Mark Wynn, former lieutenant and survivor of domestic violence, recounts his transformative journey from enduring the grip of abuse to becoming a beacon for others. Our conversation offers an unfiltered glimpse into the lasting effects of childhood trauma, the critical role of law enforcement training in handling domestic violence, and the pivotal support systems that uplift survivors. Mark's narrative is a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
Navigating the tangled web of child abuse, policing, and Child Protective Services, this episode uncovers the strategies offenders use to sow fear and the challenges children face in trusting the police, especially within diverse communities. We discuss the delicate art of interviewing young victims and the importance of comprehensive police reports, shedding light on coordination between law enforcement and CPS. The discussion extends to the fraught landscape of family courts, where the details officers capture can tip the scales in custody and protective order cases, and the introduction of risk assessment tools that aim to safeguard those most vulnerable during times of upheaval.
As we conclude, our focus shifts to the systemic barriers victims encounter, from economic hurdles in civil courts to a shortage of expert witnesses. Mark emphasizes how the personal experiences of law enforcement officers with domestic violence can profoundly shape their response to incidents. We advocate for community support in providing transitional housing and resources for Spanish-speaking victims, uniting in the belief that healing and hope for survivors begin with us all. Join us in this profound exploration that not only seeks to understand the intricacies of domestic violence but also aims to strengthen the very fabric of support for those impacted.
Mark Wynn, former lieutenant and survivor of domestic violence, recounts his transformative journey from enduring the grip of abuse to becoming a beacon for others. Our conversation offers an unfiltered glimpse into the lasting effects of childhood trauma, the critical role of law enforcement training in handling domestic violence, and the pivotal support systems that uplift survivors. Mark's narrative is a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
Navigating the tangled web of child abuse, policing, and Child Protective Services, this episode uncovers the strategies offenders use to sow fear and the challenges children face in trusting the police, especially within diverse communities. We discuss the delicate art of interviewing young victims and the importance of comprehensive police reports, shedding light on coordination between law enforcement and CPS. The discussion extends to the fraught landscape of family courts, where the details officers capture can tip the scales in custody and protective order cases, and the introduction of risk assessment tools that aim to safeguard those most vulnerable during times of upheaval.
As we conclude, our focus shifts to the systemic barriers victims encounter, from economic hurdles in civil courts to a shortage of expert witnesses. Mark emphasizes how the personal experiences of law enforcement officers with domestic violence can profoundly shape their response to incidents. We advocate for community support in providing transitional housing and resources for Spanish-speaking victims, uniting in the belief that healing and hope for survivors begin with us all. Join us in this profound exploration that not only seeks to understand the intricacies of domestic violence but also aims to strengthen the very fabric of support for those impacted.
The impact of domestic violence on children is well documented. Today we hear from survivor Mark Wynn about his personal childhood experience with abuse and the strategies for help, hope and healing that Genesis Women's Shelter in Support provides. I'm Maria McMullen and this is Genesis, the podcast. Mark Wynn, a former lieutenant within the Nashville Police Department, has witnessed firsthand the damage that domestic violence creates, as well as the bias, prejudices and missed opportunities within law enforcement who respond and work domestic violence cases. Having experienced domestic violence within his own home as a child, lieutenant Wynn is well versed in the horrors that women and children grapple with and the barriers they encounter when seeking safety and healing. Since leaving his abusive childhood home, lieutenant Wynn has become a national trainer to law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, legislators, health care professionals and victim advocates in all 50 states. For over 40 years he serves as an international lecturer at police academies all over the world and has devoted his life to ending domestic violence and training law enforcement to learn to do the same. Mark, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Maria. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1:So you've been very open about your experience with domestic violence as a child with an abusive father, and your story is even the feature in a documentary film. This Is when I Learn Not to Sleep. Can you share your story with our listeners, who may not know your background and how that experience of domestic violence impacted your child's self as well as the work you do now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you Maria. You know my story is. It's a story of a lot of survivors. The difference is that men survivors grown adult men who survivors survive childhood abuse. Don't talk much about it. So I found a lot of therapy, if you will, and telling people my own experience. And yeah, I took that experience with me, I didn't ignore it and I actually used it as an example all the years I was in policing and now that I'm, you know, I've trained police across the country.
