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Monitors report on domestic violence

By David Hench dhench@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

People charged with domestic violence frequently get their charges reduced. Different judges give strikingly different sentences for the same domestic crimes. And victims often are told to go to court, then sent home because their cases are postponed.

Those are some of the conclusions from a six-month project in which a half-dozen volunteers tracked domestic violence cases in Biddeford District Court and York County Superior Court in Alfred.

Caring Unlimited, a nonprofit that supports victims of domestic violence in York County, conducted the monitoring program to assess how the court system can be more effective in holding abusers accountable and do a better job promoting victims' safety.

"The courts are accountable to the community at large, and if we don't know what's going on, we can't hold them accountable," said Sherry Edwards, Caring Unlimited's community response coordinator, who wrote the report.

Volunteers attended each court once a week, on the day when most domestic violence cases are heard.

The observers tracked 76 cases in Biddeford District Court and 154 cases in superior court, noting how bail was handled, how victims and defendants behaved, plea deals and judgments.

The report makes 12 recommendations, including:

• Requiring police, bail commissioners or court officials to use a simple 13-question risk assessment in each situation to help predict how likely the defendant is to commit new domestic crimes.

• Judges and prosecutors must consider victims' safety when allowing defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges that are not domestic violence and don't carry the same restrictive consequences.

• Victims should not be required to report to court repeatedly only to have a defendant's trial postponed. The delays -- and the associated expense from lost work time and baby-sitting -- often discourage victims and make them less likely to follow through with the case.

• Sentencing guidelines should be developed so that defendants don't get widely disparate sentences depending on the judge and courthouse.

York County District Attorney Mark Lawrence said many of the group's observations came to light during an 18-month analysis of domestic violence cases by his office. He said some improvements already are in the works.

Cases are now transferred from district court to superior court much quicker, improving victims' sense that the system works to protect them, he said.

Also, superior court is scheduling case management conferences to determine whether trials are going forward, rather than requiring victims to attend and see them postponed.

Efforts will be bolstered by a $400,000 grant that the District Attorney's Office received to fund two domestic violence prosecutors, a domestic violence investigator for the York County Sheriff's Office, and a part-time Caring Unlimited worker to develop protocols for those responding to domestic violence.

Lawrence said his office has started using the 13-question risk assessment tool first used by Saco police in trying to determine a domestic violence defendant's risk of re-offending.

Lawrence said most of the changes recommended by the court monitors aren't costly and the long-term cost of ongoing domestic violence can be huge by comparison.

Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

dhench@pressherald.com