Libby has high rate of domestic violence homicides

According to the Montana Domestic Violence Fatality Review Commission, more than a third of the intimate partner homicides committed in Northwest Montana since 2000 occurred in Libby.

“Since 2000 to now there have been five intimate partner homicides in Lincoln County,” Matt Dale of the Montana Department of Justice’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team said. “Those five homicides have taken the lives of eight individuals. Some of those were homicide, suicides. The last one occurred in 2012. The number of deaths stands out about Lincoln County, considering the size of the county. It’s rural and isolated geographically.”

Dale was in Libby Tuesday, July 28, to speak about the work of the Fatality Review Team and to help bring more awareness of the issue to Lincoln County.

“We as a review team review two domestic violence homicides among intimate partners a year,” Dale said. “We travel to where the incident occurred. We talk to family members and members of the community. We try to find out what went wrong. We look at what we could have done to prevent the incident. We build a timeline of events that led up to the casualty to look at events or warning signs. It’s a process of missed opportunities.”

Dale said that the majority of the deaths result when the victims are attempting to free themselves of the abusive relationship.

“Most of the killings are done by men,” he said. “Not all of them, but the majority of them. Most deaths are committed with a firearm, but not all of them. The woman is getting ready to leave the man and it results in her death. She may have tried to leave before, but her saying she’s going to leave now triggered something.”

Maggie Anderson of Lincoln County Unite for Youth and Barb Guthneck of Lincoln County Crisis Solutions helped bring Dale to Libby.

“We are looking to improve community health and wellbeing by connecting community leaders and working together,” Anderson said. “We had great representation of all community sectors at the presentation.”

Dale said he was impressed with the number of people that showed up for the presentation.

“Many of the community sectors that needed to be involved to make the situation here in Libby and Lincoln county were there,” Dale said. “So it was impressive. People responded to what they were hearing, instead of just listening to the presentation. They were engaged and asking questions.”

Guthneck said it’s important to get everybody in the community involved to figure out what the community needs.

“We need to bring everybody together so we can find out what the needs are so we can start making a difference,” she said.

Anderson said domestic violence is a complex issue that has an impact at every level within the community.

“With domestic violence there are so many layers to the issue,” she said. “Educators see it with the children. Health professionals see it in the emergency room. Law enforcement responds to the calls. We want to bring more awareness to the issue.”

Libby and Lincoln County currently has three organizations that domestic violence victims can reach out to. The Lincoln County Crisis Solutions is an emergency shelter and their hotline number is 406-293-3223. The Libby Community Interagencies is an emergency shelter and their hotline number is 877-493-7139. The Lincoln County Victim and Witness Program can be contacted at 406-283-2415.

“Part of helping the victim is letting them know of the services in Lincoln County,” Dale said. “Lincoln County and Libby is ahead of other areas in the state in terms of infrastructure and offering services. Now it’s about letting people know about the services and making the public more aware of the issue.”

Eureka Commissioner, Mike Cole said that domestic violence is an issue the county keeps a close eye on.

“It’s an issue that’s closely watched in our county,” He said. “It’s a daily discussion to make it better.”

Lincoln County Justice of the Peace, Jay Sheffield said he is concerned that domestic assault victims are not coming forward.

“I’m getting two partner or family member assaults a month,” he said. “But that’s not necessarily domestic assault between intimate partners. We have adult brothers, or mother and sons. Going off the top of my head we had 25 P.M.F.A last year and 29 the year before. How can we get those 1,500 hotline calls a year into where we can track the situations? Where we can get programs to help watch over them. That huge number of calls translates into 25 cases for me last year. That’s my concern. The problem is nobody wants to come into work and talk about how they are in an abusive relationship, unless they have visible injuries and a lot of them don’t. Those numbers are so far apart and that’s what concerns me.”

Dale echoed Sheffield’s concern about the reluctance of victims to come forward.

“It’s one thing to call in the heat of the moment,” Dale said. “A lot of the times the victim hasn’t thought through all the circumstances. A lot of the time the abuser is the breadwinner of the family. The victim thinks ‘what if he goes away? What happens to our income? Do I really want the people in the community to know my husband, the father of my children is violent towards me?’ I’m confident the calls into the hotline or 911 are always higher than the actual cases we see in court.”

Cole said that domestic violence is an issue that needs to be an issue that’s on the forefront for the community.

“It’s important that this issue is being brought forward,” he said. “We need to get it out from behind the bush and need to have a streamline of communications among county and community leaders.”