Speaker 2:But five kids, seth father, 1959 to about 69. I was the youngest of five. He was a crop duster in Texas. My mother met him after she'd separated from my father and married him. He seemed okay At first. When we, as soon as we arrived in Texas, it started and it went from you know the yelling, screaming, pushing, shoving, slapping, broken bones, concussions, miscarriages, hospitalizations. We watched all of his kids growing up and then he worked on my brother and I, physically my three sisters. As they grew older they got out as fast as they could, but we moved around Texas a lot.
Speaker 2:We lived in Mesquite, oakley, dallas and Walter Hatchey, middle of the end of the Wells, point, oak, red Oak, and so we were kind of a transient family too, so there were no programs in those years and the shelters didn't come along to the seventies. So we were pretty much on our own and we got out. My brother and I actually, when I was seven he was 12, actually tried to kill him by poisoning him. This is a horrible thing that we did and everybody didn't work and he survived. Thank goodness it didn't kill him. We had all. We'd all gone to jail. So we got out and then my brother actually went to Vietnam to get out of our house. That's how bad it was. We ran in the middle of the night. We're closing our back in 68, 69. And we came back to Tennessee, which is our home, and I decided to get into policing as an adult and I brought all the experiences with me.
Speaker 1:That is a very encapsulated version of this story.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of stuff in between, but I mean it's you know, and people listening will know what the story is. When I share it with women and men, you know, like when I do trainings around the country, they come up and go oh my God, that's my story, that's my history. Or even worse, you know, I've had friends tell me I watched my father kill my mother or my sister, you know, or try to kill me, and it's you know. We're talking about the most extreme violence you can imagine. It's in the home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you've shared previously and in the film the experiences of violence, physical violence that your mother endured from this man, and the turning point was really the time when he knocked her out in the kitchen, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, he hit her and I mean really he's a pretty big guy, he was a police fighter on top. They love to fight the police. He hit her and knocked her out and I walked into the kitchen. She was on the kitchen floor and he didn't react to any of it. I mean just, you know this guy, he's just, was a brute and he just stepped over a body and opened a fridge Right. I got a can of beer, opened it and walked out to the front porch and I helped her up and she thanked God she wasn't dead. She grabbed a steak knife. She's going to go and stab him and I had it all figured out. You can't do that. You won't kill him. You'll go to jail and we'll be stuck. My sister and I, my younger sister, my big boy, stuck. We stuck here with him and she said you're right. You know you're right. She's covered in blood and she grabs a baseball bat. I was playing League League baseball in Lancaster just outside of. Dallas.
Speaker 2:Hit him in the back of the head with this bat, practice goal, rupture to do drum. Police came, took us down to a little substation and the thank God this old deserter was willing to listen to the story and he said put him in a holding cell, charge him in public drunk, drive his woman and his boy home. And when they did, we got back and we I mean it was literally this clothes on our back and we, we left. We left Texas to come back Tennessee and we survived it. She remarried, live violence free, passed away in 1999. My wife, valerie Winn, who was a therapist we met at the police department. She's a police crisis counselor started the Mary Perry Center which is my mother name and it's it's a transitional housing program here in Nashville. It's been in place for 20 years now work, you know they've worked around 10,000 victims so far. You know it transitioned us two years you stay there you get.
Speaker 2:You get a fresh start.
Speaker 1:Right and transitional housing is so important to women escaping domestic violence because it's one thing to go into emergency shelter, which is usually a very brief stay, but it's harder to find housing beyond the shelter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and plus it's a therapeutic transitional, so it's on site therapy for victims.
Speaker 1:And it's for women and children, right yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, and it's young boys. At a certain age, obviously, you need to be careful with teenage boys around. You know refuge for women, so but you know, over the years we've worked with incredible amount of women who are undocumented Immigrant women, helping with UBSs and medical and mental health and job training and job placement and it's, it's really. It's one of those things that I think if people could see that successes of these programs, they wouldn't be so discouraged and they would think, wow, that that's a new life. This is somebody who's going to flourish, not just survive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is a lot of help and hope out there. Before we go into those two deeply, let's talk a little bit about the data around children and domestic violence, because the impact of family violence on children perpetuates a generational cycle of violence. For boys who witness domestic violence, they are 40% more likely to commit violence themselves. 50% of girls who grow up in abusive homes will go on to be victims of abuse, and domestic violence is also the leading predictor of child abuse. Can you speak to that based on your experience? Obviously, you did not go on to commit any forms of abuse. You have been combating it really your whole career and the rest of your life. But let's talk about those statistics.
