Advocates: Early intervention key to ending domestic violence

Barbara Wilson's final message to her daughter was "thank you."

Wilson had planned to leave her husband the next day, and Melissa Ische texted her mother to say she'd help move her out. She never got the chance.

"I got the last text from her at 8:29 p.m. telling me 'thank you,' Ische recalled. "He called me at 9:09 p.m. and told me, 'Don't bother coming to pick up your mom. Just call the morgue.'"

Delbert Wilson, 56, killed her in their Mankato, Minn., home before turning the gun on himself. Barbara Wilson, 54, left behind 13 grandchildren, four children and nine siblings.

She was one of at least nine women killed by domestic violence in Minnesota this year. That includes five in the past two months. Among them was Trisha Nelson, who died in a busy Plymouth intersection after her fiancé shot and ran her over; Courtney Monson, shot by her husband while hiding in the basement with three of her children; and Tasha Hanson, found dead in the woods after her boyfriend strangled and beat her.

Experts say it will take more than law enforcement to make it stop. In several cases this year, police never heard from the victim.

"It's difficult to understand sometimes how it can happen or why it can happen," said Ramsey Police Chief Jeff Katers. "I think we're always looking for the why. why did this happen and sometimes we don't always have the answers."

About 80 percent of all female homicide victims are killed by an intimate partner or ex-spouse. About 20 to 30 Minnesotans a year have died in domestic violence over the past decade, according to the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women.

The data make it clear intervention happens too late, said Liz Richards, the coalition's executive director.

"There is sort of an assumption out there that what needs to happen is people should call law enforcement and that's going to solve the problem," she said. "But as we say, we're never going to stop domestic violence if we focus only on the intervention that happens after violence occurs."

There are often signs of trouble and everyone in contact with potential victims should look out for those signs, she said. Threats are a big red flag. Significant criminal history is another.

Early intervention outside of the criminal justice system is also key. One program showing promise starts the conversation in health care settings.

The project tested how teenage girls' perception of domestic violence changed overtime after talking about it with their medical providers.

Not all 136 teens in the program saw a benefit. But a University of Minnesota evaluation of the program found a significantly lower percentage of teens reported being in abusive relationships a few months after visiting the clinics — 17 percent at the start of the program and 11 percent after.

More teens also learned about available resources and almost half the girls left an older boyfriend by the end of the study.

It's easy to fall into hopelessness when seeing stagnant homicide numbers, and it's going take significant commitment across all levels of service to prevent future deaths, Richards said.

"What are we doing within our schools? How do we deal with this within our health clinics? What are we doing in terms of what messages we provide within families and communities in terms of the expected roles people play," she asked. "How do you deal with conflict?"

Ische said her mom was good at making things seem OK even when they weren't. She said she wishes there was something she could've done sooner and recalled not believing at first that Delbert Wilson had killed her mother.

"I just thought it was a dry threat, maybe he was just trying to scare us into not coming to get her," she said, her voice trying to hold back tears. "Getting that news that she didn't make it was really, really hard."

Where to get help

Women experiencing domestic are encouraged to call the Minnesota Day One Crisis Hotline, 1-866-223-1111