 Okay, we're back. We're live with Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. And during this corona crisis, we're reaching out. We're reaching out everywhere to everyone by remote using our Zoom technology and our VMIX. And today we're going to talk to one of our other hosts. We're going to talk about, we're going to talk about in the time of the coronavirus, what about domestic violence. And that's Cynthia Sinclair. She joins us now. Hi Cynthia, thank you for coming on to the show for this discussion. Hello Jay, thank you for having me. Well domestic violence is something you've covered over the years. And it's a very important subject in general, I mean in ordinary times. But our discussion today is about how it's special in extraordinary, abnormal times in the times of the COVID. Because you know, we have what we call it psychological questions and issues and process and phenomena happening in the context of people staying home and cooped up. Some people have, you know, bigger houses and some have smaller houses. But whatever the size of your house, you can get pretty cooped up. And when you get cooped up, you know, that's pressure on you, psychological pressure. And when you have psychological pressure and get, you know, get pressurized that way. One of the ways you can express the pressure is by arguments with your spouse or your family, including domestic violence. So we've heard about this around the country. It's a phenomenon that, you know, that the press, the media is following. We should follow it too. So Cynthia, have you been following this? I have been. And you know, COVID creates like a perfect storm for domestic violence to happen. We know that the statistics show us over time that whenever there's a, you know, some kind of a natural disaster, a hurricane, a flood, something that makes people be stuck in their homes for long periods of time together. We see a, a marked increase in domestic violence and child abuse. And this is no different. You know, it's even worse because we're looking at, what are we a month, a little over a month now of people being locked in their own homes. So it's particularly ironic because when you're in a crisis, it's time to cooperate. It's time to appreciate. It's time to find ways to rise to the occasion. And I would venture to say, I liked some stats from you, but I would venture to say that many, if not most people who are, you know, in their homes, locked up in their homes during a crisis like this, find a way to get to know each other better, even to like each other better, to accommodate each other and give comfort and solace to each other. So it's not like the whole world is coming apart, but there are people who do criminal domestic violence too. And we have seen incidents of that. So do you have any idea about what, what numbers are in play here? What percentage of the population is going off the side? I do. I have a lot of them even. CNN put out an article that had some really disturbing numbers. In Chicago, the 20 of the largest Metro police departments saw double digit rise in domestic violence calls. Portland, Oregon was up 27%. Up 22%. Seattle up 21%. Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Omaha, Kansas City, I could go on. Basically, it's everywhere. And everywhere is seeing a rise in these calls. But something that's really interesting is that right after they saw the rise in the beginning, they saw a market drop right afterwards. And we've got to remember that the trouble that domestic violence victims have in trying to get to be seen, to be able to get out, to be able to get heard by someone, to reach out for help, because usually they have to wait for their, their abusive partner to go to work or to leave to go somewhere before they have that opportunity to report and to reach out for help. Well, now they don't have that anymore because they're stuck right there with their abuser. Well, I think there might be a couple of, you know, a couple of phenomena working here. Number one is those stats seems to me by the way you presented them, they come from law enforcement, they come from the police department. Yes. Okay. So, you know, that's very troubling because the police department honestly has other things to do in the time of a crisis and they themselves are exposed. They don't need to have unnecessary contact, unnecessary visits with, you know, domestic violence households. We need to leave them to do the most important work, the priority work, which is taking care of the people that are sick. So the level of violence is, you know, is matched by the level of community inconsideration. It's very inconsiderate to suck up the time of the police. And that's what's happening if the police have these stats. It means they're getting calls on the phone on 911. It means they're going out to try to quell the disturbance. And we are distracting them. People who are involved in these incidents are distracting them from the more important work of dealing with the crisis. I mean, do you have any information about that? Do the articles you've looked at talk about that? Well, we have to remember that even more important when it comes to police, their most dangerous calls are domestic violence calls. That's when police die. The most often they get killed by whoever it is that's, you know, involved in the abuse. And some of the time, a lot of the time, the abused victim will try to protect their abuser from the police when the police are trying to take them away. So it's this very