Speaker 2:Well, I've always believed that a home filled with violence is the wellspring for tomorrow's crime. And I believed that when I was living it as a child. You know I'm having these moments where I felt, you know, I was learning from the violence, except it didn't work with me or my brother, and it was just the opposite. And I think most don't go on to abuse. But of the, you know the people who do abuse there's a 80, 90%. They're exposed to it. So when you show a child violence or racism or homophobia, you know what happens. If you're not born that way, you have to be taught it.
Speaker 2:And for years I've trained police officers since 1982. And this is one of the topics that I spend a lot of time on because I'm hopeful that the police will see themselves as a role model for young children who are afraid of the police. We don't want children to be afraid of the police and I teach them. You know the techniques in that. But the thing I think we don't think much about often is that what is exposure? You know what does that look like, because you can say, wow, the kids, they saw it happen and you can write that in a report. But exposure is they hear and they witness the emotional abuse. They see the aftermath of the assaults, the crying, the trauma, the broken bones. They intervene when they get to a certain age, which then they become targets of physical abuse. I worked in homicide for several years and you know I worked quite a few. Entire families were killed by the offender.
Speaker 2:And the reasoning for a lot of these offenders is first of all, a child intervenes, they get assaulted sometimes, sometimes they were killed actually, and but offenders will attack children as well because they'll often say this is my property, like she's my property. If I can't have this property, nobody else can. So we see children killed. There's a friend of mine wrote a book why Do they Kill? And David Adams. He interviewed about 30 offenders in prison for murder in Massachusetts and he said the offenders who killed the children said it was righteous slaughter. I've never heard that term before, but righteous slaughter means they were righteous in killing their entire family because somebody was taking that away from them. So you see the dilemma here. The children are part of the property view of the offenders. Well, they're blamed for the power dynamic that goes on, the power and control. It's your fault. We never fought until you came along and they witnessed actually the physical assaults and forced to enforce the watch many, many times. Of course they, like I said, they directly suffer physical violence.
Speaker 2:So that's, this is a, this is a lot. I mean this is how do we stop that exposure and for us in law enforcement it's holding the offender accountable and making sure that we understand why victims don't report because of children. In other words, I'll report him to police. He says they'll take my kids away. I don't report to police. The police find out they take my kids away for being a neglectful parent. So they're caught in the middle. And in 2015, dr Logan at the University of Kentucky did a study on the hotline in Austin the national DV hotline and this came up around 22% of the women said that this was the reason why they don't want to get the police involved. They worried about losing their children. We have to understand that dynamic in policing before we knock on the door. Of course, there's other things that we that we can go into, if you like, kind of the impacts of exposure. That's the other part of it.
Speaker 1:I want to ask you a question about law enforcement and children real quick, because we've talked about this before. But I'm curious, when an officer walks a response to a domestic violence call and there are children in the home where this incident occurred, that she made a phone call about what happens to the children when the officers walk in the house.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's a lot here. They've been children, have been surveyed about this, about child survivors. Have been asked what do you want the police to do? And very often these children will say I don't know why you're here. This is a big, this is scary. This is all about safety. Security because they're told very often by the offender I certainly was a child the police are coming to take you away. Oh wow, you're the problem. They're going to arrest all of us. So there's this propaganda that goes on in these homes.
Speaker 2:That's a good way to control somebody. It's scaring them when they won't walk up and tell somebody something. If you're afraid, you know, oh, that cop's going to arrest me. I've had children run away from me as a responding officer and then I've had the other officers. I've had children run up and hold onto me, chase me to the patrol car. So it depends on the circumstances of what the offender's doing to the children.
