 Welcome to Shrink Rap Hawaii. My name is Stephen Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist here in Hawaii. And I'm like really excited because I have a very special guest. I am really honored today. And to introduce her, let me give you a little bit of background. As part of the Women's Caucus, Women's Legislative Caucus, my guest, Senator Laura Thielen, has been working on a special project regarding domestic violence in the state of Hawaii. On average, over the last six years in our state, more than 10 arrests have been made every day resulting from domestic violence. Domestic violence is the leading cause of homicide against women in Hawaii. In the United States, three to four women are killed every day from domestic violence. Senator Thielen is here today to talk about what we're doing to try to fix this problem. Welcome, Senator Thielen. Thank you very much for having me here today. So where do we begin to even talk about it? I mean, it seems to be such an endemic problem around the country, if not around the world. Where do you start? That's a really good question. I think a lot of people are a little bit overwhelmed by the problem. Some people feel like it's not maybe their problem. It's somebody else's problem. So I think part of what we need to do is get people to look at domestic violence a little bit differently to understand it better and how it affects their lives, even if it's not going on within their own household. And then I think another part of the problem is we've been pushing these cases into the criminal justice system, which simply is not an effective way to handle the volume of cases. So in a lot of cases or the vast majority of cases, nothing happens as a result. And so the perpetrator may then go back out and repeat this pattern of violence either against the original victim or against subsequent intimate partners that become victims. So you're saying nothing happens simply because there's so many people on the court docket they don't get to them in time? Well, as you were mentioning, the number of cases is huge. So we're looking at some statewide statistics and I don't have statistics statewide, but just for Honolulu alone, over the last six years on average there's been about 6,000 calls to patrol officers every year asking for help in incidents of domestic violence. We have about 1,000 cases a year that happen in Honolulu where they're seriously violent. Attempted murder, strangulation, aggravated assault. 1,000 just in Honolulu? Yes, just in Honolulu. And then the number of cases that's filed in each year in Honolulu is about 3,000. Criminal charges filed each year. And this is just for the abuse of family and household members. So if it's something like an aggravated assault or attempted murder that's on top of that, that might be something more seriously, a more serious charge. So the volume is huge. And so figuring out how to manage the cases where you have a pattern and practice of conduct and how to change that and what kinds of services are effective. I think we need to be a lot more smart and targeted in our, how we handle the cases, the prosecution and the services and how we protect and keep people who are victims of domestic violence safe while this process is going on. So right now what we're doing is not working because it's not getting any better. Well, the women's legislative caucus has been focused on domestic violence. We have, I think the oldest state women's legislative caucus in the nation. And that was thanks to people like Patsy Mink and others who were real trailblazers. And what they did is it was every woman in the legislature, both parties, house and Senate were members and they decided to come together around issues that were of particular interest to women. So a lot of health, family health, children's health, violence against women, gender equity and things like that, education. And we've passed some great legislation. So it's not necessarily the statutes. It's just how does that, how does that work when you're out in real life with the volume of cases that are being handled, not just in domestic violence but other cases as well by police, prosecutors, public defender and judicial system. So right now there's a lot of people that either they don't get charged because the, or they get charged but they don't go to trial because the trial doesn't come up in a speedy enough way so they get dismissed. Most cases, civil and criminal, never go to trial. Because of that. But just in general, in most cases in general either they settle or they get dismissed or something like that, they're charged with a lesser offense and there's an agreement to that. Most cases don't get to trial. The disturbing thing about the domestic violence cases though is a lot of these cases are being pled down to lesser offenses where the services that are normally provided in a domestic violence charge would be say domestic violence intervention to teach people how perpetrator, how to control themselves, how not to be abusive and what are some alternative behaviors. Those types of services are not provided when somebody pleads down to a lesser offense in most of those cases. So then I would guess most of the time it's gonna happen again. Yes. Because there's no change. Again, it's a pattern and practice. And then in cases where charges are filed in domestic violence, if they can't get to a jury trial within a certain amount of time, the court will dismiss them. So in Honolulu, for example, with the volume of cases we have, the city did an audit recently. I think there are four prosecutors tasked with handling all of the misdemeanor domestic violence criminal charges. They just can't do it. And the number of judges and the amount of time a jury trial takes, they just, they can't do it. So you've been holding meetings with all the different stakeholders in this? Yeah, the Women's Caucus, we've tried to address the issue during session, but session