Violence & Justice

On September 20, 2011, Rafael Zarate slipped an eight-inch kitchen knife into his boot and walked into the restaurant where his ex-girlfriend was just beginning her shift.

Victims of stabbings and shootings, usually gang-related, are often followed to the hospital by friends and relatives planning retaliation on behalf of the victim.

Retaliatory violence creates a vicious cycle, revealed starkly in hospital statistics. Within five years, 17 to 20 percent of victims will be readmitted to the hospital and won’t survive.

A growing network of hospitals and community organizations across the country are sending streetwise mentors to the hospital bedsides of youth with violent injuries.

Native American women face a 2 in 5 chance of experiencing some form of intimate partner violence in their lifetime. In most of these cases – 86 percent – the perpetrator of the violence will be non-Native. These statistics, based on federal data, reflect a rate of violence against Native American women far greater than that experienced by any other ethnic group in the U.S.

Nestled in central California and flanked by the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, Tulare County is sometimes called the Appalachia of the West. It is home to the giant Sequoia trees; Mount Whitney towers over the county’s eastern edge. It’s also one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the state.

Most workplaces (70 percent) do not have a formal policy or program to address violence, let alone domestic violence specifically, despite a survey indicating that 44 percent of adult employees reported personally experiencing the effects of domestic violence in their workplace.

Chanel, a petite African American woman with sleek hair and hazel eyes, trembles as she remembers the last time her husband beat her. He struck her with one chair and then another. “They broke on my body as I tried to hide my face…. When I went to the hospital, I thought, Now’s my chance. I’ve got to go. I’ve got to save me and my kids.”

In the foothills of the Pajaro Valley, dozens of nursery workers dressed in jeans and work boots file into a warehouse. It’s just past lunchtime on a weekday. Normally the workers would be heading back to the white-tented greenhouses to tend to the broccoli, chard and kale shoots that grow from nursery flats, but today they are attending the final presentation of Speedling Incorporated’s Safety Week, a workshop on sexual harassment and assault.

Terra Slavin first walked into a domestic violence shelter when she was 16. In some ways, she never left.

She was there as a volunteer, but she had no idea at the time that the experience would help determine her calling.