Speaker 2:The other thing too is when you have diverse populations who may have had a negative interaction with police African-American, native American, hispanic, older women, same sex relationships where either they perceive their response past response or they have been dealt with in a harmful way. Those children will know that history as well. You know, I focused on African-American women in Virginia several years ago and asked them why you weren't calling the police, and so many of them said look, I live in a Pernombe Black neighborhood. You're all white police department, you're expecting me to call you. You blocked up my son, my husband, my uncle, my grandfather, and on and on and on. So there's that history that we have to understand as responding officers, because we've got children. They may be learning to be the next abuser or the next victim so physically when we get inside the house. Obviously it's always recommended you have two officers.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's not possible, but you have to deal with the children, because the children who are surveyed said, don't interview me in front of my parents, makes perfect sense, and you don't have to interview a crime victim in front of the parents If the child is a suspect. Usually law is required of an adult to be present during the interview, but not victims, and you don't have to do a forensic interview with the child. There are people who do that, cacs. God bless them. They're the heaven on earth, I think CACs are, and they have forensic interviewers. That's not. I'm not talking about forensic. I'm talking about just seeing a child and starting off that rapport building by saying are you afraid to talk to me? You're afraid to talk to me here. You know it's not your fault. This is another thing. Children are told it's your fault and then the closer you get the children, the more you build it into your. You know your sort of muscle memory.
Speaker 2:If I go to a domestic mama cop I'm a deputy I'm gonna talk to these kids before I leave. I'm gonna tell them don't get trapped in a small room, don't get between the mom and dad, get out to a phone call 911, it's not your fault, it's not your fault. It's not your fault.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna tell them that over and over again and then if I'm lucky enough, I may see that child anxiety level and this is a lot of anxiety. You'll see heart provigilance. You'll see eating disorders and substance abuse and identifying with the aggressor and suicide attempts, runaway reports. You'll see children who are so afraid that they'll mimic the story of the offender. When you know the story is a false, them backing up the offender. That tells you there's an incredible amount of coercion going on. You got to write this in a report because, heaven forbid, if you're a mandatory reporter and you think there's some child neglect here, cps child protective services coming in behind you a day or two later. They need a really thorough report.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because they're not there at that moment when the 911 call came in. When they're screaming, yelling and there's all this stress and strain, they come in usually two or three days later when the offenders had massaged the crime scene and said don't do this when the CPS workers here. So that means that we've got to do a better job. I think that eventually and I'm hoping this will happen eventually CPS will be able to view body-worn camera footage of officers before they make a decision on taking children away from parents. You don't want them to take away from the non-offending parents.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's kind of like what my next question was is like what does CPS know before they get involved and do they ever get to, I guess, talk to the officers or before they talk to the children, what happens there?
Speaker 2:Well, if you've got a really well functioning coordinated response in a community bigger, small when children are present, there's a good relationship. If there's a good relationship with child protective service and this is also true with adult protective services If you've got a good CPS partner you work with. Sometimes it's a phone call but we know patrol officer detected to that CPS work and say, hey, let me tell you what we got here. She's got five kids, he's done this, he's done that, he's making excuses. They're backing up its story. We don't think it's true. They're in danger. It's not her fault, she's a longtime victim.
Speaker 2:That really goes a long way because Child protective service has incredibly hard job and at the end of the day they are not worth taking chances. They can't. So they they often will take children and it's sometimes it's from the non-offending parent Because they just don't have the information they need. So that that direct connection with CPS and any police department is it's really important but it's not always there. It is if that answers a question. So We've got to understand that Victims are concerned not just about being reassorted, they're worried about their children being taken away. They're worried about that. They're not gonna report. So there's an unintended impacts of police response when police then bring CPS to the scene if CPS is not prepared to deal with the, the contact, the context of the case. Now we're asking how long have these have been abusing you? And ask that question without being Judgmental and saying, well, hell, you should have got out of here. Well, what to do?
Speaker 1:yeah, and this is true across the country. This is true people of all walks of life and it. You started off the conversation talking about why victims don't want to call law enforcement and and this is the, the spiral, like that downward spiral of the situation, of calling law enforcement. And now my kids are being taken away and I'm not gonna have a place to live and it just gets worse and worse. So it's weighing the odds of, you know, staying versus the options of leaving. Do you come a?
Speaker 2:wedge to. I mean, this is a thing you know offenders have an intent. There's an intention to this crime. This is not spontaneous. It's not, you know, incident based, though those are easy cases that that's when somebody slaps or punches somebody and they're related or their In a relationship. They've never done it before, but some I just got mad and they lost their temper and boom, you got a crime. Not abuse, a crime, yes. But when you get into the, the sophisticated abuser, children are an easy target for manipulation and you'll see it trickle into the family courts. This is a real problem when you get in the family court, or family court judges don't have the background of a criminal judge who works Domestic or sexual violence cases and this will come up and they'll ignore it. Oh, they'll. They'll get a CASA member which did they could do great work or mediator to work on the divorce Case and they don't really understand Domestic or sexual violence.
