Next Door Chosen to Receive Sharks Foundation Grant (May 2010)

SHARKS JOIN THE FIGHT

AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

SAN JOSE, CA—The San Jose Sharks are known for being tough on the ice. Now, the Sharks Foundation is getting tough on the issue of domestic violence by supporting Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence.

The Sharks Foundation has pledged $25,000 to support Next Door Solutions, a non-profit organization that provides housing and assistance to victims of domestic abuse and their children.

Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence was founded in 1971 with the goal “to end domestic violence in the moment and for all time”.

Next Door Solutions’ services include a 24-hour emergency hotline and safe shelter, transitional housing in San Jose and Santa Clara, peer counseling and support groups, and legal advocacy.

In addition, Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence offers access to services in over 35 languages and have programs for children, teens, and the elderly.

With the Sharks Foundation joining the team, Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence is that much closer than ever to achieving their goal to end domestic violence.

More information can be found at www.nextdoor.org.

# # #

FOR INFORMATION: http://www.nextdoor.org

Contact: jmarcus@nextdoor.org

(408) 501-7540

We are Women! We are Life! Event

SOMOS MAYFAIR AND NEXT DOOR SOLUTIONS TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Present a night of theater and dialogue:

¡We are Women!

¡We are Life!

Friday May 28, 2010 from 6:00- 8:00 pm

at the Mayfair Community Center

2039 Kammerer Ave. San Jose CA 95116
In English

In Spanish

Alviso case highlights domestic violence that is often hidden within gay community

San Jose Mercury News

Published: Janurary 11, 2010

By Julia Prodis Sulek

On a ride home from her McDonald’s job two days before she was killed, Leti Martinez told her cousin that her violent relationship with her girlfriend was over, that she wanted a fresh start.

Despite fistfights, scratches, chokeholds, black eyes and one restraining order during their four-year relationship, Martinez and Jennifer Bautista made up as often as they broke up — a typical pattern in domestic cases, whether gay or straight. And, like the worst of abuse cases, this one ended in tragedy after Bautista allegedly ran over Martinez on Dec. 28.

The case has drawn attention to domestic abuse that is often hidden within the gay community, a group that is trying to put its best foot forward as it fights for equal rights. The problem can be particularly difficult to recognize within the lesbian community because of a lingering perception that “women don’t hurt each other.”

But the percentage of domestic violence cases among gay couples is the same as for straight couples — up to 33 percent, studies show — and abusive relationships in both groups suffer the same power and control issues that can lead to violence.

“This was always seen as a guy thing: Guys do this to gals, or they do it to each other, but women don’t do it to each other,” said Wiggsy Sivertsen professor of counseling services at San Jose State University, who has been involved in domestic violence issues for many years, including training San Jose police officers in how to handle abuse among gay couples.

While the gay community makes strides in gaining acceptance in society, “we’re much like other at-risk communities,” Sivertsen said. “If we expose the dirty laundry in our community, they say, ‘See? Look what those people do to each other.’ There’s a kind of reluctance to put ourselves in a situation to be judged that way.”

Just what Martinez, 20, and Bautista, 19, did to each other over the course of their relationship will likely be a major issue in the case against Bautista, who has been charged with vehicular manslaughter and is being held on $500,000 bail.

Deputy District Attorney Dana Overstreet said she couldn’t discuss the details of the investigation, though she noted “any evidence of domestic violence may become extremely important in this case, regardless of who the aggressor is.”

The only details released about the case so far is that neighbors saw the two women arguing outside Martinez’s Alviso home, then one witness saw Martinez jump on top of the Honda’s hood before Bautista started driving down the street. Bautista stopped twice but then fled. At some point during the nearly three-block ordeal, Martinez was run over.

A restraining order filed by Bautista against Martinez a year ago, and interviews with Martinez’s family, indicate that at various times, the women appeared to be mutual combatants.

Some of the conflict appeared to surround Bautista’s other relationships. In the court document granting a temporary restraining order last January, Bautista hand-wrote, with often poor punctuation and spelling, her allegations against Martinez:

“She come to my house and she started arguing about a guy I’m seeing now. She got jealous and broke my phone. Started hitting me and slapping me chocked me left me bruises, marks,” Bautista wrote. “She was threanting me she was going to ‘kill me’ and that, ‘if she can’t have me no one can.’ ”

Bautista has declined media interviews from jail and her family could not be located for comment. Police are hoping the Bautista family will come forward to speak with investigators as well as turn over the purple Honda that is registered to Bautista’s mother.

