Hall Monitor

Both Portland City Council and the Multnomah County Board of
Commissioners approved funds last week to open a new one-stop
domestic violence center in East Portland, hopefully by next
February. A shocking 28,000 people experience domestic violence in
Multnomah County each year, said City Commissioner Dan Saltzman,
announcing the city’s acceptance of a $300,000 federal grant on
Wednesday, October 21.

“Currently in the Portland area, resources are scattered,” he said.
“Victims of domestic violence, often with kids in tow, must travel to
different locations, and this makes for an overwhelming,
time-consuming, difficult-to-navigate process.”

The new facility, at 102nd and East Burnside, will have a
receptionist behind bullet-proof glass and a security guard on
duty at all times. The city contributed money in last year’s budget
toward the center, and Multnomah County has donated a lease on the
building. Since 2001, 40 similar centers have opened across the
country. The center will also provide an access point for restraining
orders.

Deputy District Attorney Rod Underhill said many of the
murder scenes he has visited over the years have been domestic-violence
related. “When the dust would settle and we would move on from those
scenes, we would talk about the gaps that allowed these things
to happen, What can we do to make it so that we don’t have people
respond to those crime scenes and go through that process?

“It wasn’t through a lack of energy or desire or motivation, but
through a lack of resources,” Underhill continued.

“Knowing about the one-stop center would have given me a safe,
non-judgmental environment to learn about services available,”
said Terri Doyle, a survivor of domestic violence. “The center would
have let me know that my emotions, fears, and confusions were normal,
but most of all the center would have let me know that I was not
alone.”

There will also be facilities for children at the center—kids
are present in two-thirds of reported domestic violence cases, and 10
percent of the time a child places the 9-11 call for help.

The statistics associated with the new center are shocking, but I
couldn’t help wondering what’s taken us so long? If we were told two
years ago, for example, that a something was attacking 28,000 people a
year in this county, wouldn’t we have allocated millions of dollars to
fight the problem? I’m not against the center—merely saddened
that it’s taken us so long to get this far.