Speaker 1:So that was my next set of questions as family courts. But before I do that is CPS. Do you do training for, for CPS workers?
Speaker 2:all the time.
Speaker 1:Because I would think that it would. They would benefit from knowing the all this context and history.
Speaker 2:I've got. I've got a niece that's a CPS worker in.
Speaker 2:Tennessee and they've come at the overloaded. You know they're one of those parts of government that are really Loaded up. They for some reason state governments around the country. When they cut their budgets, that's one of the first places they go for child protective service. So that means that case load is extremely heavy and they and they're doing dangerous work. A lot of them are responding by themselves and these homes in the middle of the night, you know, and if there and there's a whole safety issue for them we have to deal with, and that they're your local police and I'm aware that they've got people out late at night doing home visits. Now the rescuing, you know, cps workers.
Speaker 2:So that whole process needs to be coordinated. You know, if you feel like they're in danger, you go into the house. After we've been there, we'll have an officer go with you. That should be, that should happen. But all that has to be, you know, worked out in the relationships. So, but it is, I don't after all these years, I just don't civil criminal. It doesn't matter to me, because very often You'll see the homicide during the divorce process. We've never been an example of. We've never been there before, we never met our police report, but the abuse was going on and she said I'm getting out of here, I'm getting divorced. During the separation, which is most dangerous time, we'll see homicides, and that's the reason my victims don't file for divorce.
Speaker 1:Right right, right right Um.
Speaker 2:I'm not mixing up apples and oranges too much here, but no, it's okay.
Speaker 1:No, you're good. Let's talk about family court now. We've talked a lot about family court on this podcast and on our sister show, the podcast on crimes against women, because this is a very complex place where children are not Listen to and they're not asked their opinions or their preferences or their experiences within this abusive dynamic. How do you work with family courts, both as a law enforcement officer and then also as a trainer?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, you know, when I train police I tell them have you thought about the shelf life of your initial police report? In other words, who puts their hands on it, who sees it, who uses it? And most often you know cops. I don't know, my sergeant signs it, maybe the prosecutor will see it, but when you tell them that defense lawyers get their reports, family law attorneys get their reports, the judge reads the report, the jury reads their report, the prosecutor, the detective, the investigator in the DA's office, your chief, you're in your, the victim gets a copy of it. So there's a lot of eyes on this report for different reasons. So if you're, if you are a victim who's got a protective order and you made out of report that validate, that police report validates, yes, I am a victim, I got her, I made a report. I mean a lot of space actually required police report, which I think is kind of crazy. But now you got a report.
Speaker 2:So if I'm reading that report in court, what better document to have in a divorce proceeding to have a police report that's got contextual picture drawn clearly, the history of photograph, maybe body camera footage, maybe a nine on one call, that's discoverable and it's used in family court and I've got friends who are family court judges and they often say I would love to make a decision on this, but I just don't have the evidence I need. And it's one. It's a cross complaints in the court process, where, in the police, when they get involved, if they do a good enough job, you're going to paint the picture of the behavior, the offender and the victim and you're going to talk about the context that could save a child's life. When I tell cops that, they say, oh, I get it now. And I tell them look, if you're talking to a victim and you're doing threat assessment and they threaten to kill your kids, they're going to kill you.
Speaker 2:You know what's what's a? Have you filed for the? Oh yeah, we're filing. We're filing for divorce. Well that the flags should be flying now.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because that's separation.
Speaker 1:Separation and the separation abuse that that will most likely ensue.
Speaker 2:And it goes into court. I know the entire did not bar from Dallas. There was a courthouse shooting several years ago. Got lost custody of his 10 year old and she was in family court. He came to the courthouse. He knew exactly when he was, he was going to be at the hearing as well. He ambushed him, ambushed her in the park like, killed her, shot his other son, shot three police officers. They lived and they're running gunfight outside title. They killed him. This was a custody case.
