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By Kenneth Passan, RN, FNC, BS

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New Family Justice Center Defines 'One-Stop Shop' Concept
By Kelly M. Pyrek

While the city of San Diego has seen a 75 percent reduction in domestic violence homicides since , City Attorney Casey Gwinn believes there's more to be done on the behalf of the approximate 25,000 victims in San Diego County who endure family violence annually; that is, to create a legal, law enforcement and medical super-center to better facilitate the needs of these individuals. For Gwinn the family man, it's a moral imperative. For Gwinn the advocate, it's the next step in a long career in which he has handled more than 10,000 domestic violence cases. For nine years prior to his election to city attorney in , Gwinn headed the San Diego City Attorney's Domestic Violence Unit (DVU), which was recognized by the Governor's Office of Criminal Justice Planning for its aggressive prosecution. He also was a founding member of the two-year San Diego Task Force on Domestic Violence that established protocols for prosecutors, members of law enforcement, military agencies, medical facilities and treatment providers. But something was still missing, and that's when Gwinn started formulating his vision of creating a one-stop shop of services for abuse victims, a natural extension of the current DVU.

"What's gotten us on the map is that we've had such a dramatic drop in domestic violence homicides through our strategy of coordinating a community response and bringing together experts in a coordinating council that worked the medical and social service issues," Gwinn says. "The vision I have had for 10 years is the idea of bringing everyone together in one location to provide those services."

Gwinn knew there was a link between the number of unreported cases of domestic violence and abuse and the unintentional wearing down of a victim when seeking assistance from multiple agencies. Statistics show approximately 25 percent of domestic violence cases is never reported, many times because sources of help are not readily known or because the process can be daunting. Gwinn says last year the city hired a respected researcher and domestic violence advocate to conduct an audit of the system. A portion of that audit was an assessment of how many places a victim had to go to get help. "We discovered that if you're a victim of family violence and you have to go to for medical services, law enforcement, legal services, advocacy, housing and employment, that individual was referred to 32 different places," Gwinn says. "That's 32 places where a victim has to tell his or her story when trying to get out of a violent and abusive situation."

"That empowered me to say the time for a one-stop shop is now," he continues. "Between Feb. 14 and April 9 we recruited support from almost every agency working in the field. Our mayor and city council voted unanimously to endorse Phase I of the San Diego Family Justice Center."

Gwinn explains that Phase I of this ambitious $2 million project, which opened late summer of this year, focuses on domestic violence while Phase II will bring in all services for child abuse, elder abuse and sexual assault services. The current build-out of 30,000 square feet in a leased building houses 120 domestic violence professionals, 40 San Diego Police Department detectives, 32 advocates, prosecutors and investigators from the city attorney's office, and 40 representatives from various organizations from the community. The $10 million-plus Phase II envisions the purchase and renovation of a specialized downtown facility that will allow the San Diego Family Justice Center to expand to 60,000 square feet in the next five years.

One of the most critical elements of the center is the forensic medical unit, staffed by a forensic nurse examiner a medical director who has medical doctor credentials, and a forensic evidence tech from the police department.

"To our knowledge, Phase I has only been done in one or two other places in the country, especially creating a forensic medical unit that is not in a hospital setting for victims needing forensic medical examinations and medical treatment," Gwinn says. "We've identified places where offsite forensic medical exams are conducted in child abuse cases and there are a few places doing forensic medical exams in hospital settings. We've had a dramatic drop in domestic violence homicides through our strategy of coordinating community response. We are creating an offsite medical facility as part of the justice center that will be under Grossmont Hospital/Sharp Healthcare certification and licensing. We anticipate the forensic medical unit to do forensic medical exams in child abuse and elder abuses cases as well as conduct sexual assault response team (SART) exams." says Gwinn, adding that about half of sexual assault cases are family violence related.

Municipalities such as Mesa, Ariz. and San Jose, Calif. are moving toward creating centralized, specialized services for domestic violence cases, but Gwinn says San Diego is one of the first to make a drawing-board dream of this magnitude a reality.

"We hope we are (setting a precedent)," Gwinn says. "We are getting inquiries nationally and from Australia and England, and even the military is looking at what we are doing."

Gwinn hopes this limelight will help the center's $10 million capital campaign that will begin raising funds to buy a building near the courthouse in downtown San Diego. "Ultimately, we want to house the courts -- family court, juvenile court and criminal court -- within the justice center to handle all child abuse, elder abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault cases. The economy being what it is, it's a bad time to raise money; however, we already have major corporate sponsorship and I'm optimistic. Seeing as I have the entire board of supervisors, the state Legislation, the entire city council on board, plus a lot of support from the business community, I know it's going to happen."

While the justice center concept could catch on quickly in other communities, there hasn't always been this degree of domestic violence awareness.

"We are representative of the process happening all over the country, however, domestic violence and abuse didn't become a major public issue until the late s," Gwinn comments. "The first federal funding of domestic violence programs came with the Violence Against Women Act in , but that included no money for medical services, just social services and law enforcement. That spurred further action. First you saw the battered women's movement in the mid- to late-s, then laws began to get passed and law enforcement come on board in the s. By the mid-s the American Medical Association became very involved in the issue; the association studied what trends ER visits revealed, and what family doctors, pediatricians and OB/GYN doctors were seeing related to domestic violence incidents. In the s most of the country focused on specialized prosecutors, detectives, judges, social services; people who were becoming experts in domestic violence issues. Specialized counsel for children who are victims of domestic violence sprung up, as did specialized counseling for batterers. Our center is the next logical step. If you create specialists in your system, it makes sense to have those specialists working together. E-mail's not good enough, voicemail's not good enough; we need to be eyeball to eyeball, doing case review together since we're all dealing with the same families. The woman going into the shelter also is applying for a restraining order and a week earlier was the same one who called 9-1-1- and her husband was arrested at her house ... every part of this entire system should be in the same place so we are moving in the same direction. There are a lot of places around the country where specialists exist but the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. We can't expect very effective intervention systems if we aren't all on the same page."

For more information, call Assistant City Attorney Gael Strack at .

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