Last night, my wife and I met an old friend and his wife, plus another friend for dinner at a local restaraunt. It was his 54th birthday and he was born in 1954, and that was enough in our book to call it a special occasion. While we were waiting to be served, I looked at the local newspaper, the Austin American Statesman. Right there on the cover of the Metro section was a story which I found quite offensive.
Before family violence turns fatal, team intervenes
Domestic violence unit has worked to keep family violence-related deaths low since it was created in 2005.
By Joshunda Sanders
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, January 28, 2008
Even before they started living together in Phoenix, Firdos Vohra, now 28, says her three-year relationship with 23-year-old Carlos Aguilera was never quite right. When she tried to break up with him, she said, he threatened to knock her teeth out.
Vohra left Aguilera in August and moved back to Austin, her hometown. She only agreed to see Aguilera after a few weeks of him harassing her family, she said. She met him about 4 p.m. Sept. 23 at a South Austin H-E-B parking lot so he could see their child, Frieda, who was then 2. When he met them, he held the baby, kissed her while she was in the car and then snatched the child and took off running, according to court records.
Counselor Jeannie Tomanetz is part of the Austin-Travis County team that helps victims of family violence through crisis situations. If you need help, call 911 or SafePlace's hotline, 267-7233.
For hours, Aguilera did not answer his cell phone, Vohra said. Then he called and said, "If you don't agree to marry me, you'll never see your baby again." Within a few days, Vohra was reunited with Frieda, thanks to the Domestic Violence Emergency Response Team.
The emergency team, created in 2005, is the newest part of the Austin/Travis County Family Violence Protection Team, which has representatives from the county attorney's office, SafePlace, Austin police and Travis County sheriff's officials, among others.
Austin police Sgt. Rick Shirley, now with the Integrity Crimes Unit, helped create the emergency team of detectives and counselors because of four family violence-related homicides in the city that year.
The team now handles as many as 40 cases a week, all involving severe threat. The unit is meant to help victims in crisis find the right people to talk to quickly and works on up to 70 cases at any one time.
The Texas Department of Public Safety reports that Austin has about 6,700 family violence cases each year. The Texas Council on Family Violence reports that 120 women were killed in the state as a result of domestic violence-related circumstances in 2006, three of them from Travis County. In 2005, 143 women were killed in Texas, five in Travis County, according to the council.
Vohra's case was a good example, team Sgt. Sandy Hutchinson said, of how important it is to have counselors and detectives working together in extreme cases of family violence.
Vohra said that the morning after Frieda was taken, she called a friend in Phoenix, Aguilera's family, his former employer, her former boss in Phoenix and police.
"No one would help me," she said, until someone referred her to the emergency team.
Hutchinson said six team detectives hunkered down in their offices to help Vohra talk to Aguilera when he called. Jeannie Tomanetz, a victim services counselor, helped her stay calm.
Detectives had been tipped off that Aguilera was in Mexico, and he was arrested for aggravated kidnapping that night, just hours after Vohra contacted the emergency team.
Vohra and a relative drove to Laredo, where Child Protective Services had Frieda.
"The detectives were amazing," Vohra said. "I wasn't expecting them to find her as quickly as they did."
Vohra is worried about what will happen when Aguilera is released from jail. He is being held at the Travis County Jail with bail set at $186,000.
But the protective order she's filed against him in Travis County will give her time to find a permanent, safe place for herself and Frieda.
Unfortunately, Hutchinson said, Vohra is just one of many survivors of domestic violence who will need help this year.
"As we close cases, we open others," she said.
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I asked my friend to read the article and tell me what he thought of it. He read it and said that the DPS was setting up a task force to do some good work addressing domestic violence. It was a good thing. Then I asked him to read it again, and this time exchange the places of the mother and father. Father says he wants to break up with Mother, and she says she would punch his teeth out if he ever did that. Father flees across two states with Daughter. Mother tracks Father down and comes to see the kidnapped child. Mother snatches child and runs. Mother flees to Mexico. Task force flies into action, hunting Mother down and locking her up for aggravated kidnapping, $186,000 bond. Task force characterizes case as an extreme case of family violence.
He blinked, and said that it did sound ridiculous the other way. Both parents were in the wrong for trying to make a dash with the kid, but the mother was more so in the wrong because she did it first. The "punch in the mouth" phrase had shut down critical thought in the first paragraph. Then he leaned towards me and whispered something that took my breath away.
"You know, I had to call the police a few times when [my wife] was hitting me." He weighs possibly three times what she does, but he would sooner die than hit her back. He's the gentle giant type. It blew my mind. He has personally made domestic disturbance calls to the police but still is struggling with gender bias when it comes to clearly perceiving domestic violence.