Martinez’s family, meanwhile, is outraged that instead of being charged with murder, Bautista has been charged with vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, which carries a penalty of up to seven years. They say that Martinez would often come home with her face scratched and black eyes.

“Leave her,” Martinez’s mother, Rhoda Vasquez, would tell her. But her daughter would always say, “No, I love her. Mind your own business.”

It’s a refrain heard time and time again in domestic violence cases of all kinds. And for better or worse, Sivertsen said, “we are really not that different from each other.”

At the LGBTQ Youth Space at the Billy DeFrank Center in San Jose, advice pamphlets about “unhealthy and abusive relationships” are available in the hangout room for their clients between the ages of 13 and 25. Of the 45 young people who are taking advantage of the center’s free counseling service, 20 say they are in an abusive relationship, and six of those are women.

“I wish one of these people were referred here,” said Cassie Blume of the Youth Space program, “to get these kids connected rather than have 19- and 20-year-olds dealing with this themselves.”

Kathleen Krenek’s Letters to the San Jose Mercury News

November 14 2009 Letter to Editor

Honor memory of slaying victims

The staff, volunteers and all those we serve through Next Door are sending our thoughts and prayers to Jennifer Schipsi’s family as they suffer the pain and anguish of the prosecution of her alleged killer, Paul Zumot.

Members of Next Door’s staff attended the Zumot arraignment and were appalled by the arrogant and impenitent behavior of the accused. Schipsi’s family members and friends were wrought with grief, and we could feel their helplessness.

We know that all of Schipsi’s family and friends would want her memory to be honored by seeing the community take notice and take action.

Please find out all you can about domestic violence — then tell everyone you know. One voice can be heard by many, and one action can touch many.

Kathleen Krenek

Link to Mercury News 11/14/2009 page

October 27 2009 Letter to Editor

Domestic violence is not an act of passion

Bulos “Paul” Zumot is charged with murder in the death of Jennifer Schipsi, who received services from our agency, Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence. While we grieve her loss, we are disturbed by early reports characterizing this as “an act of passion.”

Decades past, killing your wife “in the heat of passion” might have a jury declare a finding of innocence. Thank goodness we left that era. We now know domestic violence is coercive control exercised to gain power.

In my 24 years in this work, I have never heard a victim refer to her abuse as filled with passion. Also, we should be careful in how we portray the deceased, who is not at fault for trusting a person who professed love. Focus must be on the perpetrator. Instead of “why did she go back,” we must ask “why would someone so severely hurt the person he loves?”

Kathleen Krenek

Link to Mercury News 10/27/2009 page

Teen died after red flags went unheeded in Santa Clara County custody decision

Teen died after red flags went unheeded in Santa Clara County custody decision

Published May 23, 2009

by Kathleen Krenek

Some people ask victims of domestic violence: “Why don’t you leave?” The tragic case of Roberta Allen provides one answer.

Many victims don’t leave because they have been told by their batterers that they will lose custody of their children, and in Allen’s case, her worst fear came true. Then, earlier this spring she received the dreaded call from law enforcement. “We think we found your daughter,” the officer said, “and she is not alive.”

How many victims will read this and feel even more trapped? The system has to change to protect them and their children.

The system failed Alycia Augusta Mesiti-Allen, 14, who police say was killed by a domestic violence perpetrator, her father. Her bones were found buried in his yard.

Mark Mesiti was awarded unsupervised custody in 2005, even though he had a lengthy criminal history including a domestic violence conviction. He violated his probation and was sent to prison. For the seven years previous to gaining custody of his daughter, he amassed a variety of charges.

All were red flags. Welfare professionals and Alycia’s mother raised them during the custody battle.

The father was given custody after it was found that the mother was depressed — often the effect of battering — and therefore unfit to care for her daughter. As an alternative to this deadly decision, couldn’t we have wrapped the mom and her kids in supportive services and allowed them to heal together?

Depression is treatable. Homicide is not. Now healing will never happen for the remainder of this family.

I’ve worked with domestic violence for 25 years, and I understand the complexity of family law cases. But the errors in this case are too obvious to use complexity as an excuse.

