there are criminal charges attached to it, abusers don’t dare their victims to call the police. Instead, they threaten their victims not to call. There’s a backlash that comes with that. We’ve seen tremendous changes, but we still have a long way to go.

JUDGE DAVIES: I agree that we still have a long way to go. There certainly are dramatic changes. It’s not just that dirty, little secret that nobody talks about. It’s more open. But the old problems are still there, just not as prevalent. The women - and I say, “the women” because, statistically speaking, women still are the typical victims - will call the police. They’ll file the charges. But then they don’t want to follow through. That’s still very common.

MR. MAHONEY: From a lawyer’s standpoint, I think we have more tools available to help victims. There is so much more that you can do now than when I started practicing law. That is something that the Bar needs to take the lead on, educating lawyers about the fact that protective orders don’t cost anything because there’s no filing fee. There are tools available through the DA’s Office without even having a lawyer. We need to know that there are things that victims can do that don’t cost them anything, so that poverty is not as big a block as it was 10 or 15 years ago.

JUDGE WARNE: We do have more tools. Protective orders are more widely used, and the DA’s Office here has been leading the charge in that respect. Even in some of the outlying counties, the county attorneys are beginning to devote some of their time to the issue. We’ve had a number of tools that the legislature has now built into the Family Code, like custody preferences and those kinds of things, that tie into the whole family violence issue. But we need to continue to improve our understanding of the psychology of family violence victims to better deal with those cases.

MS. WATERS: Things have changed greatly at the D.A.’s Office within the last five to ten years. The laws have helped immensely to hold batterers accountable. The fact that second assaults are felonies is huge. That gives us a wide range of punishment opportunities and rehabilitation opportunities. It sends a strong message to the batterer that family violence is serious, and they’ll be arrested with a felony charge. It’s not a matter of taking your 10 days in jail, getting out and being done with it.
It also sends a message to the victim that this is something that we take seriously, and we’re going to prosecute to the best of our ability with or without the cooperation of the victim. Most D.A. offices are adopting “no-drop policies,” which means we prosecute the case whether or not the victim wants us to. Ten years ago, the victim would walk in and say, “I want to drop charges.” We’d have them sign an affidavit, fill out a dismissal, and the case was done. Nobody met with that victim about safety issues, about her options, about protective orders. Now, 75 percent of the victims eventually leave their abusers. And every time somebody talks to her - from the police department, the caseworkers at our office, the prosecutors, the judges - every time she’s exposed to what her options are, even though she might go back to the perpetrator, it helps make her safer in the future, and it gives her more options on what she wants to do in the future.

MR. ROBINSON: How long has the Harris County District Attorney’s Office had a unit devoted to domestic violence issues?

MS. WATERS: At least 15 years. We’ve become more aggressive. Chuck Rosenthal has been wonderful as far as the family criminal law division of our office goes. We’ve gotten an increase in staff, including more prosecutors and caseworkers. Mr. Rosenthal has allowed us to do more aggressive training on domestic violence. But we are still evolving every day. And Cassandra is right. We absolutely still have a long way to go with changing society’s views. When I talk to juries, I still perceive that there’s a tolerance for violence in the home. When we’re negotiating these cases, we always have to realize, “If the jury gets this case, what’s the jury going to do?” I think that’s a matter of educating society that family violence should not be tolerated. It hurts victims, and it hurts kids.

MR. ROBINSON: From the law enforcement perspective, how have things changed in the last five or ten years?

SGT. MEANIX-GARZA: It’s a matter of educating officers. I think sometimes victims have unrealistic expectations of what the officers who come to the scene can do: make him stop hitting me, make him be a good husband and a good father. We can only do so much, which is, basically, putting them in jail. That starts the whole process. But officers are a reflection of how society feels about domestic violence. As Jane said, some jury members still think that it’s okay for a husband to hit his wife. Unfortunately, it’s tolerated among some officers, some prosecutors, and some judges. It’s a societal issue.
When the law changed in 1985 allowing officers to arrest without warrants - which meant without willing complainants - it took a long time to get officers to realize we should do that. The law allowed us to, but to get them to do it was another matter. Now they do it, but probably 70 percent of our arrests are for Class C misdemeanors. Jane rarely sees those cases. They plead guilty, get some jail, and they’re out the next day. I think it’s analogous to how we looked at child abuse 20 years ago, how we looked at drunk driving 20 years ago, and how we look at those issues today. Society is changing, and officers’ attitudes are changing, but it just takes more education.