complicated, very delicate dance that they have to do anyway. And then when you add all the extra, you know, danger of maybe contracting COVID while they're out there makes it even more dangerous for them. Yeah, if they want to separate people from fighting with each other, they have to get close to them. That is such an unnecessary risk. Well, the other thing you mentioned, I want to ask you about this too. So you said at first, there was a big increase. And sometimes those are extraordinary numbers you gave us. But then it was a decline. And was it, you know, A, what was that about? Why was it declining? And B, was it declining simply because the police learned to ignore it? They said that they made their own, you know, list of priorities and decided, if this is a domestic, you know, violence call, we're going to do other things. We're not going to hang around. And it could be the police themselves declined the numbers. What do you know about this? We don't know anything about that. And I hope I really hope we have a bad enough problem with police not taking enough importance to domestic violence, trying to make excuses for the abuser. And that's a common problem always. So I really, I really hope that that's not the case that police aren't downgrading it. But really, what I did read in some of the articles and some of the things that I've read throughout these last weeks is that people just can't get there to do it. And that's the main thing. The main reason for that decline in the calls is that they just aren't, they aren't able to do that. They aren't able to call. They aren't, you know, the victims are not able to be in a safe enough space. So there's a lot of cases. If you look at some of the hotlines that are reporting, some of the increase of digital things like you can text now, home is and then the numbers. I don't know where I put them. Love is, excuse me, text. Love is to 22522. And you can just text it. So you're not actually talking. You could go in another room and text this hotline. So you're not actually talking on a phone that's going to go through and the husband, you know, the abuser is going to hear you. Because that's the biggest danger. And nine times out of 10, when a person dies, when a victim dies, it's because she's trying to leave. And that's what forces the abuser to really take an extra step in the length that they go to. So just beating them, no, I will kill you before I'll let you go. But it sounds like that, you know, this, this reduction in numbers is because they're all, they're all cooped up under the lockdown. And they can't leave. They can't go out on the street and make the call or go to a neighbor's house or a friend's house. So there's really no opportunity. That's why the texting is a valuable alternative for them. Very, very interesting. Being stuck there is an important factor. They can't just go to the neighbor's house. They can't just go. I mean, we're all locked in. You can get a ticket for going out there. Now, Maisie Hirono, our wonderful Maisie Hirono, and four other senators, and I could not find the names of the other four, but they wrote a really intense letter to Trump begging, urging him to not necessarily begging, but urging him to create a safe place and some extra resources for the victims of domestic violence, because we know that it is going to go up. France has seen double digits, same thing. And France has started a really neat thing where you can go into a pharmacy because you don't even have local businesses that you can walk into to get help because they're all closed, right? But pharmacies, you're open. So in the whole country of France, you can go in and you can say the code word, and I can't remember what the code word was now. I wrote it down. That was something in French, Cynthia. Yeah, it was good French. I don't know what it is. No, it's just like that hotline that we have that we'll be putting the number up, number of times throughout the show today. They have it in 200 languages. You can call that hotline and it doesn't matter what language you speak, they can relate to you in 200 different languages, which is a pretty important fact. Yeah, I'm sure. Let's go in to the pharmacy and tell the pharmacist the code word and oh no, I remember now, it's mask 19. Mask 19 is what the code word is for France. And you go into a pharmacy and you tell them that code word and they can help you. And they know you're a victim that needs help. So, you know, I must say I'm not all that familiar with the way the scenario works. You've referred to a few aspects of it. And I think it must be exacerbated by the fact that everybody's cooped up, including, you know, the the two principles of the household and then the children. But what happens after that and what is the likelihood of violence requiring medical intervention? Well, it's very rare that a woman will go in for medical intervention, even when she is broken, bloodied, bruised, cut. It's very rare. And so, I don't think that's going to be a case because they're locked inside. They especially don't think they have anywhere to go. You know the husband or the abuser is not going to take them in. Now, the CDC's numbers for the domestic violence, one in three women and one in four men during this pandemic. But the thing is, is that's pretty close to the normal numbers anyway, because it's most of the countries, including the US, that's their normal numbers. So, I don't think that CDC has actually really done anything to... No, that doesn't make