Victims of domestic violence in family court often present their case without representation, while perpetrators often bring attorneys. The imbalance of power the perpetrators use at home to control the victims follows them into family court. When this imbalance exists, victims may not be able to effectively voice their concerns and articulate their needs. Often we don’t believe them. The myth that they are lying about their abuse to gain the upper hand continues to haunt the system.

Our county’s family court has made progress in dealing with domestic violence. It can provide safe, effective and equitable decisions. But something went very wrong in the Mesiti-Allen case.

California Family Code provides guidance to judges in determining whether perpetrators of domestic violence should gain unfettered custody. It offers a presumption against custody unless evidence is provided to rebut it. The criminal conviction of Mark Mesiti for domestic violence surely met the standard to determine him unfit for custody.

Santa Clara County has to examine this case carefully to determine what went wrong. Fortunately, we have a domestic violence death review committee that can do this work. We can only make sense of this tragedy if we learn from it. But some lessons are clear now.

We must provide real equity for victims of violence who are presenting their case in court — making sure they’re represented by an attorney, especially if their abuser is.

And we must stop viewing children as a commodity that “belongs” to both parents.

Kathleen Krenek is executive director of Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence, which helps victims navigate the system and protect their own interests.  Call their hotline at  408-279-2962

© 2009 Mercury News

Fisher: A battered woman’s compelling story

San Jose Mercury News

Published: September 30, 2009

By Patty Fisher

Why didn’t she just leave?

Every time I hear about a battered woman who is shot or beaten to death by her husband or boyfriend, that’s what I wonder.

What was she thinking? How could she let him hit her, night after night — and stay?

I have heard the answers to those questions many times, from the women themselves and from the counselors who tried to help them: She stayed because she had no money and nowhere to go. She was afraid he’d kill her if she left. She didn’t think anyone would believe her story. And, saddest of all, she thought she deserved it.

But in a new book that chronicles in brutal detail the four years of beatings and psychological abuse she suffered at the hands of her handsome, seemingly devoted husband, author Leslie Morgan Steiner offers this simple reason why she stayed.

“I loved him,” she told me. “I just thought he was a really troubled guy.”

Steiner, a successful author who edited the 2006 best-seller “Mommy Wars” about the colict of career moms vs. stay-at-home moms, will be in San Jose Oct. 8 to discuss her new memoir, “Crazy Love,” and to raise money for Next Door Solutions, our largest provider of shelter and other services to victims of domestic violence.

Last year in Santa Clara County, domestic violence hot lines fielded more than 24,000 calls and provided emergency beds to 795 women and children. But nearly 1,100 victims and their children were turned away because there weren’t enough beds.

This year, after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cut the state’s entire $16 million domestic violence budget, shelters across California are closing or cutting back on services, making it even harder for women and men to break free from abusive partners. Next Door and three other shelters in Santa Clara County, each took $200,000 hits.

Kathleen Kreneck, executive director of Next Door, hopes to sell enough $50 tickets to the Steiner fundraiser to keep the doors open for at least a few months.

“We’re hoping our community will rally around us and say we want people to be safe here,” she said. “I find it interesting that the governor rallied around the state parks but not domestic violence, when there are victims literally dying across California. That certainly doesn’t speak to my value system.”

Or mine.

Steiner, too, was appalled when she heard about the service cuts in California.

“It’s like a body blow to think that women and children who are so desperate that they reach out for help will not be able to get it,” she said. “The long-term cost for society will be far greater than just the cost of keeping shelters open.”

In some ways, Steiner is not the stereotypical battered woman. She was well educated and independent. She never spent a night in a shelter. Perhaps that’s why “Crazy Love” is such a compelling read. It’s the story of a young Harvard graduate with a dream job at Seventeen magazine in New York City who falls for a 30-something guy she meets on the subway. He’s well dressed, attentive and romantic — until she moves in with him and he starts hitting and choking her.

“I literally could have walked out the door, except for what happened to me psychologically,” she said. She felt compassion because he was beaten as a child and vowed to help him. Meanwhile, he became increasingly controlling and manipulative, taking her away from her job and alienating her from her family.

It wasn’t until he nearly killed her one night that she finally called the cops.

Steiner spent 10 years writing “Crazy Love” and another year agonizing over whether to publish it. It took courage to go public with her story, and thousands of women will read it and see themselves.

On Oct. 8, we’ll all have an opportunity to hear her tell that story in person.

More important, we’ll be able to help keep Next Door’s doors open. Without safe places to go and caring professionals to help them, battered women — and men — will have one more reason not to leave.