There was Melissa Brooks Batten, 36, shot by her estranged husband just a few days after he was served with a protection order; then he killed himself. There was Laura McQueen, 24, and her one-year-old son Dominic Blackburn, both beaten to death by Laura's boyfriend. Felicity Boonstra, 14, was killed by her mother's boyfriend after the boyfriend had shot and wounded the mother. Annemarie Wargacki, 37, lost her life from a bullet fired by her boyfriend. She was pregnant.
And there are more.
Since 1997, 775 people in Washington State have lost their lives in domestic violence fatalities. Of that number, 41 were children.
The sobering statistics come from a January 2011 report released by the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Entitled "Up to Us: Lessons Learned and Goals for Change," the report brought together 13 years of research which the coalition said showed that the legal system didn't do enough to keep victims safe. "It tells us we're falling short," said Kelly Starr, communications representative for the coalition.
What proved unique about the report, said Starr, was that it didn't merely look at the numbers of murders: It examined the lives of victims and murderers before the fatalities occurred. That provided a window into what really happens in domestically violent situations, she said.
The researchers -- a statewide group of some 600 people, including law enforcement personnel, judges, medical providers and advocates working to stop domestic violence -- studied 175 cases in depth. The group discovered, she said, that long before victims contacted police, many had told friends and family about the violence and controlling tactics. Legal interventions, Starr said, usually came too late in the process to help those suffering the abuse.
The report noted that in the studied cases, police had responded to 157 reports of domestic violence. Fewer than half of those incidents, however, led to the abuser being arrested. Only four percent of those arrested served their entire sentence.
Starr said the data came from a search of news reports, crime reports and vital statistics provided by public health departments. Yet the coalition believes the report's numbers under-represented the true number of domestic violence fatalities, since some deaths may be misclassified. Also, domestic violence deaths in same-sex relationships may be misreported, Starr said, while some child deaths may not be linked to domestic violence.
Along with the findings, the report laid out 11 goals to improve community response to the violence, including maximizing the effectiveness of domestic violence protection orders and increasing options for economic and housing stability for victims.
Even though reading about the deaths may be hard, Starr said that the report offered a great opportunity: In showing how poor responses had been in the past, it provided guidelines for better responses to domestic violence in the future. "We have to learn from the people who've lost their lives," said Starr.