Family Violence

With public interest focused on judicial responses to women's issues, most of Maryland's 242 judges are expected in Towson today and tomorrow for a conference on family violence convened by Chief Judge Robert C. Murphy."

It used to be that officers wrote off domestic killings as a given - unfortunate and often brutal crimes that added numbers to the city's death tally but couldn't be prevented in the traditional way, such as with more police, neighborhood sweeps and arrests. And there wasn't much of a public outcry. People felt bad and were angry, but they didn't feel less safe because the man up the street killed his wife in an upstairs bedroom. A new team of Baltimore police and prosecutors is turning those antiquated theories around.

BOSTON -- How to explain the inconceivable: father stabbing, shooting and choking their children to death."God knows we wish we knew the reason, because then we could do something about it," said Christine Butler, a lawyer and director of the Suffolk Battered Women's Advocacy Project. "We've been tearing our hair out trying to figure out how we could have seen these killings coming."This year alone, at least a dozen Massachusetts children and young adults have been killed, police say, by their fathers or by their mothers' boyfriends.

On Nov. 17, Veronica Williams, 28, entered a Baltimore City District Court in an effort to break a cycle of domestic violence at the hands of her spouse. She secured a restraining order and exited the courthouse. A few moments later, her husband allegedly cut her throat. In broad daylight. On a public street. In the middle of Northeast Baltimore. Four days later she was dead and her husband imprisoned, leaving behind three small children who will likely spend the rest of their lives mending from this unspeakable tragedy.

Family violence has reached epidemic proportions in Maryland, and government efforts must be reorganized to deal with it, according to an 18-month study by a group of local experts."

Playwright Paula Vogel embraces tough subject matter. The former Marylander tackled AIDS in "The Baltimore Waltz" and pedophilia in her Pulitzer Prize-winning "How I Learned to Drive." In "Hot 'n' Throbbing" she takes on pornography and domestic violence. On Thursday, this provocative family drama opens the season at Washington's Arena Stage, where Vogel is writer in residence. Described by Vogel as "maybe one of the most painful and difficult plays I'll ever write, and ... also dangerously funny," the script has been substantially revised for this production.

The Carroll County Response to Family Violence Conference tomorrow will involve those who most often respond to victims, those who have the resources to help them and those who have survived and overcome the trauma of abuse. The county's Local Management Board, a group of public and private organizations that work to improve the lives of children and families, has partnered with the Domestic Violence Coordinating Council to organize the day-long event at Carroll Community College, with a $37,000 Byrne Memorial grant from the state Office of Crime Control and Prevention.

Coordinating family services - from providing shelter space to long-term assistance programs - would help Carroll County combat domestic violence, a group of family advocates said yesterday. Meeting in Westminster to identify gaps in family services, law enforcement officers, court officials, educators, social workers and therapists identified case management as one of several areas where the county lags in what it can deliver to families involved in domestic violence. "There is fragmentation and missing pieces," said Toni Mickiewicz, therapist and supervisor of the county visitation center, where families in crisis meet with therapists.

Cathy Berry, an extended-enrichment teacher at Northwest Middle School, has been chosen to receive a Persons in Leadership plaque from the Family Violence Council.She has coordinated activities at the school to promote awareness of domestic violence.Berry will receive the plaque, which recognizes efforts to reduce family violence in Maryland, at ceremonies in Baltimore on July 20.FiresNew Windsor: Firefighters responded at 6: 54 a.m. Friday to a trash fire in the 1200 block of New Windsor Road.

Every five years, the number of American women who die due to family violence equals the 48,000 U.S. men who were killed in battle during the nine-year long Vietnam War, says Dr. Antonia C. Novello, the U.S. surgeon general.The degree of violence against women is so broad now that "it's unbelievable," the nation's top doctor said yesterday in an interview. "Women have to learn to talk about it and to bring it up to their doctors," she said.And, Novello is confident that doctors across the land will be willing to listen because she and the American Medical Association have just launched a nationwide campaign to heighten awareness of the problem.

The Montgomery County man charged with drowning his three children in a Baltimore hotel bathtub during a bitter custody battle with his estranged wife was ordered held without bail yesterday as experts on domestic violence cases struggled to determine whether the killings could have been prevented. Dr. Amy Castillo had fought repeatedly in Montgomery County courtrooms to keep Mark Castillo from his children, citing alleged threats, but judges ruled against petitions for a protective order and to curtail the visitation rights the couple had originally agreed upon.