Speaker 2:Now you got problems at custody exchange. A lot of cities have safe havens programs where you, the parents, it's regulated, where the parent drops them off, they leave and the parent comes in so they don't see one another. But if you don't have a safe havens program, it all happens in the parking lot of McDonald's and this is where we're seeing assaults and murders. So the child exchange becomes dangerous. So again, when we hear I tell cops all the time, when you hear the word divorce, don't stop listening that may be the first thing she says to you or him. Well, this must be fair about. That. Can happen to males as well, but most often females. But if she says we're in a divorce, then that's when you should start asking a few more questions about history, Because you know 75% of victims are killed at separation.
Speaker 2:Yes, so the most dangerous time for and same thing for officers, all the officers killed, and around 40%, I think, is what we in line of duty deaths, you know, each year around 40 is what we see. 75% of those officers killed are killed at the same time when they're getting between the victim and the offender. So it's extremely dangerous and certainly it's certainly dangerous for the children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, the research tells us the most dangerous time is when she leaves, and sometimes what that's when the abuse really escalates is when she has left.
Speaker 2:Or you'll see some pretty extreme child abuse, because I want to control you. Yeah, all I've got to do is threaten your children, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:When you look at modern risk assessment. I know the Canadian version, canada. It was created in Ontario. It's called the Ontario Domestic Abuse Risk Assessment and officers in Maine use it.
Speaker 2:Wisconsin, minnesota, california. There is a question. There is the children you have. Are they the? He's either father of the children you have or they're children from other other men.
Speaker 2:And the Canadians saw in their research on homicide that the higher likelihood of child murder when the, when the offender is the stepdad and not the, not the blood relative. You can't bank on that, but it's just, it's a, it's a enhanced factor in risk. So the children are, and for good reason. He said this is not my child, it's child's in the way and you'll see, you'll see a death and you know it'll be a shaken baby case or just out now, just a child just beaten to death. We've seen that as well.
Speaker 2:And this and forgive me, this is really horrible I have to talk about just. I hate to put these images in people's heads, but we, you know we got to show the. You know the reality of all of this. So each individual officer and deputy comes up with their own strategy on at what point. When I'm doing initial response, you want to make time just to do a safety check with the children, just to see their little bodies make sure they're okay, right, and then start asking them questions and then leave them with a positive image of me. Call 911, get out of the house, find a friend, I'm your, I'm your friend, I'll help you. And cops will die for kids a thousand times over. So most amazing thing to watch law enforcement officers and children.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you giving us that strategy for the law enforcement professionals who might be listening. I just want to go back to one other thing about family court for a minute, and that is that children's voices are not heard within the family court and they do not take into consideration their desire to see or not see, or have visitation or not with the abusive parent, and so this perpetuates a cycle of abuse when family court is not getting the full picture from everyone who's involved.
Speaker 2:No, you know this is a common problem. A great resource for anyone who's on this side of the issue on the civil side issue is the National Center for Family and Juvenile Court Judges. It's in the University of Nevada, it's in Reno and they are the actual think tank around children and custody and visitation. One of their publications they put out several years ago is called the Green Book. You can go to the National Center for Family and Juvenile Court Judges website. You can download it. It's the model for courts when dealing with Demi DeVie and children. New York is a good example. New York sort of changed the strategy in their courts. Now many of the courts in New York. The victim can get a protective order, a criminal charge, a divorce ring from them with the same judge and that's a real benefit because they can see the whole story.
Speaker 1:That is a real benefit. Yeah, they can see the whole story. They can see the whole case.
Speaker 2:Yes, the offenders depend on wearing the victims down and this is the way they do it, because with civil there's a higher price to pay. No pun intended, because you got to have money and poor people don't have money. Go ahead.
Speaker 1:I'm so sorry for interrupting you, but you're so right. You're so right because I think we talked about this in a previous conversation is how, when you start hitting people in their pocketbook, that's when they start paying attention. If you're going to cost them money, then that's when they're like whoa, it's not the criminal stuff.
Speaker 2:And look, poor people very often don't get married. They can't afford a divorce. So basically a protective order becomes sort of an immediate divorce filing. I'm trying to get away from somebody's filing but if I've got to pay for a lawyer and God bless legal aid. But legal aid's got a requirement they won't work with you usually in an acoustic case unless you're out, so you got to convince them that you're out of the relationship. But the other part of this is we've got an extreme shortage of experts to help victims in divorce hearings.
