Posts by author: NFJCA

Domestic Violence and The Checklist Manifesto

I just finished reading “The Checklist Manifesto” by Dr. Atul Gawande.  Charles Wilson, the Director of the Chadwick Center at Rady Children’s Hospital recommended it to me at lunch a few weeks ago and said it was a must read.  I was skeptical.  But he was right.  It is a must read for everyone including those of us who work with victims of family violence.  No, the book is not about family violence. It is about…checklists.  Sounds pretty life changing, doesn’t it? Stick with me. Dr. Gawande is the bestselling author of two books, Better and Complications.  His new book is just as good as the first two.  He is a surgeon who views the world through his experience in the medical profession.  But he makes a powerful argument for the lowly checklist and uses examples of lifesaving success from surgery, flying airplanes, and building skyscrapers.  He goes on to give examples of how checklists can help us deal with severe complexity in addressing public health issues, investing money, running award winning restaurants, and addressing natural disasters.  At every turn in this book, there is a story that proves his point:  The complexity in our lives and in our work necessitates the use of checklists, often broken down into short simple steps, to ensure we do our work with excellence, consistency, and success.  He does not minimize the importance of human interaction or critical thinking in addressing a myriad of unique and unpredictable circumstances in any given issue.  But he demonstrates with outcomes and evidence from real life situations that checklists hold the key to powerful, effective, often lifesaving excellence in virtually any business environment.

One of many stories involves a Safe Surgery Checklist that he assisted in creating in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) in eight hospitals around the world.  They studied the results before the checklist was implemented and the results after the checklist was implemented.  Prior to implementing the two minute, nineteen point checklist, the WHO evaluated 4,000 surgical procedures in the eight hospitals.  They found four hundred patients developed major complications.  Fifty-six of them died including about half from infections.   But after the checklist was implemented, with simple items like, verbal confirmation of the patient’s identity and the procedure to be performed, making sure surgical gloves were not contaminated, checking to ensure the antibiotics were in the patient’s system during surgery, and a complete accounting of surgical sponges after surgery, out of 4,000 procedures only 277 developed complications (vs. 435 before the checklist), and only 27 died.  Major complications after surgery fell by 36% and deaths fell by 47%.  The number of patients needing to return to surgery because of complications fell by 25% — amazing results on a worldwide level in eight completely different kinds of hospitals with radically different levels of professionalism…all because of… a checklist. Read more »

“We Used to Call it Choking”
by Gael Strack

In March 1995, I received a phone call from Sgt. Anne O’Dell that changed my life and triggered profound changes in San Diego and around the world.  Fifteen years ago, I was the head of the San Diego City Attorney’s Domestic Violence Unit. It was the nationally-recognized Unit that Casey Gwinn had started 10 years prior.  Anne was the head of the San Diego Police Department’s Domestic Violence Unit.   She told me that Casondra Stewart had been repeatedly stabbed to death in front of her friends by her 21-year old boyfriend Alfonzo Terrell Merritt. Casondra was 17 years old at the time.  She was a young mother of a beautiful little boy, Javonte. There was a history of domestic violence. The last call came two weeks prior her death, when she called San Diego Police Department to report a domestic violence incident. Her boyfriend had just choked her. By the time the police arrived, Casondra was already recanting. She minimized the incident. She refused to give a detailed statement. No photos were taken of the red marks to her neck.  The case was assigned to a specially trained DV detective and he followed up with Casondra. She didn’t budge from her recantation. Since there was no independent corroboration and no victim cooperation, the case was closed and never submitted for prosecution.