MR. GAGNON: From my perspective, both in the legislature and in the family courts, I see the family courts making a more concerted effort to address the issue. They have their own special designated court each month that deals with Protective Orders. There have been several changes in the legislature over the last ten years. In fact, the advocates for victims of family violence can pretty well get what they want out of the legislature any time they go there, although they are not always clear about what they want. They could beef up the VAWA, or Violence Against Women Act.
I saw statistics that in 2002, there were an estimated 891,000 cases of family violence in the state of Texas, and only five percent of those people were addressed by the legal system. There are a lot of people falling through the cracks. The Family Law Section in the Supreme Court has tried to make protective orders more readily available. We’re also developing a kit that will allow the Houston Area Women’s Center to help people complete their own application for a protective order. Also, the kit should help a lawyer who is unfamiliar with the family courts feel comfortable in assisting victims.
But I also agree with Jane, that there’s still an attitude out there. I’ve talked to every constitutional county judge in Texas in three different meetings. And I can tell you, in West Texas they don’t like to give out protective orders because it takes away the abuser’s guns. They can’t go hunting. And that’s the first thing some judges think about. They don’t think about, “Is this going to happen again?” They think, “Well, what’s it going to do to that guy?”
The second thing is, there is still a bias that men are not abused. If you take a guy in that’s been physically abused, the judge isn’t going to feel sorry for him. The judge and the jury will think, “He did something to deserve that.” So there’s still that conflict of attitudes for men and women.

MR. ROBINSON: I have a question for our two family law practitioners. In the context of a divorce, what options or remedies are available to a victim of domestic violence?

MR. MAHONEY: You can take a victim to the court the day after the incident or the day of the incident and ask a judge for an ex parte Protective Order immediately upon recurrence of any kind of family violence. Our judges are very available, and you can get in the court immediately. That’s a tremendous tool that is not available in any other place that I know of. The statute makes arrangements, if the judge chooses, to call the perpetrator and see if he wants to come down and respond. I think that builds in as much due process as necessary when you have a true emergency situation. That’s something that the legislature has done that greatly assists a victim.
Another part of that is to make sure that the victim knows what’s available through the District Attorney’s Office. Every judge that I know, when they release somebody in a criminal assault case, includes a “no contact” provision in the bond and enters a protective order keeping the perpetrator away from the victim, and sometimes the victims’ children. I think we have an obligation to report any offense that we know about and tell our clients that they need to report any offenses to the police.

MR. ROBINSON: Judge Warne and Judge Davies, what’s the difference between a “no contact” order and a protective order?

JUDGE DAVIES: For me, it is pretty much as Walter just described. In a typical criminal case, the first thing that happens is that the victim asks for a protective order. And, of course, the order includes sanctions set out in the statute. But in addition to that, if the perpetrator makes bail, I will make a condition of that bail that they have no contact. I’ll put in similar conditions in the protective order - that they can’t go to the place of residence, the place of employment, a school, whatever may apply. The big difference is that my order says, “no contact whatsoever,” whereas a protective order says, “You can’t make harassing communications.” I don’t care if it’s a love note – you know you’re not going to send flowers. You’re not going to have any contact or communication whatsoever. And the sanction is that I can revoke the bond.

MS. WATERS: The “no contact” order has a huge advantage because it means he can’t call her and tell her he loves her, and beg her to come back and do the honeymoon thing.
But the protective order is excellent in the sense that the police can arrest him. And it’s the only mandatory arrest in the Code of Criminal Procedure, if the order is violated in the officer’s presence. So if the officer goes to the house and the suspect is there, the officer has to arrest him even if she’s invited him over or even if he’s moved back into the house.

MS. DAVIES: And typically, we’ll revoke bail, issue a warrant, and set it for a hearing.

MR. ROBINSON: We’ve been talking about the issues once they get into the court system. But they start out on the street or in the homes. What is the normal standard operating procedure for a responding officer? What can he or she do or not do when there is a call on a domestic violence situation?

