Joining to fight family violence

If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a county to protect that child from violence in the home.

That's the theory behind the Illinois Family Violence Coordinating Councils, a statewide effort bringing together local agencies dealing with domestic violence to seek common solutions to a massive societal problem.

The council's newly formed McHenry County chapter had its public coming out party Wednesday with a symposium that drew a crowd of about 145, including judges, law enforcement officials, social workers, educators and clergy, to McHenry County College to discuss issues of domestic violence.

"I don't need to convince anyone here that we have issues with family violence in McHenry County," said Michael Sullivan, chief judge of the county's 22nd Judicial Circuit and chairman of the county's Family Violence Coordinating Council. "We all see the signs and effects of family violence in our professional and personal lives."

The public event, the McHenry County council's first since being launched earlier this year, was headlined by Lydia Walker, an author and nationally recognized expert on family violence issues.

Walker said common misconceptions about the causes of violence in the home -- from the Super Bowl to hot weather to hunting season -- are so prevalent that it impedes efforts to combat it.

The worst of those myths, Walker told the crowd, is that abusers are people who lose control.

"A lot of these myths sound funny, but they aren't so funny when they affect what we do to try to help people who are battered," she said.

Mary Batson, the McHenry County council's coordinator, said plans are for the symposium to become an annual event to bring together the various groups dealing with family violence issues.

"This is bringing all the players together so where there are gaps in services, where there are gaps in how people get help, we can get it solved," Batson said.

The council already is making its impact felt.

When its leaders learned McHenry County Court Services, the agency that oversees court-ordered probation in the county, did not receive timely reports when a protective order is granted against someone on probation, it worked with the McHenry County state's attorney's office to bring about a change. Now court services knows within days what it sometimes took months to learn.

In the months ahead, the council plans to provide training programs for police officers on dealing with incidents of family violence and to local educators on how to recognize signs of abuse in the home and their requirements to report it to state authorities.

"While we have made strides in our goal of eliminating family violence, we're really only at the beginning of this journey," Sullivan said.