happens January to May and you're just dealing with so much and it gets complicated and people on Oahu want one thing and people on neighbor islands say we're different from Oahu. Our population is smaller, we handle the cases differently. So we haven't been able to come up with a resolution. So we decided this year to do something different and the caucus is going out to each of the four counties because police and prosecutor are county level. Judiciary and probation are state level. So we got the attorney general and the chief justice of the Hawaii courts to co-sponsor these meetings with us and we're going to each of the four counties to meet with all the parties. So it's not like anyone can say it's their fault. And so we'll have the police, the prosecutor, the public defender, judiciary, including probation. And we've begun by having a session where we bring in advocates and survivors to talk about their experience with the system and it's our turn to listen because they're really the people that are going through the system day in and day out. So what's their perspective of the problem? And then we take a break and the advocates and survivors leave and then we start to have a conversation around the table between all the people involved in the system about okay, what do we need to do to do things differently so that there can be something that happens that could change behaviors. So that's the ultimate goal. We want less violence within households and families. Right, so I wonder about, I mean, you didn't mention the perpetrators, right? And I can understand the problem of getting the perpetrators to come to the meetings but it seems important that they be part of the solution because they're maybe the biggest part of the problem, right? A husband and wife have a fight and typically the guy hurts the woman and then what? And very often the aftermath of that is a lot of I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll never do that again until it happens again. And part of my job as a marriage therapist is working with couples that are dealing with that stuff and trying to affect a change and in order to affect a lasting change I find that you really have to go way back. I mean, the problem started before they met each other. It probably started in childhood because that's what was modeled for them at least on one side of the couple. You know why the woman chose a guy who's like her father and I'm being stereo, I'm stereotyping now but it's not unusual. And the guy swore he would never be like his father, the guy swore he would never hurt his kids and now he's done that and there's a lot to go through. I guess what I'd say is first of all domestic violence is a little bit different. I mean, every couple will have arguments. Every marriage or relationship is gonna have stresses and strains and arguments. Domestic violence is really a different from an argument. It is a means of one person controlling or having power over another. And using violence, either physical violence or psychological violence are both as a pattern and a practice in that relationship to have control over the person. In some cases it gets so bad that the victim ends up being killed. In some cases the person ends up surviving and exiting the relationship but the perpetrator goes to the next relationship and creates a problem. So we saw something a while back where there was a young man who had domestic violence within his girlfriend's relationship. She ended up getting a restraining order. She got out of the situation. This perpetrator did have some subsequent violence outside the relationship. Also had some restraining orders against him. Had another relationship where they attempted to get a restraining order. He was out on probation and ended up throwing lighter fluid all over the young woman and lighting her on fire. I mean, this is the kind of thing where it's not, it's not like, you know, my husband and I are disagreeing whether we should support our daughter's effort to go do something or rather. You know, this is control, manipulation, abuse, and in many cases if the abuser does not behave this way with people outside of the relationship. So it's not a matter of, oh, this guy is a hothead and I'm saying guy because- It's usually a guy. The statistics are it's usually men and certainly in the cases of the fatality or near fatality, it's almost, you know, it's well over 90% women who are being the battered person in the relationship. So when you talk about having the abusers there on our meetings, I think it's important that as a society we look at, okay, in many cases these abusers, they're part of our community and we need to find things that work to get them to change their behavior. Right. And that's where I think we need to start taking a harder look at, does the domestic violence intervention services work? What's their success rate? What's their recidivism? You know, how do we get better at that? But to bring them into the room with the people who are the survivors now who are sharing their stories is not, it's not appropriate to bring them together and in some cases it would be downright dangerous. Maybe not together. But I mean, I would really want to try to understand, I mean, to me what you described sounds like a kind of mental illness. You know, somebody that lights his girlfriend on fire. What do you do for him besides lock him away for the rest of his life? Is there something to be done? I think there needs to be something to be done but my first priority is protecting the victims. I want to protect the people who have the restraining orders, who are recognized that this person is really violent and so that when there is a violation something happens and when the probation is violated that they're taken in. This young man was on the Project Hope Probation which is supposed to be better than typical probation. But we have to find a way of doing better lethality assessments to say, okay, there's certain people where let's just stop them from hurting people in society. Then maybe you have your one time, first time offenders that you can deal with another way and then you can deal with the middle. But we don't do that right now. We're just kind of funneling this mass through the system like it's relatively the same. We'll be right back with the rest of our show with Senator Lathielen. Don't touch your mouse. