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Home > Blogs > West Chester News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > June > 13 > Entry
Hiding in plain sight
It’s a cliche’ title, but probably the best I can think of to describe it:
In March, a 15-year-old juvenile allegedly hit her grandmother with the base of a telephone, then threatened more harm if the older woman tried to leave. The granddaughter was charged with domestic violence and abduction.
That same month, a 33-year-old man hit his ex-wife with his car during an argument. He was charged with felonious assault and domestic violence.
In May, a woman reported her boyfriend kicked her in the chest and blackened her eye. Later that month, another woman reported getting shoved out of a chair and her fingers slammed in a door.
These all happened in West Chester Twp, to township residents. I have more.
I’ve been keeping track of domestic violence reports over the past several months. They don’t show up in The Pulse-Journal’s police blotter, a decision made long ago by someone higher up than this lowly reporter.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen around here.
Next week, I’m covering the trial of Terrance Candidate, a township man who is accused of holding his ex-girlfriend’s family captive, stabbing her father, then stealing her car. He faces decades in prison for what he did in April.
You may recognize Candidate’s name. He was one of the inmates implicated in an escape attempt at Butler County Jail a few weeks ago. His name rang a bell with me for another reason, though.
Back in October, one of the first domestic violence reports I noted in my files involved a man who forced his way into his girlfriend’s car, threatened her with a box cutter and forced her to drive him to a location in the township. She suffered bruises in the incident, and he went to jail on a domestic violence charge.
Candidate was the perpetrator. The victim was the same woman whose family he attacked in April.
Would this have been a different series of events had the paper listed the first assault in our weekly police blotter? I don’t know, but I doubt it. The cynic in me says that domestic violence is one of those sticky, insidious problems that the kind of people who move to the suburbs for good schools and safe neighborhoods (the other great suburban myth; see this week’s Pulse-Journal) wouldn’t face up to, even if it was laid out on a platter in front of them.
I’ll write more about this subject this week, including the stats that made me - and should make you - a little more concerned about domestic violence in the community: state-wide, the number of DV-related calls to police have steadily dropped since 2004. But the number of deaths from domestic violence - women, children and occasionally men killed by those who they’re supposed to be able to trust the most - have gone up by a notable margin.
Think about that, and keep your eye on the website. This is a topic that needs discussion, whether it’s something we want to address or not.
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