Civic leaders sound battering alert.

Byline: Bill Bishop The Register-Guard

Spurred by 11 deaths in six months linked to domestic violence in Lane County, more than 100 civic leaders called Wednesday for a comprehensive community response that reaches into workplaces, neighborhoods and homes.

They announced a public forum for next week to start finding solutions to what they call an epidemic.

"We are here today to plan for the eradication," said Kitty Piercy, chairwoman of the Lane County Commission on Children and Families.

The commission is helping organize a community forum Monday night to extend the violence prevention network.

"For more than a decade, local agencies have been improving the coordination of their response. It's time now to add neighborhood engagement," said Lane County Commissioner Anna Morrison, reading from a letter signed by commissioners and endorsed by nearly 200 agencies and people.

The letter urges victims of domestic violence to contact community hot lines dedicated to helping people be safe and escape abusive relationships. It also urges batterers to stop and seek help from local counseling programs that teach batterers how to change.

Mike Schell, a Springfield man who completed a yearlong local batterer intervention program run by Christians Addressing Family Abuse, told the gathering at the Hult Center that counseling helped him stop acting out of anger against his wife more than two years ago. The couple, now married for six years, have a young child.

"I had a hard time believing I was the problem," he said.

Batterers don't need to be told how bad they are, Schell said. Instead, they need to be taught how to react appropriately to situations that make them angry. For example, he said, he has learned to see his anger as an indicator that something is going wrong, just as a smoke detector indicates fire.

"You don't throw a smoke detector at a fire," he said. "They need to be taught how to do things right."

But domestic violence is more than a personal, spiritual and moral problem, said Dan Bryant, senior minister of Eugene First Christian Church and past president of the City Club of Eugene. Bryant told the gathering that the issue extends through workplaces, friendships and families to touch the entire community.

A 2001 City Club report on domestic violence in the workplace found homicide is the leading cause of death on the job among women and that one in eight women on the job are victims of domestic violence. One in three domestic violence victims turns to a co-worker for help, he said.

"Time at work may be the only time the victim is away from their abuser," Bryant said.

The report calls on employers to provide secure workplaces, adopt policies that assure victims that they won't lose their jobs while struggling to be safe and by educating all employees about how to respond to co-workers who disclose and seek support to survive domestic violence.

"Those in abusive relationships, either as the victim or the abuser, need to seek help. Those of us with friends, family members and colleagues in abusive relationships need to be more proactive in helping," Bryant said. "It is time that, as a society, we raise our awareness and lower our tolerance of domestic violence."

COMMUNITY FORUM

When: 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday

Where: Rogers Room of the Lane County Mental Health office, 2411 Martin Luther King Blvd. in Eugene