Gman
News Editor
Evelyn DeStefano has trouble remembering that Antoine Thagard was the first man she ever loved, the first man who possessed her body and soul.
He reminded her of that when he beat her, when his paranoid delusions convinced him she was cheating on him every day despite her desperate cries that she'd been faithful.
The
first time he slapped her, her eyes went wide with shock. The former Clarence resident was several months pregnant with their baby and had never been struck in her life.
Six months later, she found herself handcuffed to the bed after being punched, stabbed, sodomized, choked and beaten nearly to death. Blood filled her eyes and clung to
the walls of her apartment.
"I was so scared . . . I think God was watching over me," she said.
That night last year, DeStefano's domestic violence case joined more than 3,700 others in Erie County in 2003.
Domestic abuse arrests have more than tripled in the past decade because of tougher laws and tougher enforcement. Since the mid-1990s, police arrest abusers whether the victim wants them to or not.
Nationally, domestic violence experts wrangle over how effective laws like New York's are. Locally, there's concern the law is unevenly enforced and putting a strain on courts.
E
ven so, most area activists agree much is improved in Erie County: higher arrest and conviction rates, an overhauled court system and a strong web of support for victims that has gained national attenti
on.
From 1995 through 2001, domestic violence arrests grew more than 650 percent in Buffalo alone, reaching a high of 3,352 cases in 2001.
Similar records for the suburbs do not exist, though prosec
utors say they've seen the same sharp climb in arrests over the past 10 years. Roughly 1,000 arrests each year now originate in the suburbs.
Domestic violence activists take grim satisfaction in the alarming climb.
"It's identical to child abuse," said Lisa Rodwin, chief of the Erie County district attorney's Domestic Violence Bureau. "It's not that people weren't abusing children 30 years ago, it's that people weren't arrested for child abuse 30 years ago."
DeStefano was fortunate. She escaped with her daughter that night and liv
ed.
Thagard pleaded guilty to two counts of felony assault. In April, he was sentenced to five years in prison. Police started making mandatory arrests in domestic violence cases in the mid-
1990s, said Lt. David Mann, commander of the Buffalo Police Department's Sex Offense Squad.
Before then, police were trained to simply interrupt and mediate a dispute, often leaving the scene with no arrests. That changed after the state adopted a zero-tolerance
law in 1995 to make the criminal justice system more responsive to victims. The Buffalo Police Department, like many others, now requires officers to make arrests if they see evidence of domestic violence.
In one case, a Lackawanna woman pleaded guilty to stabbing her boyfriend after accusing him of cheating on her.
The boyfriend refused to testify or cooperate with law enforcement, but police still arrested the woman, and the DA's office prosecuted. She ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor assault.
Law only goes so far
However, the law only goes so far if a victim refuses to cooperate with police, which is often the case.
When DeStefano finally left Thagard for good and
agreed to cooperate with the police, she'd been beaten black and blue for months. Every time the police were called to her address, she sent them away, insisting she was fine.
If a victim denies abuse and hides obvious signs of it, police cannot make an arrest, Mann said.
Thagard had threaten
ed to kill DeStefano, to harm her family and take away their daughter, she said. With every mark and scar he left on her body, DeStefano tried harder to appease him, even submitting to routine strip searches that Thagard conducted to inspect her body for any trace that she'd been with another man.
"You don't know what fear does to you," she said.
Anyone who still wants to celebrate diversity after reading this article can go to hell!!!!! Nigs are h
ellhound scum and NO white woman on this planet should have anything to do with them!!!! Where was the father of this girl while this was going on I wonder?? A sad story in
deed. The only diversity I would have liked to celebrate with this black demon is with my trusty "diversity celebrator", if you know what I mean!!!
Gman
