This is the second of a series of stories WGLT will publish this week about domestic violence in McLean County. Read Part 1 now.
Domestic violence has escalated since the pandemic — and is becoming more violent. Domestic violence deaths more than doubled in Illinois in 2023. And in Bloomington-Normal, at least two women caught in cycles of domestic violence lost their lives in the past two years.
Police intervention can be one tool in disrupting domestic violence. Orders of protection are another. But it’s an imperfect system, sometimes with dire consequences.
“Every domestic battery is a ticking time bomb,” said DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin to the Chicago Tribune after a Villa Park man charged with domestic battery killed a woman and himself while released on electric monitoring awaiting trial. Cases in
McLean County also have turned fatal, in which multiple orders of protection failed to protect one Bloomington woman and another from Normal.
Interrupting cycles of abuse
According to national data, more than 90% of women killed through intimate partner violence had contact with police an average of six times in the three years prior to their death. In Bloomington and Normal, most of the calls patrol officers respond to are domestic disputes, police officials said. Normal Police responded to over 500 calls for domestic battery in 2023. From 1,900 domestic calls in 2023, Bloomington Police made 331 arrests.
Police say a high volume of calls is not necessarily cause for concern.
“I would be more worried if those numbers were extra low,” said Normal Police officer Brad Park, a department spokesperson with 22 years on the force. “With the number being high and being one of our highest types of calls for service … If the community is approachable and open to calling the police, I think that’s a good thing.”
When an abuser is charged, there’s an even greater chance cycles of abuse can be broken. If nothing else, it physically separates him from his victim.
“This is cyclical behavior,” said Suzanne Montoya, director of McLean County Court Services. “You have to understand that clientele and understand that kind of behavior to try to make change and work with them.”
The DV protocol
Prosecutors tend to push for probation or conditional discharge for offenders, reserving prison for those who are a clear danger to society, or have extensive criminal histories. In Illinois, an offender convicted of domestic violence must complete a domestic violence protocol in addition to standard provisions attached to other types of probation. In McLean County, 63 people are currently assigned a “DV protocol.”
"We can hold them accountable all day long, but when they have someone else telling them who has been in the same situation — that makes a world of difference."Cheryl Gaines, Collaborative Solutions in Bloomington
“They have 60 days to get a domestic violence evaluation done and start that process to get into treatment," said Autumn Rayne Sender, a specialized probation coordinator for McLean County who manages domestic violence cases.
Police and probation officers use a specialized tool called the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment [ODARA] to predict lethality and the likelihood an abuser will re-offend. ODARA considers victim statements collected by police and barriers to treatment, like access to housing, shared children with the victim and language spoken. It also accounts for a rising number of women who are perpetrators of domestic violence.[In a WGLT investigation of more than 100 alleged protective order violations, six suspects were women.]
“Unfortunately, over time, some women are getting a lot more aggressive,” said Cheryl Gaines, who coordinates domestic violence treatment for Collaborative Solutions in Bloomington. The agency is one of two state-sanctioned providers of court-ordered 24-week education programs for domestic violence offenders. Bloomington-based Chestnut Health Systems is the other.
Collaborative Solutions has added a women’s group for female offenders. Since the pandemic, they hold all sessions virtually, enabling them to serve counties with no providers.
“When you court order somebody to do some kind of treatment, are they open to it?” said Rachel Sizemore, program manager for Mid Central Community Action’s Countering Domestic Violence program.
Some are, said Gaines.
“When people first come in, they’re mad,” she said. “They don’t want to come in. They ‘don’t need it.’”
As treatment continues, Gaines often witnesses have what she calls a “lightbulb moment.”
“And then they’re like a sponge,” she said. “You can just see it in their eyes. They want to learn and they’re really working hard.”
Gaines said the group setting helps many offenders open up. A select number also are assigned individual counseling.
“They have other people who are their peers and are holding them accountable,” she said. “We can hold them accountable all day long, but when they have someone else telling them, who has been in the same situation — that makes a world of difference.”
Trauma-informed care
Rather than cohorts, clients cycle in and out of the program on their own timelines, allowing newer participants to see those “lightbulb moments” happening to others in real time.
“In some of these groups, the men get comfortable enough with one another and they will actually talk about some of their history,” said Gaines. “They will talk about the sexual abuse and physical violence they endured — and cry like a baby. Just getting it out, finally, is so helpful to them.”
