A rash of domestic violence-related homicides since summer has prompted officials to announce a summit on the issue in hopes of removing Oklahoma from the list of top states for family violence.
More than a dozen officials gathered at Tulsa police headquarters Thursday for a news conference to condemn domestic violence and show their support for the summit, which will be held in early 2015.
Targeted at educating the public, being proactive and preventing domestic violence, the summit will feature leaders from faith-based communities, courts, schools, law enforcement agencies, youth organizations and domestic violence agencies.
Tracey Lyall, executive director of Domestic Violence Intervention Services, said a major concern is the prevalence in Oklahoma of the top contributing factors to domestic violence: unemployment or low income, substance abuse and access to weapons.
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“In Oklahoma we have a lot of all of those three things,” Lyall said. “Those are the top three risk factors for a person to be killed by their partner, and we don’t do great in any of those three areas.”
One-third of Oklahoma domestic violence homicides in which a parent was killed were witnessed by children, according to statistics provided by the Tulsa Police Department.
Lyall said DVIS provides free counseling to children who have witnessed domestic violence and extended those services to 411 children of survivors in 2013.
“It traumatizes them pretty much for their entire life,” Lyall said. “Even children in the womb — we know it affects their brain development, and that trauma can have a lasting affect on kids throughout their life.”
Mayor Dewey Bartlett called domestic violence a “scourge” that is permeating the city, county and state, and he called for an aggressive and proactive approach to combating it.
Bartlett recounted the tragic situation in which a 12-year-old boy called 911 on Oct. 25 to tell dispatchers his stepfather had shot and killed his mother before turning the gun on himself. Two slightly younger children also were present.
“They were of age to see and experience and understand what just happened to their mother,” Bartlett said. “Can you imagine that? Can you simply imagine that? How scarred they are now for the rest of their lives.”
Police Chief Chuck Jordan touted his department’s use of a lethality-assessment questionnaire for the past three years, a practice that as of Nov. 1 is required by statute for all law enforcement agencies in Oklahoma.
Jordan said the hundreds of domestic-violence victims that Tulsa police identified through the form as being at-risk for homicide are survivors because of it. In other words, none of those victims of domestic violence became homicide victims.
Advocates also touted what a significant step the new law — House Bill 2526 — is in mandating that law enforcement use those lethality assessments, saying the critical step is matching victims with resources to help remove them from dangerous situations.
Suzann Stewart, director of the Family Safety Center in Tulsa, noted that none of the 10 domestic violence-related homicide victims this year in the city had accessed services provided by the group.
“We know without a doubt once we are able to get families into the system, with the resources this community has available to them, we will not have fatalities,” Stewart said.
