Full Scope of Domestic Violence An Unknown

New Canaan Police logged 94 family dispute calls in 2009. None came from the Farren household.

Before the night of Jan. 6 when J. Michael Farren allegedly tried to kill his wife, police had not gotten any calls from the house on Wahackme Road reporting domestic violence or abuse. Later in affidavits, Farren's wife said the emotional and verbal abuse had been going on for years. Farren was back in court today as laywers argued over how much of his assets should remain frozen while his wife's civil suit for damages is pending—the outcome has implications for his ability to make bail.

Officer Michael O'Sullivan, Domestic Violence Coordinator for the New Canaan Police, says most of the cases he deals with each month (which include fights between parents and children, and siblings, as well as couples) involve people he's never met before, and he's sure there's more in abusive situations who have yet to come forward.

"They're working on building up that confidence to make that call, to come through that front door," he said.

Efforts to empower more to get help has paid off. The local domestic violence center has handled a significant jump in cases over the past five years. The New Canaan caseload of the Domestic Violence Crisis Center, which also serves surrounding Fairfield County towns, has nearly tripled between 2005 and 2009, from 29 cases to 81.

Experts say that, in part, that's a good thing. Police often don't get called until a fist is thrown, so if the DVCC is seeing more cases, that's an indication more abuse suffers are coming forward before a situation escalates into physical violence. 

"The number of families using DVCC this year, that's success,"said Lt. Fred Pickering. "The problem is exactly the same as it's always been, but... people are finding other avenues to find help."

But here where the lawns are vast and the fences are high, "People fight in private," said Rachelle Kucera Mehra, Executive Director of DVCC, which serves New Canaan and other towns in southern Fairfield County.

"We don't have a lot of New Canaan cases, but more are serious. She thinks she can manage this."

The abuse can start as simply as with a husband telling a wife when to pick up the kids or what to wear to a party, then with him controlling every credit card and checkbook, before leading to isolation and threats.

"It comes to the point of serious assaults," Kucera Mehra said.

When Pickering became the Police Department's first domestic violence coordinator seven years ago, almost no one in New Canaan knew that they could reach out to the DVCC as an alternative or complement to law enforcement for comprehensive services from safehouses to counseling to legal help with divorces and protective orders.

At the time, police themselves had a very limited handle on the scope of abuse here.

"We weren't always logging domestic violence calls as domestic violence calls," Pickering said. "The first thing in house was to come up with statistics."

The first tally in 2002 showed 100 family dispute cases.

In the spring of 2003 New Canaan resident Dede Barlett, who was then chair of the National Domestic Violence Hotline advisory board, persuaded the hotline's director to give a talk here.

"I invited everyone I knew and invited the chief of police," Barlett said. The event was front page news in the New Canaan Advertiser. "That was a watershed."

Shortly thereafter, Barlett recounts, the police chief told her that abuse victims were starting to call.

In March 2004, New Canaan's Domestic Violence Partnership met for the first time, with representatives from Police, the Ambulance Corps, Human Services, small businesses, and local churches. The group organized to bring speakers into town for "Domestic Violence 101 Sessions" and tie purple ribbons around the trees along Elm and Main streets to mark Domestic Violence Awareness Month (which will be held in May this year, instead of October as in past years).

With increased awareness came more calls to police. By 2005, the number of cases logged by the cops hit a high of 186.

"In the beginning, our goal [was] to see the number of calls go up," Pickering said. "It's happening whether they call the police or not... I totally attribute that spike to educating the public—that was the 3 years of us saying the police want to help you, please call us."

And the police had started treating family dispute cases with greater care.

Initially, if a suspected perpetrator had to be tracked down because, for example, he had fled the scene of an attack or had violated a protective order by contacting his subject by phone or e-mail, officers might take three to five days to secure an arrest warrant. Now, Pickering says now the turnaround is usually within 24 hours, with officers sometimes staying on after their shift is over to make sure the paperwork gets filed.

And, with both parties involved in an incident often showing bruises, New Canaan used to have a very high dual arrest rate—in 2002 police arrested the victim along with the aggressor more than 40 percent of the time.

"I guarantee there's people in the community that will never call the police again," said Pickering of the impact of victims being arrested.

While Connecticut's legislature considered changing the law to mandate more discretion, New Canaan officers began on its own initiative to take self-defense into account when determining who to arrest following a family dispute call. The dual arrest rate is now in single digits locally.

The DVCC helped lobby for a docket at Norwalk Court, where most New Canaan cases are heard, listing the domestic violence cases (such a docket was already in existence at Stamford Court), making it easier for police to keep track as they moved through the courts.

"Say I see a name, and I've dealt with the name before... I can contact the State's Attorney's office," said Officer O'Sullivan, indicating that he may be prompted by the docket to suggest alternative recourse be used against repeat offender.

"We're pretty cutting edge in Connecticut," O'Sullivan said. "A lot of departments don't have a dedicated officer following up with each case... It could be one of the factors that cut down on recidivism."

New Canaan's Human Services Department is keeping an eye on domestic violence cases too. After Human Services gets a report from police, social worker Jacqueline D'Louhy reaches out to make sure the victim is connected to the appropriate help, often referring them to the DVCC.

"What I'm most interested in providing is if they're not already in counseling, that that happens," D'Louhy said. "You cannot help yourself and provide for your children if you're not doing ok."

D'Louhy says about about a third of those she makes contact with utilize Human Services for ongoing assistance.

"It's more crisis management and case management... but they [do] sit in my office and there's Kleenex," she said, explaining how a shoulder to cry on comes with applications for aid like camp scholarships or getting an energy bill paid.