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I just walked by and I said, what's happening guys? They told me they were making music. I'm Ethan Allen, host of Likeable Science on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science where we'll dig into science, dig into the meat of science, dig into the joy and delight of science. We'll discover why science is indeed fun, why science is interesting, why people should care about science. You care about the research that's being done out there. It's all great, it's all entertaining, it's all educational. So I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science. Welcome back to Shrink Rap, Hawaii. I'm Steve Katz, I'm with Senator Thielen. So the question most people have a hard time wrapping their head around, why don't the victims, the people who are getting beat up, just leave the relationship? Yeah, I think that's one of the hardest things in getting society to relook at domestic violence. Again, there's different kinds of relationships where domestic violence takes place. So let's say you have somebody who's in one of those really violent relationships. The most dangerous time for a woman is when she tries to leave the relationship. So nearly one third of women in Hawaii and in the United States who are murdered because they're in a relationship with domestic violence and that person knows best what they need to do in order to keep themselves safe. So sometimes the timing is not right for that person to leave a relationship because the perpetrator's gonna go after her and kill her. There are other situations that say maybe it's, I don't wanna classify it as minor because sometimes domestic violence can be minor, minor, and then major as far as the injury that occurs. I've been in a minor for 20 years. But yeah, but let's say it's kind of a lower grade offense. You're married, you have kids together. How do you move to a separate house in Hawaii given the cost of housing? You just, you want that abuse to stop. You want the person maybe to be the way they were at the beginning of the relationship before the abuse started with you. Maybe the family and friends that you're going to for help. Oh no, no, no, no, this isn't a problem. Very good friend of mine, her family, her husband's family, no, you're making it up. Cause they didn't want to address the fact that it was going on. And given the cost of living here, it's really hard for people to leave. Yeah. Part of what domestic bonds advocates are looking at nationally is not just how do we keep people safe, but how do you get people where they can economically, safely move to another place. So they can survive afterwards. They can make a fresh start. You know, in Hawaii, with given the cost of living, if your family doesn't believe it, or if your family can't keep you safe, they can't be the place to go to take you in. So there has to be an alternative. Yeah. And sometimes, I mean, I've dealt with a lot of families where a lot of the violence is directed against the children. And there's denial on the part of the other parent, because I'll say she, because typically it's she doesn't know what else to do. You know, it's, yeah, this is happening, but I can't say this is happening. Because if I said this is happening, it would mean I have to leave and I won't know how to support the family. Yeah. And it's, you know, for, there's a lot of children that are growing up in households where there is domestic violence and they may not themselves be hit or use matter psychologically, but they see it. And the biggest predictor about whether you are gonna grow up to become an abuser or become a victim is if you grew up in that household. But now studies are showing it has an overwhelming prediction for things like homelessness, for mental illness, for other crimes, which is why, you know, some of the prosecutors that we've worked with have said if we could reduce domestic violence, you will see a reduction in crime. You will see a reduction in drug abuse. You will see a reduction in alcoholism. Because a lot of this is because of people being raised in households where this violence is taking place. So we could have a huge societal payoff if we can figure out better ways. You know, people change behaviors on drinking and driving. People change behaviors on smoking. You know, people change behaviors on seatbelts and cars. I don't think it's too much to say, can we change society's attitude towards domestic violence to be willing to recognize it? To be willing to say it's not okay? And to be willing to say that the people who are the victims or survivors of these acts of aggression need help because it's not something that they can exit on their own. It's not like a stranger has come and hit me on the street and I can go and testify against that person. You know, there's a lot of deep ties there. And what you were just saying kind of answers my next question, which was, if it's not going on in my house, why should I care to do anything about it? But you're saying that people that grow up with this domestic violence are more likely to become, excuse me. Excuse me. Are more likely to have all kinds of problems that affect us all, like addiction and felonies of all kinds. I pulled up the statistics from the Uniform Crime Reports and it's interesting, because Hawaii has very low violent crime, which means when you're talking about issues of domestic violence, it is a large proportion of the total violent crime we have. But we have huge rates of property crime. If