INNOVATIVE PARTNERSHIP
Grant-funded research aims to reduce domestic violence
East Carolina University faculty members and local responders want to ultimately reduce the number of deaths from domestic violence through a new $598,000 grant-funded research project.
Dr. Heidi Bonner, principal investigator and assistant professor in ECU’s Department of Criminal Justice, is collaborating with researchers at Yale University’s School of Medicine and Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice on the multi-year, national project focused on preventing intimate partner violence or IPV.
“More so than other types of crime, this form of violence poses unique challenges for public agencies to address because the victim and offender are linked through their shared intimacy, material resources, and legal, social or familial relationships,” according to Yale’s statement of purpose for the grant.
Grant data shows that homicides and incidents of domestic violence have decreased in the past 20 years across the country. In 1994, 2,408 people were killed by domestic violence; that number dropped to 1,410 people in 2012.
Yet 911 calls reporting domestic violence remain high. Nearly 1 in 5 of all murder victims (16.3 percent), and 2 out of 5 female murder victims, are killed by an intimate partner in the U.S., officials say. While IPV is seen in women and men across socio-economic status, people at greatest risk are young women, particularly those with limited resources, according to grant documents.
Experts have argued for interventions that address a range of issues that contribute to IPV, targeting not only factors aligned with perpetrators but also their victims, the grant proposal said.
Locally, Bonner is working with agency partners including Melissia Larson in the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office and ECU colleagues Heather Littleton, associate professor of psychology, and doctoral students Melissa Decker and Ana LePage. Letoya Lawson, administrative assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice, is providing administrative support.
While the overall project has received multiple grants, the current scope of work is funded by the Office of Violence Against Women, a component of the U.S. Department of Justice, through a subcontract from the Pitt County Sheriff’s Department.
“One of the reasons Pitt County was selected was because of the strong existing partnerships between the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office, the Greenville Police Department and the Center for Family Violence Prevention when it comes to addressing domestic violence, and the willingness of criminal justice agencies in this area to be innovative in responding to particular crime problems,” Bonner said.
Officials completed the first step in the project last year to determine community and agency readiness to implement a domestic violence homicide reduction model.
A Lethality Assessment Program or LAP was implemented to train local law enforcement officers on the use of a standardized screening tool.
“The lethality assessment is something that officers can utilize when called to a domestic violence incident to determine if the victim is in a potentially fatal abusive relationship,” Bonner said. “There are a number of indicators in a domestic violence situation that indicate if the victim is at a higher risk of being killed. The LAP screens for lethality, not re-assault, and it is very reliable.”
Victims who are determined to be high risk are immediately put in touch with services to get help, she said.
“It not only helps victims see what kind of danger they may be in if the domestic violence continues, it also shows the victim the partnership between law enforcement and the advocate who receives the call at the time of the screen,” Bonner said.
Researchers will be collecting data through spring 2018 to provide a long-range analysis. Decker will coordinate a group of ECU graduate students who will be interviewing victims of domestic violence with oversight by Littleton. Investigators also will collect administrative data on domestic violence cases from the criminal justice system and the Center for Family Violence Prevention.
ECU students learned about resources on campus during a presentation on domestic violence at a Sept. 1 event in Hendrix Theater.