Gaines said the state’s required protocol isn’t therapeutic, but Collaborative Solutions infuses its program with principles from cognitive behavioral therapy.
Similarly, Sender said enforcing the court order is the “bare minimum” a probation officer does, but they take into account how cycles of abuse impact offenders, too.
“Regardless of their crime or why they’re on probation, we’re trying to help them,” she said. “We’re trying to provide them support and resources.”
Gaines said many offenders also have been victimized. Physical, psychological and emotional abuse can be learned behavior, passed down through generations. Children who are abused and/or exposed to domestic violence demonstrate a higher likelihood of abusive behaviors as teens and adults.
“The dynamics in these families are pretty toxic,” Gaines said. “That’s one of the things we try to work on. Because otherwise, we’re going to be in that same cycle forever.”
“A lot of times, it comes down to their basic needs being met, too,” said Sender. “We meet them where they’re at. That’s where we start. If they’re homeless, have a substance use issue, are struggling with depression — that’s where we’re starting because that stuff builds up. If their coping mechanism is violence and they don’t know how to handle their emotions, frustrations or identifying toxicity in a relationship, that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Measuring success
Curative interventions are tough to generalize and difficult to measure.
“I wouldn’t say there’s ever any ‘run of the mill’ type of domestic call,” said Park from Normal Police. “They’re all so different. They’re so many different dynamics.”
Recidivism can be equally hard to gauge since many domestic incidents aren’t reported to police. Sender measures success in more intangible ways.
“It’s less about numbers or how many boxes were checked,” Sender said. “Are they holding down a job? Do they have stable housing? If they’re looking like their mug shot on the worst day ever … hopefully, the idea is we’re going up from there.”
Assistant State’s Attorneys Emily Young and Ashley Scarborough screen domestic violence cases for McLean County and note the inevitability of seeing offenders cross their desks again and again. But they remain hopeful and are committed to reducing the stigma that keeps victims from reporting their abusers’ crimes.
“It’s time we say we’re done tolerating it,” said Scarborough. “To be done tolerating it, we have to start talking about it.”
Room for improvement
Multiple people interviewed for this story point to the late 1990s as an inflection point for McLean County.
Grant support from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority in 1998 funded two full-time sheriff’s deputies devoted to domestic cases. The same year, the county added two probation officers and an additional assistant state’s attorney specializing in domestic violence through a $489,000 federal grant. The grant included money earmarked for police overtime, including officers who appeared in court.
Gaines said social workers did ride-alongs with police responding to domestic violence calls. Judges saw all DV cases on a single weekday, she said, allowing advocates to consistently attend hearings. Counselors had jail access to begin treatment immediately. According to managing attorney Adrian Barr, Prairie State Legal Services got a grant in 2018 to hire an additional attorney to handle orders of protection.
Agencies have attempted to keep these structures in place when grant money dried up. The county’s Coordinated Community Response Team [CCRT] meets quarterly, formed when Mary Koll, now a judge, was a domestic violence screener in the state’s attorney’s office. And professionals working within the system all say, compared with other Illinois counties, McLean County is ahead of the curve.
“We have kept it going in probation,” said Montoya, who was a domestic violence probation officer at the time. “[Sender] has revamped the domestic violence phasing probation and taking it back to what we were doing in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. I’m not generally an advocate of going backwards, but a lot of the concepts we were using back then made a lot of sense with that population.”
Challenges remain.
Sender and Gaines want to see more treatment providers and reduced wait times. Sizemore and Gaines think interagency collaboration could be better. The statewide attorney shortage is particularly dire in downstate Illinois. State’s Attorney Erika Reynolds wants to see better and earlier education about what healthy relationships look like for youth and teens.
“If we work at it in the right way, we can cut down on some serious, serious injuries, and even some deaths,” said Gaines. “We can’t fix it all. All of us put together can’t keep somebody from doing something. But we can at least try.”
Sizemore said those working in domestic violence do so for a reason. Many are survivors, too.
“Do I think our work will ever be done? No,” said Sizemore. “But we can make a big difference in people’s lives. That’s what, I think, keeps all of us going.”
Coming Thursday: What does it take for victims to advocate for themselves? WGLT talks to domestic violence survivors and advocates about how to navigate the system.
