Author visiting Omaha says domestic violence goes beyond physical bruises

OMAHA — Supporters of a Nebraska nonprofit providing legal help to people in need are set to hear from an author and investigative reporter whose work emphasizes that domestic violence is broader than bruises and broken bones.

Rachel Louise Snyder, who is headlining Legal Aid of Nebraska’s luncheon fundraiser Thursday in Omaha, spoke this week with the Nebraska Examiner about her work probing abuse and the message she wants the public to remember.

“This idea that domestic partner violence is something that requires a physical injury is wrong,” she said.

The most common forms of domestic violence today involve efforts to coerce and control a romantic partner, Snyder said. This often includes threats to adults, children, pets and finances that get someone to do something they otherwise would not.

That is why she called her 2019 book, “No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us.” She said she wants friends and neighbors confronting domestic abuse to leave room for the kinds of abuse that are harder to notice.

She cited the example of a husband who controlled his wife by taking their children on unscheduled overnight trips after threatening to harm them. Other abusers trap partners with threats to drain bank accounts or cancel credit cards.

“One got a rattlesnake and a cage and said he’d put it in her bed while she slept if she didn’t do what he wanted,” she said.

Most states, including Nebraska, are ill-prepared to help abuse survivors confront this “intimate terrorism,” as she calls it. California, Connecticut and New York have outlawed coercive control. Maryland and Pennsylvania are considering bills. 

She welcomes changes to the law, but she said other parts of the support system confronting domestic violence need to improve, including training and increased public awareness, to help partners seek justice for more forms of domestic violence.

“You can pass a law, but unless you have the requisite community buy-in and you have the supports in place to train the police and the judiciary, it doesn’t matter,” Snyder said.

States like Nebraska can take small steps to make life safer for survivors of domestic violence, she said, including buying the abused some time to get help by keeping suspected abusers jailed at least three hours after they are arrested.

“This will cost a jurisdiction nothing,” she said. “But it will give people enough time to get to a shelter, do a danger assessment, maybe even change the locks on the house.”

When financial entanglements like leases and mortgages give abusers a cudgel, she said, she hopes Legal Aid supporters know that access to a good lawyer “can be the difference between someone being free and someone being terrorized.”

She mentioned the case of Hailey Christiansen, the 29-year-old Norfolk, Nebraska, woman who was murdered by her abuser. He had received none of the treatment he was required to receive in prison, the Flatwater Free Press has reported.

Treatment of abusers is needed, too, she said, and that could require investment from the state. 

Snyder said she was encouraged to hear that Nebraska is starting its own fatality review team that will bring together hospitals, advocates, police departments and judges in cases involving suspected domestic abuse. Two decades ago, Montana started something similar, she said, and it helped.

Getting better at confronting and preventing domestic violence starts with getting better at identifying its role in many of the worst issues society faces, she said, from gang violence and mass shootings to sexual assaults.

Advocates, police, prosecutors and judges, she said, must see abuse as “a driver of community violence,” not “something that is a private matter.” The goal, she said, should be to prevent violence, not just to stop it after it happens.