SGT. MEANIX-GARZA: What they have to do by state law and by our policy is make a report, at an absolute minimum, and give what we call a blue card. That’s a card that has all the resources in our Houston area. Now, what we hope they will do if they have probable cause to believe an assault took place resulting in bodily injury is make a warrantless arrest. There are all types of family violence. If it was two drunken brothers fighting in the front yard over whose football team lost, the officers are going to handle those much differently. We’re seeing more and more adult children beating up their parents or grandparents. That’s still family violence. We still can make a warrantless arrest. But it’s not your true woman-victim/bad-guy-husband situation, which is what most people think of as family violence. A lot of these guys are smart enough to leave before the police get there. Out of all the times they get called out, police make an arrest maybe 25 percent of the time. And at least 50 percent of the time, he’s not even there, so the arrest issue never comes up.

MS. WATERS: Some agencies still have the option of filing a case. Even though he’s left the scene, they can file a charge, get a warrant and arrest him.

MR. GAGNON: On the civil side of it, she can get herself a lawyer or get someone from an advocates program and file a civil protective order. That may not make it through the criminal process, but gets them over to see Judge Warne and other family law judges.

MS. WATERS: Right. We do protective orders for victims at the DA’s Office, so they’re not based on criminal charges only. The victims can just come to our office and apply for a two-year protective order. And it’s free of charge, and the family court judges give us one Wednesday every month where all they do is issue protective orders for victims of domestic violence.

JUDGE WARNE: It’s actually one a week. It stays in one court a month, each Wednesday, on a rotating basis. And the number of protective orders that you’ve been filing has been going up, hasn’t it?

MS. WATERS: It’s been increasing. We’ve made it easier to file. And we include more children on the protective orders than we used to.

MR. ROBINSON: Are the incidents increasing, or just the access to protective orders?

MS. WATERS: I think the access is easier. We used to have a lot of rules. We used to make the victims show up with the birth certificate of their child to prove they had a child together. Or they would come and apply for the protective order, but then they would have to come back to do the affidavit. We have really tried to make it where they come in one time, apply for the protective order, and the next time we see them is in court on a Wednesday to get the order.

MR. GAGNON: What we’re trying to do with the Protective Order Kit is to give the Houston Area Women’s Center or the police department a document they can give to the victim to fill out.

MS. WATERS: And I think that is a great tool. I guess my concern about that is it may put a big burden on the family courts. There’s no screening. We see a lot of batterers come to our office and apply for a protective order. And it’s backfired on me more than once, where I’ve gotten a protective order for a man, and the next thing I know, he’s using it as a power play on the custody issue. I guess my concern is putting a bigger burden on the family court judges to figure out whether the case involves a true protective order or someone trying to abuse the courts. It’s tough.

MS. THOMAS: They’re less likely to come to our office. We have more of a screening just because we’re the Houston Area Women’s Center. They already know we have a bias - or they think we have a bias. But I agree that if it’s more easily accessible where there isn’t an ability to screen, the batterer is going to use it himself as a way of controlling his family.

MR. GAGNON: We were concerned about that. In fact, some of the county judges were very concerned about that. We did a little research on the experience of other states. Texas has one of the more stringent processes. If you go to New Jersey and ask for a protective order, you get it. And it’s not a hard process to fill out. What we found was, when we move to more lax systems, there’s a little bit of a spike in their filings, and then it levels back off. We saw that in the family courts, where someone could lose visitation rights, and all of a sudden, there’s a spike in filing protective orders. We’re not seeing it that much anymore.

MR. ROBINSON: Cassandra, I have a question for you. Judge Warne mentioned earlier that there’s been a lot of education of the public, courts, and lawyers over the last five to ten years on issues of domestic violence. One of the challenges is understanding the psychology of not only the victim, but also the batterer. One question that always comes up in domestic violence issues, particularly against women, is why doesn’t she leave if he’s so bad? And corollary to that is the situation where there is reconciliation between the victim and the batterer. What are your thoughts on why this occurs and why that attitude prevails?

