Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder

We need the public to know we are trying and we have finally been empowered to take action that we would not have taken 20 years ago. So I think a support base more than anything to allow us to do our jobs. I think certainly there are ways for the community as a whole to give financially to places like Peace at Home, Children's House, you know different places where people are in need of protection or in need of services that they can't afford or they would never get.

o I think finances are big people can get involved kind of behind the scenes just by giving their money. I know its broader than just women but it seems to me that women and children are main the victims of these types of crimes so that's just kind of where I'm at. I think the people you are talking about are the kind of people who've never been exposed they've had idyllic lives so to speak. I mean no body's got a perfect life, but the people that don't recognize or don't want to admit its going on have probably never witnessed or had a family member that have suffered from abuse.

Its not that they know about it and are ignoring it I think that they are more in denial than anything that its actually going on because its never affected them. Of course for me in law enforcement. I've seen everything and I'm ashamed to say early on in my career even and I know it was even worse before that but you know our main objective when we responded to a domestic call was two officers respond one takes the woman one takes the man, you separate them, you get their stories, and try to reconcile right there if that doesn't work out offer for one of them to leave and then we would transport them out. But we provided no assistance other than try to calm the situation right then. And that wasn't right but that's just the way things were done.

And then when a woman was bold enough to want assistance then of course we had the Battered Woman's Shelter, which was not a great situation I mean the people there were great, they were loving, they were wanting to help, but the facilities were just so awful that its no wonder the women would run back to their abusive situation.

Of course that's all changed now, I mean Peace at Home is a fabulous facility. Even back when I was going through the academy that was some of the training you know because when you think you are there to help a certain party if you even act like you are in a position where you are gonna arrest that person your just as libel to be attacked by the person you are there to protect. It doesn't make much sense but the psyche was this is the bread winner how am I going to survive this is our deal. You out of it and it could became a very dangerous situation we were trained to watch out for that but it would still happen.

I would say the thought process the training and even laws started evolving in the early nineties would probably be my best guess but I think that's about right where state the legislature got involved and made laws that were more stringent and really the preferred course of action for law enforcement was then mandated to arrest if there was sufficient evidence to indicate a crime had occurred we didn't need a warrant we were given time. This has even gotten better over the years. I think on certain crimes its four hours that we can arrest without a warrant and we can even go to 12 hours on other assaults where there's evidence of injury that we can arrest people without a warrant.

Well that's light years ahead of where we were. I mean it was discouraged to make an arrest that was an after thought now is the preferred action. Because we know that "to many times if we just separate the couple we take the man from the home we put him off and don't do that or your gonna be arrested those feelings and those emotions are running so high that nine times out of ten he's gonna back door us he's gonna be back in there before we are a mile out. And a lot of times further violence occurs and it just was not a good situation. Some very proud of the move that the state made that kinda forced law enforcement's hand kinda helped us do what we needed to be doing.

And now our policies I'm assuming all law enforcement policies i know Washington counties mirror the law you know it basically ya know before you leave I'll let you see what our policy is but you know that's what we are supposed to do is to take care of those people who can't or won't take care of themselves. I think first of all they have to be empowered they have to know it's not them its not their fault. First of all you know somebody ....i think the psyche of an abusive relationship a lot of times is they internalize this and for some reason they think its their fault that their husband beats them you know. We've got to get the word out that its not their fault) This should never happen, but if it is and they get to that point then obviously there are a lot of venues now where they can receive help if they are bold enough to walk out even. Places like peace at home family shelter. DHS, your police department will certainly take action we've all got trained personnel on board to deal with domestic violence. But its really incumbent upon them to step out before it gets to bad. Think of your children if you've got children in the homes think about what they are witnessing don't think that they don't know what's going on even though you think its all happening behind closed doors and they haven't ever seen it don't kid yourself. These children are going to grow up and you've seen the studies and I've seen them too that if they are involved in abusive relationships as children a lot of times the males turn into abusive husbands and the females become victims. So i would hope you working on this would get the word out further that they need to be empowered they need to be bold and take that first step and seek help. If once they arrive in a facility that's clean its not demeaning they show up at a place where people actually want them there that they provide certain opportunities for them to succeed that if they have some invite these organizations will actually help them get out in the world in the workforce . And what you see is a transformation of a meek mild victim into a person that is empowered that understands its not my fault and they start to develop a whole new personality that they can succeed on their own. You see the biggest problem we've ever had was we could help them initially to get them out of that situation but almost always they would drift back to that situation because they didn't think they could make it they didn't have the finances they didn't have the education or the training to provide for them or their children so what was their option it was to go back to the bread winner and take t well we are educated enough now. We understand the psyche and i think these organizations are really working at trying to make sure these ladies understand its not their fault and they can survive.