State lawmakers who don't think witness intimidation is a problem in cases of family violence haven't been paying attention. Baltimore prosecutors can offer more than a dozen examples without much trouble: A 61-year-old grandmother receives threatening phone calls from the man accused of molesting her 14-year-old granddaughter, the child's father; a woman is assaulted and cut by a former boyfriend who has been charged with burglarizing her home; a...

The Carroll County Response to Family Violence Conference tomorrow will involve those who most often respond to victims, those who have the resources to help them and those who have survived and overcome the trauma of abuse. The county's Local Management Board, a group of public and private organizations that work to improve the lives of children and families, has partnered with the Domestic Violence Coordinating Council to organize the day-long event at Carroll Community College, with a $37,000 Byrne Memorial grant from the state Office of Crime Control and Prevention.

Sitting in their tranquil cream kitchen, the picture window and deck behind them, mother and daughter spoke calmly about "the incident." "It was March 11, 2002," the mother started, her hands folded on the glass-and-iron table. "She came back with a bad report card." "I had one D," said her 15-year-old daughter, wearing jeans and a pink shirt with glitter writing. "No, two Ds and one C," the mother responded softly. Just more than a year ago, the 39-year-old sat at this same table, in this same pretty, 2,430- square-foot home tucked near Patapsco Valley State Park, and started telling the same story.

As a child in rural Vermont, Wynona Ward knew that the neighbors could hear her mother's screams as her drunken father punched her in the stomach. No help came, Ward told an assembly of teen-agers at Baltimore's Bryn Mawr School this week. "They turned their heads, just as, frankly, we turned our heads on the domestic abuse in our neighbors' homes. A man's home is his castle, after all - except in our case, the castle was a prison for my mother and her children." Later, Ward would help convict her own brother, who was abusing a family member, and then would fight to keep him behind bars when the Vermont parole board wanted to release him after two years.

Coordinating family services - from providing shelter space to long-term assistance programs - would help Carroll County combat domestic violence, a group of family advocates said yesterday. Meeting in Westminster to identify gaps in family services, law enforcement officers, court officials, educators, social workers and therapists identified case management as one of several areas where the county lags in what it can deliver to families involved in domestic violence. "There is fragmentation and missing pieces," said Toni Mickiewicz, therapist and supervisor of the county visitation center, where families in crisis meet with therapists.

Once again, the myth of the evil, brutal male perpetrator and the perfect, innocent female victim is being broadcast and written. The discussion is national. The rage and sorrow, palpable. Only when we come to terms with the fact that domestic violence is the responsibility of both men and women, however, can we put a stop to this horrible nightmare.Domestic violence is not an either-or phenomenon. It is not either the man's fault or the woman's. Both the male and the female are bound in their dance of mutual destructiveness, their incapacity for intimacy and appreciation of differences.

The brother of a Hampstead woman found strangled in her home last week after seeking court protection from her estranged husband urged more than 100 law enforcement agents and victims advocates from throughout Maryland yesterday to step up the fight against domestic violence.Kicking off a one-day training seminar on sexual assault and domestic violence, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend asked for a silent tribute in memory of Patricia A. Titus before John Biglin told the gathering that his sister's death has led him to stand up for the rights of women.

Playwright Paula Vogel embraces tough subject matter. The former Marylander tackled AIDS in "The Baltimore Waltz" and pedophilia in her Pulitzer Prize-winning "How I Learned to Drive." In "Hot 'n' Throbbing" she takes on pornography and domestic violence. On Thursday, this provocative family drama opens the season at Washington's Arena Stage, where Vogel is writer in residence. Described by Vogel as "maybe one of the most painful and difficult plays I'll ever write, and ... also dangerously funny," the script has been substantially revised for this production.

Cathy Berry, an extended-enrichment teacher at Northwest Middle School, has been chosen to receive a Persons in Leadership plaque from the Family Violence Council.She has coordinated activities at the school to promote awareness of domestic violence.Berry will receive the plaque, which recognizes efforts to reduce family violence in Maryland, at ceremonies in Baltimore on July 20.FiresNew Windsor: Firefighters responded at 6: 54 a.m. Friday to a trash fire in the 1200 block of New Windsor Road.