The big cop kicked in the door to the tiny concrete block house, but it partially was blocked by a woman lying on the filthy floor inside, bleeding from a cut on her face. Her nose obviously broken; her eyes were swelling shut. She could only moan. The house reeked of booze and bleach and something burning on the stove.
We squeezed through the narrow opening only to find two terrified girls in dirty, faded print dresses, faces splotched from being slapped, huddled against a far wall. They were gasping and sobbing. Between us and them was a scrawny piece of trash in a grimy T-shirt, stinking of cheap aftershave and promising to kill us both. He said it like he meant it, so drunk he could barely stand up.
"They made me," he said waving his arm toward the woman, "They made me." He had a kitchen knife in his hand, and the cop whacked him hard with a nightstick -- not nearly hard enough, in my view -- and that was that.
The man -- and I'm using that term loosely -- was bleeding, too, from cuts and abrasions he sustained while beating the woman and the girls. He had a tattoo of a heart on his forearm. A heart. As if this slobbering, sweating garbage once had loved somebody.
Dinner, it turned out, was not to his satisfaction, and the skinny little girls, the oldest perhaps 8, would not be quiet. The three, he said as he smoked a cigarette outside, were not showing respect. Men needed to keep their women in line. He had told the cops that the last time they came, he said. This time he went to prison.
I wondered aloud later, "What do you suppose would have happened if we had showed up a few minutes later?" The cop looked at me a second and said, "He would have passed out or ..." he made a slitting motion across his throat. In the years to come, as a reporter, I would see that ending, too. Murder by knife or stereo speaker or cast iron skillet or gun or knife or whatever happened to be at hand. Domestic violence was always messy. Support or help for victims was almost non-existent in those days, and, too often, the abuser was left in the home. It was heartbreaking.
Over time, I noticed a common thread. Booze and drugs. They were gasoline on the spark caused by economic problems or marital woes or whatever today's trigger might be. The violence cut across all strata of society. The victims were male or female and young or old. I always wondered how many of the kids would grow up to be abusers.
As bad as it was, it seemingly has gotten worse, and Alaska, it turns out, leads the nation, per capita, in domestic violence. The Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault says a survey over a 24-hour period last year by Alaska's 18 domestic violence programs showed they served 467 victims in single day; 307 domestic violence victims were housed in emergency shelters or transitional housing; 160 adults and children received non-residential assistance; and 80 hotline calls were answered. All of that was in a single day.
In addition to the human costs, domestic violence's economic price tag is staggering. It costs business and the justice and health care systems, by some estimates, more than $125 billion annually.
It is hard sometimes to agree with Gov. Sean Parnell. It is hard not to wonder why he acted as a place-keeper for the first two years he was governor after Sarah Palin bailed out, putting Alaska two years behind on fixing things such as oil taxes, but it is easy to agree with his efforts to curb domestic violence. There is no doubt Parnell, whose grandfather was an abusive alcoholic, is doing the absolute right thing in taking on domestic violence and abuse.
He says he wants to fund more Village Public Safety Officers, beef up the Alaska State Troopers and add support for victims. He is committed to a "systematic approach."
Maybe I saw the gritty aftermath of too much domestic violence to believe there is a magic bullet to end the problem. Maybe Parnell's systematic approach will work. Maybe it won't. But not having a better idea, I think we all should get behind him on this one.
Or build more prisons.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDaily Planet.com.
PAUL JENKINS
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