MS. THOMAS: One of the things that we forget is why people marry in the first place. People marry because they thought they found the best thing that was out there, and that they love them. The psychology of the batterer is key. It’s not that he beats her every day of the week and he beats her all day long and he’s beating on the kids. There’s a cycle going on. He knows, “If I beat her that much, she will leave. Everybody is going to agree with her and think I’m the worst thing in the world.” He doesn’t want anyone to think that. He wants them to think that he’s the best thing. So he’s going to beat her, but then all of a sudden, she gets the flowers, she gets the gifts, she gets the card, she gets the dinner, and he becomes the person that she initially married.
And all of us remember when we were dating somebody, all lovey-dovey. That’s what he becomes again. She thinks, “Oh, he’s got it now.” He’s promised, “I’ll never hit you again. I promise. It was just this, and I’ve got this under control.” So she says, “Oh, well, it was just this, and he’s fixed it, so now things are okay again. And so he’s become this man I love.” Before we get married, we say, “I’m never picking up any dirty clothes. If he puts them on the floor, he’s out of here.” What do we do? We pick them up. We might fuss, but we do it because we all make concessions in marriage. And for a lot of women, they think being beaten is part of the concession.
If you add kids in the mix, then she thinks, “At least the kids are being fed and clothed and have all of this. If I leave, I’m not sure they’re going to get fed because I don’t make enough money to pay rent and feed them.” So you add all of that together, and for her, it’s not just a simple decision of “I’m gone,” which we’re all quick to say when we don’t have any obligations. You’ll say, “Honey, he does one thing, I’m out of there.” The minute you get married, you say, “Okay, maybe it ought to be 15 things before I’m out because I’ve got a house loan, and I’ve got this, and I’ve got that.” So she has all of that to consider.
Many times, what she’s trying to do is make the best decision for everybody. I’ve talked to many women who know he’s doing wrong, but at least the kids are taken care of. At least he’s a good father. He’s never hit the kids, and they’re going to private school, and they have this and they have that. And so she stays. Or she says, “Yeah, he hits me, but it’s not with his fist. It’s with the palm of his hand.” So we all have these definitions of what’s wrong, and for a lot of women who grew up with this kind of thing, this is normal. Daddy beat mama. Grandpa beat Grandma. This is marriage. So they put up with it.

MR. GAGNON: In the litigation context, we see guys that have a reason why they did it.
“I was drunk. I lost control.” And that’s the same justifications that the women have for going back to them. “He was drunk. He’s not going to get drunk. He’s going to stop drinking, and it won’t happen again.” The thought process for the victim and the abuser are sometimes the same.

MS. THOMAS: That’s right.

MR. ROBINSON: From a law enforcement perspective, how do you deal with that?

SGT. MEANIX-GARZA: It’s frustrating for the patrol officers who make the scene Friday night after Friday night after Friday night. Some of them get cynical: “ Hey, she’s not willing to help herself. I’ve given her so many blue cards, but she won’t leave.” So the officer gets frustrated, and the investigator gets frustrated because he’s helped her, but now she’s back with her abuser. They serve the arrest warrant, and there she is in bed with him when they come in to arrest him. So everybody in the system is frustrated. She comes in crying and screaming, “You aren’t helping me enough. You aren’t going to help me until he kills me.” The next day, she’s in there demanding that the case be dropped because now she’s protecting him. Maybe he’s threatened her, or maybe they’re back together. But everything Cassandra said is right on.
When I train officers, I tell them, “It’s just like anybody who’s gotten a divorce with no violence involved; the first time that she bounced a check or the first time he got drunk, you didn’t get divorced. It’s a long time before a person says, ‘I want out.’”
And our society teaches young women that they’ve got to have a man to be a success. So at least she’s got a man and her kids have a daddy. She doesn’t want another bunch of kids being raised without a father, even though he’s not the best. This question comes up always; “Why does she stay?” We don’t ask that of other crime victims. But we always ask the victim in these women-oriented crimes what she did to make this happen, instead of asking why he batters her, gets away with it and still thinks it’s okay.

MS. THOMAS: One of the things that Jan said earlier is that what the victim wants is the violence to stop. That’s separate from the marriage. Because the marriage, under other circumstances, is probably okay. He is probably working; he is probably a good father. And she does have a man. So that’s why it’s so frustrating, because when the cops come out, she says, “I want him to quit hitting me. The cops are here. He quit hitting me. So I am okay now.” It takes a while for her to realize that the hitting is now a part of her marriage; that it is now normal, and will continue for the rest of her life. That’s when she says, “Okay, I’m gone, and I’m out of here for good.”

