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Show communications, questions about the physician/patient relationship, and, finally, questions of trust and faith in the criminal justice system to back up health care providers who complied with the law. If the health care provider reports an injury notifying law enforcement of the possibility a crime has been committed, the health care provider may become a critical player for the criminal justice system to provide evidence of the crime. Health care providers rely on law enforcement and other members of the system to investigate, charge, sentence and treat the perpetrator of the crime to stop the violence and protect the victim or their patient. At first, health care providers and criminal justice professionals pointed fingers and accused one another of failing to perform their legal responsibilities when dealing with both the victims and perpetrators of domestic violence; however, as time goes on these two systems see one another as allies, not enemies, in the fight to stop the damaging effects of domestic violence. They have, so to say, symbolically started to hold hands in the prevention, intervention and suppression of the cycle of violence that permeates our society today. Prevention The Utah Domestic Violence Advisory Council (UDVAC) is a statewide coalition made up of law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, health care providers, social workers, treatment providers and probation officers. Under the direction of the UDVAC, there is a violence prevention subcommittee which consists of a similar coalition of people focusing on the preventative aspect of domestic violence and crime. One of the eleven committees in the prevention subcommittee is a health care committee made up of professionals from the American Medical Association, the Utah Medical Association, the Utah Academy of Family Physicians, St. Mark's Hospital, Intermountain Health Care Hospitals, Columbia Hospitals, the Mobile Mammography Unit for Salt Lake Regional Medical Center, the School of Nursing at the University of Utah, the Utah Department of Health, Women's Mental Health Task Force for Alta View, Cottonwood, LDS and Wasatch Canyon's Hospitals, Environmental Health Education, the University of Utah Hospital, the Utah Attorney General's Office and other professionals concerned about the health aspects of domestic violence. The newly formed health care committee has discussed several violence prevention strategies: first, educate hospital staff on the dynamics and cycle of domestic violence; second, teach hospital staff to recognize the signs of domestic violence and to recognize any behavior or attitudes in both a personal or professional setting that may contribute to or perpetuate the cycle of domestic violence-like victim blaming; third, teach domestic violence and child abuse prevention awareness in childbirth education classes; fourth, provide resource material for patients who are victims of domestic violence; fifth, work with the business community to provide the resources necessary to help the victim, the perpetrator and the children, such as safe houses, shelters, and treatment centers for the perpetrators; and finally, focus on healing the victim and the family as a whole-these people need to be treated, healed physically, mentally and spiritually; and that will come through compassion and care by hospital staff working in conjunction with clergy and other professionals dealing with family violence. Intervention The 1993 First Comprehensive National Health Survey of American Women report portrays the pervasiveness of violence in American homes: On average, every 9 seconds a woman is battered and almost 4 million women were physically abused by their husbands or boyfriends in 1993 alone. Children are casualties in violence's wake as well: 3.8 million children witness their mothers being beaten; 50% of these batterers also physically abuse their children; 45-50% of the families investigated for child abuse and/or neglect contain a battered woman. It is estimated that 55,000 Utah women are abused by an intimate partner, over 144,000 Utah children live in homes where their parents hurt each other. Children who witness abuse are more likely to attempt suicide, to abuse drugs and alcohol, to run away from home, to engage in teenage prostitution, and other delinquent behavior, and to commit sexual assault crimes (Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Dept.of Youth Services, 1995). Sixty-three percent of all males between the ages 11 and 20 who are doing time for homicide in America killed their mother's batterer (Acherman, 1985). If health care providers, law enforcement, prosecutors and judges don't intervene in the cycle of 2 Impact of Domestic Violence |