Anne called a short time later to tell me that we had a second domestic violence homicide. The next day’s newspaper reported: “A Tierrasanta man, who is accused of strangling his 16-year old girlfriend and setting her a body ablaze in an Oak Park field, was charged with two counts of murder yesterday after prosecutors disclosed that the victim was 5 ½ months pregnant. Mario Andre Rushing, 18, pleaded not guilty to the murder charges and an arson charge. The body of Tamara Smith was found by firefighters Friday night in a field off Federal Blvd and an autopsy determined she had been strangled.” Mario was the father of the child Tamara was expecting and the father of Tamara’s 11-month old daughter, Asha. Read more »

“El Silencio es el Principal Enemigo de la Justicia” (Silence is the Enemy of Justice)
By Casey Gwinn

This week I was reminded of a profound truth: Silence is the enemy of justice.  Our team (Gael Strack, Brenda Lugo, and I) spent three days in Monterrey, Mexico as part of an historic kick-off conference sponsored by the Mexican federal government, USAID, Management Systems International, and the National Family Justice Center Alliance.  As we met the amazing women of Mexico’s movement to stop violence against women and girls, and the men that support them, we were sobered by the stories of rape, kidnap, abuse, and murder.  We heard of the hundreds of women killed in Ciudad Juarez in the last fifteen years.  We viewed a powerful video by the Avon Foundation about the impact of domestic violence on children.  We heard that 8 of 10 women who report violence, sexual assault, and other forms of abuse later recant their story in the face of a criminal and civil justice system that does not provide adequate support.  We heard that between 1999 and 2005, more than 6,000 women and girls were murdered in Mexico.  We heard of the recent police raids of refuges for battered women and children in Monterrey, Cancun and Ciudad Juarez in 2010.  We heard of the pain, fear, and intimidation that regularly faces victims, women’s advocates, and political leaders who attempt to speak the truth.  We heard of the shelter director who resigned after being kidnapped and threatened.  We heard of public officials assassinated for speaking out.  We heard of advocates being sued by abuser’s for representing battered women.

The power of the darkness was obvious.  Justice is so often denied to the battered and abused women of Mexico.  Justice is so often sacrificed on the altar of male privilege and entitlement and too often condoned by the Catholic Church and the social structures that shape the foundations of Mexican society.  But the silence of women, the silence of the abused, the silence of the oppressed is ending in Mexico.  Dr. Martin Luther King said in 1963, “we must repent not only for the words and deeds of the ‘bad people’ but for the appalling silence of the ‘good people’.”  The good people are repenting and are raising their voices in Mexico – led by courageous women. Read more »

Last week, Yeardley Love was murdered by her former boyfriend, George Huguely at the University of Virginia.  The media has given it much coverage.  Though three other women died the same day Yeardley died and though four women have died every day since her death, this case has captured more attention.  She was from an upper middle class family.  Her killer was from a wealthy Florida family.  They were both good looking, white, successful college lacrosse players with scholarships.  This kind of thing is not supposed to happen with people like this, right?  They were young…with their whole lives ahead of them.  Now, George Huguely will spend the rest of his life in prison.  Yeardley Love is dead.  Who is responsible?  Who should answer for her murder?  Fingers are pointing at the university, at his family, at their friends, and at law enforcement professionals who dealt with him in the past.  People are calling for an investigation and a review of everything that happened.  The University is pledging to do more about the issue of relationship violence on their campus.

But perhaps we are missing out on the big picture.  Perhaps we are missing out on the much less obvious cause of Yeardley Love’s murder.  And perhaps we can actually learn from it and do something about it if we will get honest about those who should be accountable…So, who is responsible for the murder of Yeardley Love?  Who should answer for her death? Read more »

The newest book of the Family Justice Center movement, entitled “Dream Big: A Simple, Complicated Idea to Stop Family Violence” (Wheatmark 2010), was released last week at the 10^th Annual International Family Justice Center Conference in San Antonio. I dedicated the book to my Dad.  He is part of the story of the Family Justice Center movement in America and around the world.  Here is the book dedication.  I hope it challenges you to be part of the story too. 

“Mabel married Gardner soon after his first wife died during childbirth.  She had never been married, but she was taken with this young widower with two small children.  He was a businessman with dreams and aspirations—and a broken heart after the death of his first wife.  He courted Mabel; they fell in love and soon married.  Mabel wanted to care for Gardner and his sons, but she also wanted her own children.  Within two years, she was pregnant.  Over the course of the next 12 years, she gave birth to six children of her own.  Read more »