MR. ROBINSON: Jane, how does the District Attorney’s Office deal with that?

MS. WATERS: When people ask, “Why does she stay,” I say, “Well, why does he hit her?” Let’s turn it around and let’s hold the batterer accountable. I don’t really care what they come in and tell me later. I want them to come in and see a caseworker. If I have a good police report with good 911 tape, good photos, good independent witnesses, someone has talked to the neighbors, it doesn’t really matter to me what she says later, unless I have a really weak report. What she’s saying now isn’t as important as what she said the night it happened. Did the officer talk to all the witnesses? Did the officer get photos? Did the officer say, “Do you have any love letters from the last time he hit you?” Great evidence.
The lawyer comes to court and says, “He’s never hit her before.” Well, I have these letters where he’s written, “I’m so sorry I beat you on Mother’s Day.” I mean, these guys write letters and the honeymoon phases are very, very elaborate. So there are all kinds of great evidence to collect on the night of the offense. The most important person is the first officer at the scene that night. The rest of us just do the best we can with what we have to work with later, because 85 percent of the victims will recant.

JUDGE WARNE: One of your prosecutors said something to me that really helped my view. It relates to what you’re talking about, what you see at ground zero when the officer is out there and then what the victims do later. She said that we all have to recognize that it’s easier for the victim to lie to us, the judge, the prosecutor, the lawyers, than it is for her to lie to her abuser.

MS. WATERS: Right. They’re not afraid of us, you know.

MS. THOMAS: He’s proved his ability to hurt her.

MR. ROBINSON: What impact can a domestic violence situation have on the final decree of divorce, both from custody and property division standpoints?

JUDGE WARNE: From a property standpoint, it’s one of the factors under the Family Code that the court considers in making the equity division. If specific fault grounds are pled, it may be more of an issue. But most of the courts allow it in and will consider the general conduct of the parties in dividing the property. On the custody issues, the Code has specific provisions that require us to consider conduct in appointing conservators. The judges are sensitive to the fact that domestic violence against one parent is harmful to the children. They don’t have to have the blows striking them for it to be harmful to them. I think all of the service providers, including judges, are sensitive to the fact that there is a cycle and that these behaviors are learned.
As Cassandra said, people grow up with expectations about what relationships and marriages are like. This is how people deal with their disputes, even if they love each other. And kids pick up on that. Judges are concerned about that. And we don’t want to set up a situation where the violence gets perpetuated. One thing that we’ve been struggling with in the family courts is that family violence is very much about control and manipulation, and happens when the legal system responds to you. In the family courts, a lot of the threats have to do with custody: “I’m going to take the kids away from you.” And often victims just believe it because they’re so much under the control of the perpetrator. We’re trying to be sure that when these victims come to the Family Law Center, we’re not participating in helping the guy make his threat come true. We don’t want to respond by letting him use the system to put all of the legal costs on her. We’re trying to develop screening methods so that we’re not perpetuating his control.

MR. ROBINSON: As a family court judge, if you see evidence that there’s a domestic violence situation, can you make a referral to the D.A.’s Office?

JUDGE WARNE: If we see evidence of child abuse and have reason to believe it has not been reported, I think we’re required by statute to make a report. And I’ve done that two or three times, when I’ve looked at an affidavit filed with an application for protective order and it involves an allegation of abuse directed towards the kids and I can’t tell if anybody has reported it. But generally, we don’t make direct referrals to CPS, the DA’s Office or law enforcement from our courts. Usually, we’re down the chain from when that’s happened.

MR. ROBINSON: What should private practitioners do to screen clients for domestic violence?

MR. GAGNON: Part of my initial consultation with a client is focused on that issue. You have a conversation with them: “Why are you going through the divorce? What’s your marriage been like? Why has it gotten to this point?”
They normally come in to you having already decided that they’re going to at least explore a divorce. So they’ll talk to you about their issues, where they may not talk to a counselor or minister about marital problems. They see you as an advocate for them. I have a very frank discussion with all of them that there are advantages to a protective order, but it’s just a piece of paper: “It’s nice that you have this protective order. It still takes the police department a few minutes to get out to your house.” And my conversation with them is: “Whatever you do, however you pursue it, make sure you take all the steps you can to protect yourself. Your house is not worth your life. You just need to get out of that situation as much as you can.” I usually see them when they’re already separated.