Speaker 2:I've testified in probably a dozen or more cases over the years as an expert and I would dare charge these folks a dime. I would never do that because they don't have any money. But if we could build a national cadre of experts to help family law attorneys, what a great gift that would be. Because a judge will absolutely. If I'm a police officer or advocate and I've been through training how to be an expert and I get on a stand and they more dire me and I say let me tell you what I know about these crimes. I've worked these crimes as an investigator. I've seen the aftermath. I've seen the impact and his behavior is dangerous and the hammock being exposed to these children is a detriment to their brain development. For God's sake, judges listen to that. But if there's a community that have experts, then the victim's on their own and they have to depend on the wood will of the court and understanding domestic violence. So you're exactly right, it's a horrible place to be. So what it does, it limits your options.
Speaker 2:Now, if I'm a victim, I've got children. Can I afford a divorce? I can't get a lawyer. He'll take my kids away. So let me think through this. This is a thinking right. Let me think through this. How do I survive? Okay, well, you know how many beats me up three or four times a month, but I still have my kids here, so I think I'll go ahead and accept this. Yeah, he rapes me on occasion, but that's a small price to pay to keep my children. This is the reality now and this is the thing that very often the advocates know this. Most of them are survivors that I've met over the years. But the survivors in uniform, the cops who put it behind them, that's no excuse In law enforcement. If you have lived it and survived it as a child and you're out, you're not violent. But you're now protecting people. You should use your experience as a survivor, just like advocates do, and read the family and read the room when you go on a domestic violence call, especially with children.
Speaker 1:More good advice. I'm so glad you said that, and I do want to focus a little bit more here as we wrap up on the strategies, because we talked in the very beginning, 30 minutes ago or so, in this conversation about transitional housing, and that is a great resource for women who need a place to stay while they figure out how they can become independent. We have that at Genesis, women's Shelter and Support and the Mary Parish House.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Mary Parish named after my mother, 10,000 victims they've worked with over the last 20 years. I'll tell you it's one of the things for law enforcement especially and the Mary Parish Center does this.
Speaker 2:They have a great partnership with the Nashville Mental Police and these officers know what happens there and this is the you know as a cop. You spend years responding, you arrest, you go to court, you convict. You usually don't see the family after that unless you get another call. So you don't see the product of your good work, opening the gate for the victim to get out. Once that victim is out and they're the arms of transitional, that's when they learn English, that's when they get their teeth replaced. They've been knocked out. They go to OBGYN they've never gone to before. Their children get mental health care, they get a little money, they get furniture, they get a job, training, they get a car, they get a scholarship and now they are thriving.
Speaker 2:Police should see that. I mean, they're responsible for that, but they don't. And that's the thing that I think. If I had a message to send to every chief and sheriff, I'd say you got a call, your shelter director tomorrow and say look, I want every one of my officers to come to the shelter when you say you can, or the transitional, and let them see what you do, because that will make them more thorough when they do their job, because it's not just. I will never see them again. If I knew, I'm a deputy and I'm working in El Paso, where I'm in Harlingen or in Phoenix or New Orleans, and I've been to this place where I watch these unbelievable angels rebuild families. I'm going to send more of them to them and I want to make sure that nobody misunderstands what I'm watching, especially when the child's been exposed to violence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, genesis Women's Shelter and Support here in Dallas, texas, we do just that. We have, through Jan Langbine, who's our CEO, who really pulled this relationship together with the Dallas Police Department. We have very strong network with the police department, with the FBI, with other partners in the area and across the country, and through the conference on crimes against women, which was co-founded by Genesis and the Dallas Police Department. We have international relationships with institutions, researchers, experts around the world who gather both in person and virtually to talk about these topics and these strategies that can improve outcomes for women who are victims of domestic violence and other crimes, and their children as well.
Speaker 2:Speaking of Now I know where the program in the world and I trained for the State Department. I had trained police officers all over the world. Nobody in the world puts on a conference like Genesis and Dallas PD. In the Crimes Against Women Conference, every year More people have been trained and influenced by the years of training and connecting and networking and showing high standards. Nobody has done it better than the Crimes Against Women Conference at Genesis House, bar none. I'm biased, I just believe that to be true because I've trained officers for the last 43 years and I know the big conferences. There are great ones going on, but nothing like what happens in Dallas. It is transformative.
