Schools

Summit Tackles Topic of Relationship Violence at UMBC

Fourth annual event was held Monday night at UMBC's campus.

By Emily Jackson

While the UMBC campus community has avoided tragedies such as the death of University of Virginia student Yeardley Love, violence in relationships is still something that occurs on campus.

During the fall semester of 2010, had launched the in order to help those in the campus community recognize and prevent relationship violence.

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On Monday night, campus and county government officials hosted the fourth annual Crime Victims' Rights Summit to further discuss how to prevent tragedies from occurring.

With a variety of sponsors including the UMBC and Baltimore County Police Departments, various other Catonsville and Arbutus organizations, and speakers including UMBC Student Government Association (SGA)  president Yasmin Karimian, Baltimore County State Attorney, Scott Shellenbergerer, and William Mitchell, president and founder of the Kristen Mitchell Foundation,   the summit touched on a variety of topics—determining who is at risk, identifying warning signs, escaping dangerous relationships and finally, understanding bystander intervention.

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Opening the summit were remarks from first time summit attendee and newly appointed UMBC Chief of Police, Mark Sparks, who briefly introduced the guests and spoke highly of the collaborative efforts of the elected officials involved with improving the legislation for victim’s rights.

“In the early [1980s], victims in domestic violence cases were originally regarded as an afterthought—a piece of the puzzle used to solve these cases,” he said.

“Now, it’s not unusual for police departments all over the country to have their own Victim’s Assistance units, and victims now have an easier and fairer process in court,” he said.  

Domestic violence changed, now more than co-habitants, but extends to people that have some sort of relationships with each other, Sparks said.

The summit’s first speaker, UMBC SGA President Yasmin Karimian said the intention of the summit was to encourage dialogue about relationship violence.

She said that she, like everyone else had only heard of cases of relationship violence until the death of her friend, Yeardley Love, a Virginia University student who had been claimed as a victim of domestic violence in May of last year.

“The relationships we encounter in both high school and college set the norm for future relationships. We need healthy examples and strong role models to tell us what a normal and healthy relationship is,” she said.

Karimian also explained that after Love’s death, she was forced to bring her own relationship into question and found that it wasn’t the happiest it could be.

“[Simply addressing] these issues as a school isn’t enough. To fully make a difference in prevent them, we must join together as a community with our eyes, ears, and voices, and the only way we can do this is if we begin to spread the word and show the support we can provide to the victims,” she continued.

The next speaker, Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenbergerer, said victims coming forward used to be more of a problem that it is now.

“We used to have problems with victims calling in reports of domestic violence on Friday night and then completely changing their story by Monday morning, begging us [to let the defendant] out of jail, and refusing to testify, causing our cases to fall apart. Because we never have a victim in homicide cases, we developed a similar approach in addressing these domestic violence cases where we assume that the victim isn’t on our side,” he explained.

Through a collaborative effort between precincts, their new approach to domestic violence cases, which he referred to as a  ‘proactive prosecution,’ focused more on the hard evidence given at first examination rather than the word of the victim who may or may not change her story.

To avoid hearsay, he said, the officers have to examine evidence such as the written or oral statement given by the victim, 911 tapes of the phone call because they capture the true and fragile state of the victim, photographs of any injuries or condition of the area in which the incident took place, which can also be used as concrete evidence, and each officer must fill out a Domestic Violence (DV) police report, which assesses the victim’s condition at the time.

“These things are concrete evidence and are important in court to help us assess our case,” he said.

He also spoke of the role of Domestic Violence Coordinators in each precinct, who receive the domestic violence reports issued over the weekend and examine them by Monday, ready to converse with the victims about their options.

Domestic violence is the number one cause of injury to women in the United States and 98 percent of cases reported in Baltimore County alone show the violence being directed against them, Shellenberger said.

“In 2007,” he said, “We had 36 reports of homicides in Baltimore County, fourteen of them listed as domestic related.  Overall, 40, almost 50 percent of homicides reported in Baltimore County are domestic related,” he said.   

Shellenberger also criticized the way the victims in domestic violence cases were scrutinized, often having the blame place on them, instead of the other way around. 

“In these cases, people always question why ‘she stays with him,’ when they should be asking ‘why is he abusing her,’” he said.

The last speaker was William D. Mitchell, founder and president of the Kristin Mitchell Foundation, named after his daughter who became a victim of domestic violence on June 3, 2005, almost three weeks after she had graduated from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.  

After showing a brief slide show featuring photos of his late daughter, Mitchell advised the audience what to do if someone they knew was in an abusive relationship and wanted to break up with them, as the more controlling the relationship, the more explosive of a breakup it will be.

“When you do decide to break up, make sure that it’s somewhere out of the abuser’s reach—over the hone instead of a private area. Try to stay out of reach for as long as possible and let your friends and parents know what’s going on,” he said.

Kim Leisey, UMBC’s associate vice president of student affairs and chairwoman of the Verizon Violence Prevention Committee, Deborah Miller, the Domestic Violence Coordinator for the Baltimore County Police Department and SGA President Karimian hosted a question-and-answer session with the audience.

The grant from the foundation has help raise awareness on the UMBC campus, Leisey said.

“Our job is to educate the whole community on the red flags and warning signs of dating and relationship violence, and to provide a clear definition of what a healthy relationship is,” she said.

“It’s not just the students we’re advocating, everyone is encouraged to speak up, whether it be the faculty, the students, or the dining hall staff. It’s really important that you come forward,” she said.

Miller echoed Leisey’s urgency to help the victim by offering resources, as she does the same thing within her role in the BC police department.

“A day or two after the incident is reported, I meet up, interview, and assess the victim, making sure that they know the complete list of resources offered to them, and hoping they act in a timely manner before the incident progresses,” she said.

It might not always be what they want to hear, but Miller isn’t there to tell them what to do. It’s up to them to make the right decision, something she is confident in.

“Normally they react in a positive manner, and do [exactly what we were hoping for],” she said.  “It’s clear that they are taking advantage of the resources, because the number of domestic violence cases has gone down. We’re not going to the same house again and again," she said.

Caitlyn Leiter-Mason, 18, like Karimian, had heard about cases of relationship violence in passing, “but the presentations of some of the speakers really hit home and made me realize how serious it was,” she said.

Leiter-Mason asked Shellenberger how he managed to get the victims to be partners in investigations, instead of always being placed in the opposing position.  

“We do have dozens of women on our side, and many of them do decide to testify,” Shellenberger said. “But, we prepare for the worst, just in case they decide to change their minds later on. Sometimes they’ll use the excuse that they were forced to testify just to avoid any further altercations with their partner.”


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