sense. It's obvious that if you're cooped up, the likelihood of domestic violence is greater. You don't have to be a scientist to know that. The only question is the metric. So anyway, the scenario is they're cooped up. Somebody sets something off. Now there's an argument. There's nowhere to go. And somebody is into violence. And then somebody gets hurt. Okay. And so you can say they don't like to go to the hospital, but sometimes you really have to go to the hospital. You can refrain from doing that, but I'm sure there are a number of situations where you really have to go. You broke a bone. You're bleeding. You've got a bad cut. You've heard your eyes or your nose. And anyway, I guess that kind of thing happens. And here's the problem. So here's completely unnecessary injuries. I mean, in the moral sense, in the aspirational sense, completely unnecessary injuries. And now here's somebody who has to go for medical care, like to a hospital or an emergency room. Now, this is the place where the coronavirus people are going. This is the place where the entire staff is dedicated to treating the coronavirus people, which is a crisis all of its own, depending on what hotspot you're in. Now that's really inconsiderate because you're taking the space, the medical space and the medical resources away from somebody who really needs those medical resources, life and death, by engaging in this violence. I mean, I get a real reaction on that. That's so basically inconsiderate, aside from being stupid. But that does happen, doesn't it? When you have to go for medical care, you're displacing somebody who legitimately needs medical care. Well, I'll tell you, and often when women go to the hospital, when it gets to that extreme stage, a lot of times they make excuses. I fell down the stairs. I tripped when I was outside. There's all kinds of excuses that people use to try to excuse the abuser so he doesn't get in trouble. But I've heard some very troubling stories from people that I know that are in domestic violence situations and they want to go to the store so that they can be exposed, so they can get the virus, so they can go to the hospital. Oh, gee whiz. Oh, wow. That just broke my heart when I heard that. I thought, what? No, you can't do that. They would rather die. And I think if you're strong enough to think you can get COVID, you're strong enough to go to a shelter. And here in Hawaii, our shelters are open. And in most places, all shelters are open. They might be really overwhelmed because they've had to, in order to keep social distancing and social practices, safe practices, they have to reduce the number of people that they can have come in. They're trying to arrange so that there's like one room that's separate where they can put people that have been exposed, things like that. They're really trying to get creative so they can keep their doors open. So, you know, this opens the question, though, of what to do, what to do about domestic violence or to prevent domestic violence at a time of the COVID. And it's going to last for at least a month more, but who knows? You know, my own expectation is it'll be more than just the end of May. We won't solve this either here or in other places, including especially hotspots by the end of May. So we have an ongoing issue. And the question is how in my household do I avoid having domestic violence? If I am first, I suppose you ought to address some comments to the people who do the violence, and then you ought to address some comments to the people who are the victims of the violence. What is your advice based on your study of this and what you know about it? Well, I really applaud all the men's programs that are out there that are trying to get even men that don't abuse to get involved in the prevention stages of domestic violence. So if you are out there and you're a guy and you got a friend and you know that he beats his wife, you can call him more often. You can check in on him. You can encourage him. You can try to get him to talk about it and be honest about it. And until men get involved, I really think we're not going to make the kind of headway that we need to make. We need to have men that are going to get involved and stop their friends from this kind of behavior. Okay, let's do a call. Let's do a call. Let's assume I am somebody who you're my friend. You're my friend who lives in the next house or across town. You pick up the phone as people do in a time of a lockdown crisis. And you feel there's a certain risk that I'm going to do domestic violence. Maybe I have a history of it or I'm having the kind of personality that could lead to that. Let's have the call. Okay. So, Johnny, you're calling me. Why? Why are you calling me today? Well, wait, wait, we have to establish, are you the abuser or am I the abuser? I'm the abuser. You're my friend and you're trying to stop me. Okay. So, I'm just calling you in to let you know that I was thinking about you, seeing how everything's going. I know how things are right now, you know, with the stress of everything. But I'll tell you, they've opened up the parks again that we can go for walks and stuff. Or if you ever need anybody to talk to, dude, I'm here for you. You can call me anytime you want. And I know that you and Cheryl, you have some trouble sometimes. But, you know, whenever you get to that feeling where you just can't take it anymore, before you strike out at Cheryl, take a break. Step away. Give me a call if you want. You know, I know you don't want to