Family Violence

Maryland's domestic violence victims sometimes face a sluggish, fragmented response from police, courts and social service providers, according to a report being released Monday by the state Attorney General's and Lt. Governor's Family Violence Council.The 114-page study -- a year in the making -- urges law enforcement agencies to be more aggressive in prosecuting domestic abuse cases, and recommends a swifter and more active response to domestic violence victims from police and other officials.

When it comes to assisting victims of spousal abuse, Latisha "Tish" Mayne, the county's new case coordinator for family violence, has experience well beyond her 23 years.Mayne understands why battered women try to convince themselves that an abusive partner will change. She understands why a victim believes a spouse acts the way he does because of something she has said or done.Mayne has been there. She was 16 and pregnant when the first punch landed."To escape, you've got to call police and hold the abuser accountable," she said.

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.

LAW ENFORCEMENT and social service agencies have become better attuned to the needs of domestic violence victims over the years. Police now take assaults in the home more seriously than a decade ago, and battered women have a wider variety of places to turn for help. But other steps can be taken. In Howard County, two separate efforts should bring victims added compassion while holding offenders more accountable.The state's attorney's office plans to begin a program in December to aid domestic violence victims.

ClarificationBecause information was not available at the time, an article tTC in last Wednesday's Howard County edition of The Sun, about Howard County receiving a $3,688 grant from the state to fight domestic violence, did not say that the money fully funded the only such grant that the county had requested.Pub Date: 6/18/97When the state of Maryland handed out $1.2 million in grants from the federal Violence Against Women Act, Howard County nearly came up empty-handed.The grants were announced yesterday in Dundalk by Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend who was kicking off a one-day training seminar on sexual assault and domestic violence.

A FEW MONTHS ago, I spent an instructive if depressing morning watching the prosecution of domestic violence cases in a local courtroom.I came away somewhat comforted by the fact that prosecutors and police seem to be taking these cases much more seriously than they did in the past.But the number and nature of these cases raise uncomfortable questions about society's tolerance for abusive responses to the stresses and strains of human relationships.From the barbed, verbal put-downs you can hear on almost any television sitcom and in many family conversations, to the free-floating anger that explodes in "road rage," it is obvious that stress is taking a heavy toll on plenty of relationships.

The problems that arise from domestic violence cover a wide range of issues -- and fall under many different state laws. One of the dilemmas that has long vexed people working to curtail the frequency and the effects of violence within the home is the question of legislative strategy.Is it better to go for small steps each session, the piecemeal improvements that can address small areas of the problem, or hope to build political momentum for a larger-scale reform that would touch all the bases?

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...

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.

The greatest mass addiction in America today is not alcohol orcocaine, it is television.The tube is America's electronic Trojan horse. It seemed so benign at first, but in less than 50 years, it has captured virtually all our leisure time, and hypnotized families, communities and the nation every day.TV is the master teacher of our children and the biggest classroom without walls. It is the electronic pulpit of values and the cultural religion of our time. Americans learn more from television than anything else, but what are we teaching and what are we learning?