Peterson's media entourage should emphasize all domestic violence

It's not about Drew.

Oh sure, Drew is the reason the dozen TV cameras and microphones are waiting outside the Will County Courthouse in Joliet practically as soon as the sun comes up Monday. The questions reporters shout at lawyers refer simply to Drew, no last name needed. Everybody knows Drew Peterson.

"He's fine. He's rolling with the punches," Joel Brodsky, Peterson's defense attorney, assures a couple dozen media members.

Celebrity, if that's what the wisecracking, interview-granting murder suspect is, isn't what it used to be.

"Who cares about his mood?" Vickie Smith, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence, offers gently. "Everybody deserves a day in court, but why do we focus on his mood?... He seems to be doing very well at feeding the media."

We media types are the ones who told you how Peterson joked about how he should have "returned those library books" when he was led away in the handcuffs, which he called "bling." We tell you when the 55-year-old murder suspect appears on a TV talk show and when he's got a new girlfriend. Even today's column gives Peterson publicity not granted the myriad mopes accused of domestic violence every week in our suburban courts.

When a member of the media asks a line of people waiting for the courthouse to open if anyone is here to see Peterson, one woman grumbles, "That's the last person I'd want to see. I don't want to give him his celebrity or add to his celebrity status."

Peterson, a retired Bolingbrook police officer, didn't become a household name until 2007, when the mysterious disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, led officials to reinvestigate the 2004 bathtub-drowning death of wife No. 3, Kathleen Savio, whom Peterson is now charged with killing.

"When I went to the funeral, he laughed and joked in the back," recalls Henry Savio, father of Kathleen Savio. "You think he'd have some heart."

Some Savio family members say Peterson waved and smiled at them Monday as he pleaded not guilty to killing their loved one. Another relative saw just the opposite.

"I've seen him walking around for a year with that smug smirk," Savio's niece, Melissa Doman, tells the media. "Now, the smug smirk is gone."

I didn't see Peterson taunt or wave to people in the court, but I wouldn't say that smug smirk has vanished, either. What I don't understand is why that seems to be the most important part of this story.

One woman is dead, and another is missing, and we wait for smirks, quips and mood updates. "It's not funny," concludes Smith of the domestic violence coalition, which serves victims in 54 programs across the state. Peterson has been married four times, and two of his wives from turbulent relationships are no longer around.

Whether he's responsible for that or not, "that's the story that needs to be told" about domestic violence, Smith says.

"These guys don't just pop out of the woodwork. These guys have a history," she says.

It's important to remember that Peterson is charged only in the death of Savio and he has pleaded not guilty. Charges have never been brought in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.

Still, throughout the long media circus that has followed his story, he has been known for a jovial, cocky attitude. Smith says that kind of attitude in the world of wife-beaters and batterers is "not that unusual."

"They often are very sure it's not their fault. It's someone else's fault," she says.

She's seen enough cases to have picked up some generalities.

"We have 60,000 orders of protection issued in Illinois every year," she says. "What finally ends up in our court system has been going on before that."

If a neighbor got mad and threw a punch, kept you from leaving your house or threatened you every day, you wouldn't put up with that for six months; you'd call 911 immediately. It's not so simple with domestic violence.

"We don't think about it in the same way," Smith says. "It's not about people fighting. It's about one person who wants control over the other person."

People often say that could never happen to them; they blame the victim for not escaping a bad situation before it turns deadly.

"The reality is we don't know what we'd do in that situation," Smith says.

About 95 percent of the victims helped by the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence are women. One in four women will be a victim of domestic violence at some point in their lives, Smith says.

"If you look at batterers, what you can find sometimes is that no matter who they are in a relationship with, they batter," Smith says. "There may be a victim out there who is recognizing their partner is like that."

She's hoping the publicity we in the media give Peterson might lead domestic violence victims to recognize the dangers of abusive relationships. She urges people to visit ilcadv.org for more information or places that offer help. Most of the women that get help are poor, but domestic violence knows no economic barriers.

"We are challenged in reaching our middle- and upper-class victims of domestic violence," Smith says, noting the suburbs have many silent victims. "A lot of that is embarrassment and fear of repercussion from the community."

Maybe the attention given to Peterson can remedy that situation. When it comes to not showing any embarrassment, Peterson could be the poster boy.