On Tuesday, the Orange County Board of County Commissioners received the final report of the Domestic Violence Commission which was re-convened earlier this year, owing to the uptick in domestic violence.
Co-chairs Circuit Judge Alice Blackwell and Dick Batchelor outlined the 24 recommendations contained in the report which arose from the six workgroups formed to focus on how cases are handled from the time a 911 call is received to the post sentencing phase.
Classified as high level priorities to lower level and short-term to long-term, recommendations covered a range of topics including, information sharing among law enforcement, providing advocates for victims, review of stalking and dating violence policies, and various training programs implemented for the judiciary and law enforcement. Long term recommendations included, funding of a batterers’ intervention program designed specifically for children who are accused of domestic violence, funding specific treatment programs for children who have witnessed violence in the home and funding of a long-term study on the impact of children in violence.
A major theme throughout the report was the need for funding to implement the various proposals.
It is unclear whether Mayor Teresa Jacobs and the rest of the County Commissioners will dedicate resources to implement any of the recommendations.
Could anyone find a connection between domestic violence and the Orlando City Soccer Stadium?
See the full report here.
There are many things that can and should be done. Another failure of the system are judges who do not get the dynamics of domestic violence. Batterers often use children in order to maintain the coercive control over the victim(s). When judges ignore victims simply because it is a he said, she sad situation, what does one do when it turns out she was right? Case in point, man arrested for violating an injunction. First offense because law enforcement refused to fie charges. Fast forward over the next 8 years and the victim reports various crimes, all stemming from a need for control by the batterer. No charges filed for any of these crimes ranging from stalking to harassment to truancy to assaukts to custodial interference to kidnapping to identity theft to filing false dcf reports to neglect and more. Who would have been surprised to discover this perpetrator being arrested in March and again in July for DV? The original victims was not surprised and neither were some of the professionals involved. Now imagine the surprise when the first charge was dismissed. Again, the original victim was not at all surprised. Will the most recent charge result in any kind of punishment? What does the original victim think? Well, I think he will walk again because sheriff Gary borders and his band of merry men do not care. And sadly the original victim had to run and go into hiding basically because she fears what this batterer is capable of doing to not only herself but to their child as well. And even though she now lives in Orlando and attitudes are slightly better about DV, there still needs to be lots of work done. And i know all of this because I am that original victim. And i simply want freedom for my child and i.
http://www.clickorlando.com/news/deputies-teacher-arrested-for-having-sex-with-student/-/1637132/21510510/-/jcytqh/-/index.html
And if you read te comments on this article show society’s attitudes towards victims of DV, sexual assault, rape and sexual abuse of children. Over half of the comments on the above article blame the 16 year old victim, rather than the 31 year old attacker.
[…] the lack of actual accomplishments, Jacobs did continue to show voters she is good at appointing commissions to look into issues and then never following up on them in public. “Typical Teresa” even became a target for her flip-flopping ways in an […]