PARIS – Local leaders ranging from police officers to high school guidance counselors gathered Wednesday to create a countywide task force that aims to stop domestic violence for good.
Paula Paladino, executive director for the Abused Women’s Advocacy Project, said, “We needed to have a coordinated county response to domestic violence. It has to be everyone together, rather than individual systems.”
In this spirit, district attorneys, social workers, therapists, nurses, school principals, judges and clergy were invited to the task force’s kickoff meeting in Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School. The task force plans to meet monthly to address a social scourge that hurts hundreds of families every year in the county.
Domestic abuse is a problem that affects not just the couple in the relationship, but their children if they have them, their employers, their colleagues and ultimately, even strangers, Attorney General Steven Rowe told the audience.
Employers need to help
Rowe declared that domestic abuse is costing the state millions of dollars. Early prevention would help people avoid being hobbled by abuse, allowing them a chance to achieve a better education and be more productive.
Rowe said he has reminded business leaders, “Even if you don’t have a heart, you have a pocketbook, and domestic abuse affects every part of the state.”
Employers need to create domestic-violence policies to support workers who are being abused, Rowe said. “The loss of human potential is terrific. Usually it is a she, and she takes it to work with her,” he said.
Holly Stover, regional manager of the Department of Health and Human Services, called domestic violence an epidemic.
“The leading cause of homicides in this state is domestic violence,” Stover said at the meeting. “Silence is the best friend of domestic violence. If the community does not get together to talk about it, we’re not going to have an impact on that.”
The cycle can continue
Stover, who lives in Boothbay Harbor, said her town responded to a double domestic-abuse homicide last year with a task force whose mission is to let residents live free of home violence. The group plans on reaching further into the community to alert dentists to look for signs of beatings, and to educate veterinarians. Stover said violent abusers can target pets as a means of intimidation.
Stover said everyone needs to pay attention to the devastating problem, which can repeat as children exposed to household violence end up adhering to the same patterns as adults.
“It’s not just a law-enforcement issue. It’s not just a social-services issue,” she said. “It’s not a poverty issue and it is not a mental-health issue. It is a learned behavior.”
And the problem touches all of us, Rowe said.
“We are only as strong as the weakest among us,” Rowe repeated the saying. “And only as rich as the poorest among us.”
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