40 Years Later, Domestic Violence ​“An Epidemic”

Unesha Ecton said she never considered herself a typical domestic violence victim. In fact, she never considered herself a victim at all. She often fought back against her abuser — and she has the arrest record to prove it.

Ecton said she was trying to protect herself and her child from a man who refused to leave her house. A man, Ecton said, who would break into her house and keep her from using her cell phone to call the police. The police arrested her for assault.

When she turned to traditional systems like the courts for help, she said, she was deemed the problem.

“Nobody helped,” she said.

Evan Stark, a professor emeritus at Rutgers University and longtime advocate for victims of domestic violence, said stories like Ecton’s shouldn’t be happening in the 21st century.

Stark said that a City Hall press conference Tuesday called to mark Domestic Violence Awareness Month, in the hope that stories like Ecton’s become less common.

Forty years ago, Connecticut was a forerunner in the fight against domestic violence. Stark said the state has since fallen behind in creating laws that lock up abusers and provide resources to victims. Stark helped start the first shelter in New Haven for victims of domestic violence.

“It is embarrassing that the shelter that we started no longer exists,” Stark said at the press event. Other participants included Mayor Toni Harp along with other advocates for victims of domestic violence.

Stark said all too often courts send conflicting messages by ordering an abused mother to keep her and her child away from the abuser, and then charging the mother if she denies visitation rights to the abuser.

Other states have toughened their laws dealing with chronic domestic violence, stalking and sexual assault, rightly recognizing domestic violence as a way to oppress women and keep them from exercising their basic human rights, Stark said. Meanwhile, Connecticut has stagnated.

“In Connecticut, the crime of domestic violence is still treated as a second-class misdemeanor,” he said. ​“A man who commits 50 domestic violence crimes is treated no different from a man that commits one.”

Harp called domestic violence an epidemic. Cases regularly fills local jail cells. Harp, a former state senator, said the state must continue to update its laws to protect victims.

“Domestic violence spurs crime in ways that we don’t often think of,” she said.

Cheryl Dargento said it took her many years to get out of an abusive relationship, and she knows she could not have done it, or sustained her independence from her abuser, without the help of many of the agencies that exist in New Haven. But more is needed.

“Without help, we can’t do that,” she said of developing the courage to leave an abusive relationship. ​“We need more support.”

“They,” she said of the agencies represented at the press conference, ​“need more resources.”

Paola Serrecchia, chair of the Connecticut Domestic Violence Collaborative and the Greater New Haven Domestic Violence Task Force, urged the public to not turn away when they see someone being abused.