Speaker 1:Let me add to that. Let me add to that because I'm also biased, because I work there, but I can tell you. If you ever want to catch some significant examples of outcomes, we can give them to you. There have been crimes solved, cold cases solved on site at the conference in Dallas, texas. People just jump up and get out of the room and they're able to connect the dots on a case that they were working on. This podcast and the podcast on crimes against women as well, have done the same thing. So at Genesis, we pour resources into education and communication among all of our other services that we provide, in order to share the knowledge so that we can help women who even aren't coming into Genesis, who are anywhere around the world. And that's very similar and in alignment with the work that you do training, law enforcement and others.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's the thing, and I know you know this. It's one thing to say that we're going to train everybody when they first come into the work, either as navigates or officers or prosecutors. But then the natural thing happens People get promoted, they go to other professions, they leave. New people come in. So we've got a constant population of new cops, new advocates, new police officers who need additional training. And then we have to do retraining because training is perishable.
Speaker 2:You have to bring the old folks in to show them the new methods in aquatic homicide and human trafficking and trauma informed response. It's part of building a national standard so we don't have to go back to the old days of just making it up as we go along. And plus, somebody else is watching this. The legislators are watching this. They're thinking if we're going to change the laws around improvement and strengthening response to victims of crime, you know we have to listen to the experts. The experts come to Dallas every year and then people who meet somebody in the hallway and you said it it's where do you work? I'm with the Port Worth Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 3:Oh, you had a case that. Oh yeah, let me tell you how we handle that.
Speaker 2:Or you know, I work in DC. You know we had this major trafficking case. We work. Those people now connect with one another and, of course, with social media. Nowadays it's easy to have friends like that you don't social media together, you're sharing information, you're working cases together. It's just you can't all those things never happen. And I've trained for years before the internet. You it was business cards I've got, I mean, in my office I've got a box that weighs about 100 pounds with business cards in it.
Speaker 1:Sure, you do.
Speaker 2:I kept them all that way. You know and you never know. But nowadays you you're on a list service, somebody, you're on Facebook, you're on LinkedIn, so that's replaced the old business card. You have a case and you throw it out to your population. You're saying I got a serial rapist. He's attacking elderly women. Can somebody help me with your profiling? Or you know resources Boom, you got it instantaneously. Those relationships happen at the conference on crimes against women.
Speaker 1:They truly do, and I appreciate that endorsement for the conference because I'm hoping you're going to be there in 2024. And I also heard that you're coming to Dallas in February. What's happening then?
Speaker 2:Well, genesis has a heroes program getting male men involved in prevention of domestic sexual violence, and I'm going to give a speech at the this year's event and I'm sure they're going to have heroes from all around the area. They're going to award and congratulate and hopefully, if we're lucky, they'll be able to show a piece of, or my documentary. We just finished in September. Oh, this is where I learned not to sleep. It's a 38 minute documentary on my experience and then the work that I've done over the last what is 50 years. I mean I lived in a 10 and worked in policing more than 40. So it's a lifespan of 50 years of exposure, you know, and redemption, and it's a journey and I've shown it in film festivals around the country and police departments. They never failed me. I had men come up and go down. That's my story. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know, and I tell them, I'm right back at him said OK, now let's go home and tell people that.
Speaker 1:Right. And now I mean, let's talk about your obligation to helping the next generation eradicate domestic violence. I look forward to being with you in February and then again in May, and I thank you once again for talking with me today.
Speaker 2:No, it's a great honor and I just. You all are wonderful and keep doing the good work and you call me anytime and I'll come running, as they say.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Attention Spanish speaking listeners. Listen to the end of this podcast for information on how to reach a Spanish speaking representative of Genesis. If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, you can get help or give help at genesisshelterorg or by calling or texting our 24 seven crisis hotline team at 214-946-HELP 214-946-4357. Bilingual services at Genesis include text, phone call, clinical counseling, legal services, advocacy and more. Call or text us for more information. Donations to support women and children escaping domestic violence are always needed. Learn more at genesisshelterorg slash donate. Thanks for joining us and reminding you always that ending domestic violence begins when we believe her.
Speaker 3:This is the podcast. It begins when we believe in the victim.