a child growing up in a household with domestic violence is more likely to end up using drugs, a lot of our property crime in Hawaii is due to drug addictions to fuel the addiction. If the child is more likely to end up being homeless, we're dealing with the highest per capita homeless population in the nation right now. And is that something that we can reduce by reducing the crime that's going on within households? So I think people, even if there's nobody in your family that you're aware of, that is going through issues of domestic violence would benefit if we can reduce it. But I also think that caveat about if you're aware of it, because a lot of people where domestic violence is going on in their households, they will not talk about it. Because of the perceived shame. I was wondering, a lot of what I do in my practice is I look at instances where things are going well. So cross-culturally, in other countries, are there places that are doing a lot better that have a lot less domestic violence? And what, if so, why? What are they doing that we're not doing? You know, internationally, the statistics about violence against women are really horrifying. And there's not really any country from the statistics I've seen that I would hold up as an example of where it's not a problem. And I think that that's, you know, I got asked at one of the meetings, well, there's a women's legislative caucus, is there a men's legislative caucus? And one of the other legislators said, yeah, it's called the legislature. I was just dancing, asked that before the show, I said the same thing. But the reality is the violence against women is a global problem. It's not just the United States. It would be nice if we became a leader in the reduction. And I think we've taken steps towards that with the Violence Against Women's Act and having some funding. But that's where I think, thanks to databases and everything now, we can be a lot more analytical about is what we're doing working. And if it's not, then for heaven's sakes, let's just change it and start to try something else to see if that works. Because what we're doing right now isn't working. And so that's what the women's legislative caucus is doing with our meetings, is we're not trying to say that we have the answer. And we know Neighbor Island and Honolulu, it's very different volumes. But, you know, even the public defender told me, he's got daughters, you know, that people want to change. So fine, the ones that work in the system that's come to the table and take a hard look at the data we have and say, if this isn't working, then what do we do differently? Yeah, I'm also, we live in Hawaii and it wasn't, you know, in the annals of history, it wasn't that long ago, it was just Hawaiians here. I wonder, did they have this issue? Maybe we need to look at that. I have no data. Right, there was no written record. Yeah, yeah. Right, there's no data. No, that's an interesting, yeah, I don't know. But I guess when you look at other cultures around the world, are there any cultures that don't have it? And I'm not aware of any, yeah, I'm just, because I remember reading recently about a culture in some ethnic group in China, I think, that tends to be led by women. So maybe- Yeah, I was wondering, that's what I was wondering. Would it be a less violent culture if women were in charge? But you may need to look at the flip, you know? Because, again, we've been saying he and she, that men can be victims and are victims of domestic violence, it's just, in our society, the vast majority of perpetrators are the men, and certainly the vast majority of the statistics for the deaths are- Well, because like he was saying before, it's about power, power and control, right? I've had instances where it was flipped, where the woman was a perpetrator. And he wouldn't leave. And because, yeah, it's about somebody needing somebody else to do what they say. And the way that they control them, you know, you can't go out, you can't talk to friends, it's a whole universe of control. And it's scary. But this is the kind of thing where, you know, I have more of a background in land use and environmental, but I've been involved in issues of domestic violence for about 25 years. And this is one of the things where, as a senator, you know, we may or may not end up with a lot of legislation that comes out of these meetings, we may be fine-tuning it, but there's an opportunity as a senator to just, in the Women's Legislative Caucus, to convene people around the table to look at an issue. And to say, you know, as leaders in the community, we need to recognize when we're not doing as good a job or as effective a job, even though everybody's working very hard and everyone's well-intentioned, the results aren't what we want. So it's time to re-look at it. And that's been very, you know, I'm grateful for the ability through the Women's Legislative Caucus for all of us to bring people to the table. I'm grateful for the help from the Chief Justice of the Hawaii Supreme Court and the Attorney General in cosponsoring these meetings, because everyone was willing to recognize we need to do something differently. Are you hopeful that it'll change? That makes me hopeful. I don't know that we're gonna arrive at the solution or that there is the solution, but a recognition that we have to try something and be smarter when we do try it, to monitor it, to see the results, to follow the cases and see what's happening, and to not be so wedded like, oh, this was my idea, so we can't change it. You know, if it's not working in the future, let's change it in the future. You know, we just have to, in government, we gotta figure out when things are not effective. How do we make them more effective? Well, thank you so much for doing this, and thank you for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you asking. Oh, I appreciate you coming. Thank you. And tune in next time for Shrink Rap Hawaii Aloha.