get there being shy to go to a, you know, any kind of counselor. But you know, you got friends. And that's what friends are for. So reach out to me. I'm here for you, dude, whenever you need me. Well, you know, you know, Johnny, while I appreciate that, I don't understand why you're actually telling me. Do you think I'm going to lose something like that? Well, you know, I know you've had trouble with your anger before in the past. And, you know, you kind of talked to me a little bit about stuff like that. And I've heard you make comments about things like that. So I was just wanting you to know that I was worried about you and Cheryl and wanting you guys to do okay. And during this time when we're all locked up so tight, everybody has trouble. It's not like, you know, you're just this terrible guy. Everybody has excessive stress right now. And, and it's hard not to succumb to the stress and strike out at the people you love. That's pretty good. You're good at this. So the next question is, what do you say to me? What do you say to me? I mean, what should I be thinking about myself? I am the potential abuser. What should I be thinking about? What's the way I can restrain myself? Avoid, you know, getting angry? Avoid certainly doing violence? What's your advice to me? Get plenty of sleep. Get plenty of sleep. That's really important. Sleep deprived. People are at higher risk for violence and all sorts of stress. So get plenty of sleep. Eat right. Just simple things. Exercise every day. I don't care if you live in a studio. Get down on the floor, do a little yoga, do some sit-ups and push-ups, whatever. Get some of that excess energy that gets built up while you're stuck inside. And get it out, you know. Go for a walk. Get out of the house. Make sure when you start to feel those feelings that you have plan in place. Take a walk. Count to 10. All those simple things. Punch a pillow, you know. Go out and do something that relieves that stress so that it won't be so bad and it won't be directed at your spouse or your children. All right. That's good. And I hope that, you know, people can hear that or will listen to it and be introspective about it to try not to let themselves get out of control. Now, this is the last one. We only have time for one more. This one is the potential victim. In this case, let's talk about, you know, my spouse, my girlfriend who lives with me, who I have beat up before, maybe, or who, you know, is trying to protect the children. How do I handle this? Do I go passive? Do I go active? What can I say to him to slow him down? What can I say to protect the children? Well, and I left this off the last one and I should have put it on there. No alcohol. Alcohol, number one trigger for violence in domestic violence situations. So as much as you can do to limit the alcohol, keep them busy doing other stuff, things like that. Do everything you can to protect yourself. Most people that are victims really notice every subtle difference. The nuance in their abuser's voice even can tell them that a trigger is coming. Get away. Take the kids out for a walk, you know, which is really all we can do these days. Go to the store and remember that there are people out there. Depending on how extreme your abuse is, you can still get help. Go to a pharmacy. They're open. Some grocery stores will even go to customer service if possible. Tell them your situation. Let the police come to you. Don't leave your children home unattended. Stay with your children. Keep your children close. Remember that children are collateral damage in all of this. And they're watching everything that happens. So if more violence in the home than there's, these kids are being exposed to more violence, we're going to make all of this stuff that's the fears that are happening for children with the coronavirus 10 times worse. What about resisting physically? What about defending myself? What about meeting violence with violence? What are your thoughts about that? What's your advice to the potential victim about that? It doesn't usually work. That's not usually ever the recommended best case because of the fact that it'll just make things escalate. And you don't want things to escalate. That's the most possible thing. So not fighting back is better than fighting back. But in some cases, if you know he's about to shoot you and you have a way to take him out of the knees in some way so that when he shoots you, if he doesn't shoot straight, I say survival instincts will keep you alive. But it's not always the best practice to go and try to fight back. Wow. Complicated, isn't it? Complicated because we don't know how long the lockdown is actually going to last and we don't know how people are going to react. But those are pretty good points of advice. I really appreciate it, Cynthia. Thank you so much for taking a look at the stats and helping us with. If you need help, reach out for help. Mostly remember you're not alone. Do not think that you have to suffer through this by yourself. All of the shelters are open in Hawaii. Shelters are open across the country. There is a number that you can call. Call that hotline that we've been putting across the screen throughout the show. If you make sure you do it in a safe way though, sometimes leaving an abuser can create more violence. So very careful about how you try to call for help. But reach out for help. Get advice. Thank you, Cynthia. Cynthia Sinclair. Think Tech Host. So much appreciate this discussion. Aloha. Aloha, everyone. Stay safe.