MR. MAHONEY: Because of the nature of my practice, I don’t see that many who are coming straight from the police department. I used to see a lot more. It’s hard to imagine how desperate their situation is; they are literally trapped. When you talk about them staying in the marriage, many times, they don’t see any other alternative. The hardest thing for me to do is to try to find resources, like on the blue card, and then reassure them that the judge is going to protect them and do the right thing, and that it’s not going to cost them a fortune. You have a very hard time explaining to them that if their abuser says he wants to fight for custody, then he can do that. In my experience, if a batterer chooses to be in a position of power by saying he’s going to take control of the children, then that is the reason why the victim goes back 75 percent to 80 percent of the time.

MR. GAGNON: The process wears them down to a point where they’re making concessions that are not in their kids’ or their own best interest. You’ve got to pay the ad litem. You’ve got to pay this and that. You’ve got to play the games. You’ve got to go down to the hearings. You’ve got to take off from work. And a lot of times, you’ve got a guy on the other side that is self-employed.

MS. THOMAS: There are many attorneys who don’t do a good screening. They don’t want to talk about it. They’ll ask, “Is there domestic violence?” Well, most women don’t know what that means. So they go and get a divorce decree that doesn’t address domestic violence. The screening is the key. It has to be there up front so the judge hears it the first time, because modification is hell. You can’t get attorneys to do them. They take forever. You’re talking about a costly process that could really bankrupt a victim.

JUDGE WARNE: Judge Shelton and I have a policy that we specifically follow on any case where there is a legitimate family violence issue. We don’t do anything in a case that’s going to either delay it or increase the expenses of the parties unless there’s a real good reason to do it. That’s the problem I was voicing earlier that Stewart and Wally recognized. You can beat a victim down with the system. When you do, you’re just part of the problem.

MR. GAGNON: But how many courts do you have where you stand up at docket call and say, “I have a temporary order hearing. Custody is an issue.” The first thing they do is send you to mediation. They don’t care what the facts are. The second thing they do is appoint an amicus or attorney ad litem. And then they’re going to order somebody to do an evaluation.

MR. MAHONEY: Part of the problem is, in Harris County, there is no place to get a low cost custody evaluation. We are a big city with millions of people, but if you have a family that is in need of mental health input, there is no way to get that without spending $3,000-$5,000. And sometimes, that’s a lot more than the monthly income for these families. It’s just not available.

MR. ROBINSON: Is the issue of domestic violence in our society a problem that is unsolvable? If it is solvable, what’s the answer?

MS. THOMAS: I think it is solvable. I wouldn’t be doing this work if I didn’t think that there was some end in sight, but I think we’re talking about long term. We always talk about education, but education alone doesn’t change attitude. You have to educate, and then you have to have people want to change their attitude. In the meantime, you put as many sanctions and laws in place as you can saying, “This behavior is unacceptable.”

JUDGE WARNE: I think it’s solvable. I agree that we have to send the message that it’s not acceptable behavior and that there’s no excuse for it. It’s illegal behavior. We have to have the sanctions in place, and we have to have people who are willing to impose them. There are some really alarming statistics about the prevalence of family violence in dating relationships and people who have never been married. And there are studies that show that the response is, it’s better to have a boyfriend who’s mean to me or violent to me than to have no boyfriend at all. We’re all too late in the system to help those people or to change those behaviors. That should come from parents. The schools have a role. In our society, we seem to want the schools to do everything. But I think we have to focus some of our attention and creativity on the younger people and get it into them that these are not acceptable behaviors. I think that’s where the focus will shift to because we have the legal tools. I think the system is responding and using them.

JUDGE WARNE: I think it’s solvable. I agree that we have to send the message that it’s not acceptable behavior and that there’s no excuse for it. It’s illegal behavior. We have to have the sanctions in place, and we have to have people who are willing to impose them. There are some really alarming statistics about the prevalence of family violence in dating relationships and people who have never been married. And there are studies that show that the response is, it’s better to have a boyfriend who’s mean to me or violent to me than to have no boyfriend at all. We’re all too late in the system to help those people or to change those behaviors. That should come from parents. The schools have a role. In our society, we seem to want the schools to do everything. But I think we have to focus some of our attention and creativity on the younger people and get it into them that these are not acceptable behaviors. I think that’s where the focus will shift to because we have the legal tools. I think the system is responding and using them.

