EDITORIAL: Fresno's domestic violence problem is overwhelming. But we must confront and solve it

May 27--"We are overwhelmed by domestic violence."

Those words, spoken by Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer, aptly summed up the key point of a three-day series by Bee staff writer Barbara Anderson. Called "Broken Bodies, Broken Hearts," the series told in numbing detail how widespread, prevalent and insidious the problem of domestic violence is in Fresno.

What spurred Anderson were six murders last year of women by their husbands or partners. But go behind that grisly number a bit and one finds that thousands of women are emotionally bruised and physically battered every year in the city.

Domestic violence is not limited to neighborhoods where low-income or undereducated people live. It is an equal-opportunity crime, spanning the whole of the city and involving every race, ethnicity and religion. While many violent crime categories declined in 2017, domestic violence jumped by double digits. It so alarms Dyer that he has made arresting domestic violence suspects and rescuing their victims one of his department's top goals this year.

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Charity DePina was 22 when she was killed. Now we will never get to enjoy her bubbly personality. Another young women of promise was Rocio Medina Gomez, a 21-year-old with budding computer skills. Who knows what technological wizardry she might have achieved; her former boyfriend allegedly stabbed her to death. Martha Garcia had been married for more than 40 years and had two adult children. But her relationship to her husband soured and she sought a divorce. He tracked her down to St. Alphonsus Church and shot her in the parking lot before he killed himself.

In 2017, nearly 5,200 calls about domestic violence were made to local authorities. That's about 14 a day. The rate of calls in Fresno is nearly twice that of similarly sized cities, such as Bakersfield, Sacramento, Riverside, Long Beach and San Francisco. Fresno, the state's fifth-largest city, had the highest rate of calls of the 10 biggest cities in California in 2016.

The city is indeed overwhelmed by a crime that, due to stigma, and sometimes cultural and religious reasons, remains largely hidden from public view. Most incidents are not reported, meaning the statistics that exist don't nearly tell the story. But one group sees the problem firsthand through the safe houses it operates.

Nicole Linder is executive director of the Marjaree Mason Center, which operates safe houses in Fresno and Clovis for women and children to escape to from an abuser. Last year MMC helped 5,700 adults and children through the safe houses and its other programs, like counseling.

In large measure, the Fresno community has delegated the domestic violence issue to Marjaree Mason. It needs greater financial support to carry out its mission. Given the breadth of the problem, we call on local and state officials to seek new monies for MMC.

MMC's immediate need is to find $224,000 it lost in federal funds when the focus shifted away from transitional housing. That directly impacted the center's program at its Fresno safe house.

Beyond that, new funding for another safe house would greatly help, Linder says. Her agency needs about $300,000 a year to operate such a secure facility around the clock, as it does at the existing homes. Most of the funding for that comes from grants that Marjaree Mason receives.

But getting another safe house does not address the problem of domestic violence in a big enough way, Linder says.

"Domestic violence is so massive a problem, and so widespread, no one organization can take care of all the issues involved," she said.

What is needed is a focused, unified effort by the spectrum of nonprofits that deal with family issues, plus government counterparts like the police, the district attorney and the courts.

Linder said that kind of movement is occurring now on the problem of human trafficking. "Likewise, we have to do the same with domestic violence," she said.

Groups that specialize in creating housing, for example, could take the lead on establishing new safe houses.

Schools play a key role. Linder noted that some instruction about healthy relationships occurs in high school health classes. But such instruction is not required, and ideally such lessons should be taught starting in middle school, when interest in dating begins.

Such teaching might have saved Charity DePina.

The young woman from Merced thought she had found love with her Fresno boyfriend. But Gabriel Salvador Salinas would take her from her home to Fresno for days at a time. Her aunt, Anita Iniguez, remembers DePina texting that Salinas was beating her.

Iniguez said she called DePina's social worker, church and mentors for help. The answer was always the same: As an adult, DePina had to choose to leave Salinas.

But Iniguez said her niece was autistic, and had the mentality of a young girl.

"It's like talking to a 7-year-old girl and luring her into a van with candy. She's slow and disabled. That guy picked her out like a predator."

Iniguez wants to create a "Charity's Law" that would let family members intervene on the behalf of a mentally or emotionally disabled relative.

DePina was killed last November. Iniguez thinks of her every day. "I feel like I still have to talk about this and do more. This needs to be prevented."

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