ECTOR COUNTY, Texas — Domestic violence is an issue that hundreds of people face, and places like the Crisis Center of West Texas are working to combat it.
"[In 2018] 174 individuals lost their lives due to domestic violence in the state of Texas, which is actually the deadliest number in the past decade,” said Lauren Thompson, Director of Client Services for the Crisis Center of West Texas.
Which is exactly why the Lethality Assessment Program came straight to Ector County.
“The trend that we were seeing is that the majority of victims that were coming through our doors had not reported to law-enforcement because of intimidation by their abuser," said Thompson.
"They were just afraid to kind of to reach out. So they were coming to us for services and not reporting to law-enforcement so we noticed that a lot of the victims that were reporting to law enforcement we’re not getting to our services."
The crisis center is working to reach a demographic they once struggled to get a hold of.
“LAP went live in March actually one week from today. We’ve already received 17 LAP calls just from the time that it went live last week to the day. In February on average we were getting three calls a day and just in the first 11 days of March in addition to LAP calls, we’ve seen a spike and we’re now averaging six calls a day,” said Thompson.
That’s already double the average amount of victims getting the help they really need.
“One of the important things in addition to connecting victims with services, is educating victims on the fact that there’s a high chance that they could be murdered by their intimate partner,” said Thompson.
Thompson says on average a woman will go back to her abuser seven times before she officially decides to leave, and that’s always the most dangerous time.
“It’s very rewarding in the sense that we are now able to reach victims that we weren’t able to before. But we’re able to explain to them the severity of their situation. These calls that we get are the severe of the most severe. These are the victims that are screening in high danger,” said Thompson.
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