JUDGE DAVIES: It’s such a large societal issue, as we all well know. It’s going to take generations. And it takes funding. We all talk about the counseling and the resources. We know we need them. But implementing them — these things just don’t happen. They have to be funded.
One thing that concerns me is the hidden victim of domestic violence. For example, in criminal courts, I often see female defendants who come in charged with credit card abuse or drugs. When you look at their backgrounds, pretty much consistently, across the board, they have been victims of some form of domestic violence. I can’t say there’s a direct link, but statistically, this is the kind of person that we’re losing to other kinds of criminal activity. We’re dealing with those every day. We put them on probation, but most of the programs that we have in Harris County are for the men. We can’t get the programs in place.
Right now our probation department is trying its darnedest to get a very ambitious program in place that has the working title, “Women Helping Ourselves,” or “WHO.” We can’t get it going because we can’t even get people to bid on providing the services. Women have a unique set of problems that other services don’t address. But we don’t get the funding.

MR. MAHONEY: I think it’s unsolvable until you reach the kids, the next generation. We all know that those persons that are involved in domestic violence almost always have grown up in a household where it occurred, yet we are not dealing with those kids.

MS. WATERS: I also think education is huge. You need to get to the 12-year-olds. Those are the kids that you want to reach because they’re old enough to understand. They’re looking towards relationships themselves. Those are the kids you want to get to, to say, “This is not good. This is not healthy. You don’t have to have a man. You don’t have to have a girl. You are a good person whether you have one or not.” We have to change those thoughts because that’s where it starts, that whole obsessive, jealous, crazed thing we see.

MS. MEANIX-GARZA: I reiterate what everyone said. I agree. It’s a huge societal problem. It’s going to take a generation.
I’ve been a cop 22 years. When I joined police work, we drove drunk drivers home. We were a taxi service. Now we arrest them. We looked at child abuse like “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Now we arrest. We routinely told women, “If you don’t leave, there’s nothing we can do to help you. You’re not willing to file charges. If you call me back out here again, I’m going to put you both in jail.” In 1985, everything changed. Now we’re encouraging officers to make arrests.
I think Public Service Announcements are very effective. The Houston Area Women’s Center has several. But we’ve got to get them on the stations that the kids are watching. Kids are learning that drugs are bad and drinking is bad. My 10-year-old will tell you, “I’ll never smoke. It’s bad.” He didn’t dream that up. He got indoctrinated with that. So we’ve got to get these PSAs to the little kids, to tell them before they start dating that violence isn’t the way to solve problems.
They’re doing it in some of the schools through mediation systems, where even if two little kids get in a fight in elementary school, they have other students that help them work out the problem and show them fighting is not okay. And teachers hitting kids isn’t okay either. It’s going to take generations, but it’s solvable.

MR. GAGNON: I’m going to be the pessimist. We live in a world where the state won’t provide the resources to solve the problem before it gets to be a problem. We’re not paying for education right now. We ought to be paying for education. When you say, “We would like to have this educational program,” good. We would like the lawyers to put it on in schools. We would like the doctors to put it on in schools. We want somebody to volunteer to put it on. We’re not going to put our state resources behind it.
You guys talk about putting abusers in jail, but they don’t go to jail. We don’t have the resources to put them in jail. We don’t have enough jails to put them in jail. We give them probation. And what those little kids see is, “Dad went away in the police car, but he came back and he didn’t go to jail.” If I’m a kid and I get grounded, but then you say, “Well, okay, go on out and play,” it doesn’t teach me anything.
I agree with the education part. The Family Law Section used to put on a six-week course in all of the high schools. We would teach responsible family values. And one part of that was the appropriate way to communicate, and what’s not appropriate behavior. We don’t do that anymore, but that is a project that this bar association could do in conjunction with some school districts. The statistics that I’ve seen say the largest age group for family violence is 19 to 24. You’ve got to get them before they get into high school, so they learn not to do it when they get out of high school. That’s what I think will help.

MR. ROBINSON: Again, I thank each of you for giving up your lunch hour and participating in this discussion. I think it’s going to be valuable to all of the members of the Houston Bar Association.

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