By Edgar Sandoval
On a sweltering July night, Jesse Falcon was so high on cocaine, marijuana and alcohol that he would later say that he barely remembered the explosion of violence that happened.
Convinced that his girlfriend was pursuing another man at a social gathering at their apartment complex in San Antonio, he began attacking the man. When his girlfriend tried to intervene, he shoved her so hard that she was left with a gash on her arm.
Falcon, 21, did recall one thing about the evening: “I was full of rage,” he said.
Cases like Falcon’s are troublingly familiar to court officials in San Antonio, which has long been plagued with a high rate of domestic violence. “They leave jail angrier and more resentful, and the trauma continues,” said Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, a family violence judge in the city.
A court run by Gonzalez is trying a different approach: providing the abusers with a chance to change.
First-time offenders like Falcon can avoid becoming another statistic in the long string of men — and a growing number of women — who go to jail for hurting their families, if they are accepted into a family violence diversion program run by Gonzalez’s court, which is known as Reflejo, Spanish for reflection.
The problem is hardly unique to San Antonio, a Latino-majority metropolis in South Texas. Much of the country saw a record spike in domestic violence cases during the coronavirus pandemic as lockdowns, job losses and alcohol consumption drove people into tense situations indoors.
Many cities have tried to address the problem, and rates in several cities are declining once again. San Antonio is among the places that have assigned more detectives to domestic violence cases. It is also conducting “lethality assessments,” in which officers ask a series of questions to determine whether a victim is in danger of serious violence or even death if an intervention does not occur.
The new court is one of a handful across the country that provide incentives as well as accountability for perpetrators, aimed at helping them control violent impulses before they become deadly.
In exchange for seeing their charges expunged, offenders who appear in Gonzalez’s court are required to complete an intensive program of frequent court appearances, counseling, treatment for addiction and random drug and alcohol testing.
On a recent afternoon, Falcon and a group of men who had all been arrested at one point for assaulting a romantic partner or a household member gathered in the judge’s chambers. Falcon soon found himself answering uncomfortable questions. A monitor he was required to wear had detected alcohol in his system, a violation of the program’s rules that could send him back to jail.
“It’ll go a long way if you reexamine your steps,” Gonzalez said, shooting him a stern look. “You’re young. I want to see you do great things.”
This year, the nine family violence homicides in Bexar County, the unincorporated area around San Antonio, surpassed the number in each of the past three years, according to the county sheriff’s office. The city of San Antonio has also seen a troubling rise in domestic violence cases.
In 2019, the escalating number of cases prompted hundreds of people, many of them women, to descend on a town hall meeting where they described chokings, beatings and other episodes of violence committed regularly, mostly by men in their families.
A judge ordered the creation of a commission on domestic violence to help address the problem.
Abusers tend to come from poor neighborhoods and often numb the memories of their own childhood traumas with substance abuse, said John Vacca, who runs a class known as Pathways to Healing, a requirement for those in Gonzalez’s program.
For Gonzalez, who works closely with Vacca, the idea of a court like Reflejo seemed like common sense. Even before being elected as a judge in 2018, she said, she had grown frustrated while working as a lawyer and a social worker; there seemed to be a revolving door of people who were continually rearrested for assaulting a loved one.
“Many reoffend, not knowing why,” she said. “They don’t understand where these emotions are coming from.”
When she started pitching the idea of a program for abusers, not victims, she was met with resistance. One politician told her, “Nobody wants to help a violent offender — it’s bad politics,” Gonzalez recalled.
Legislation to create the court, written with the help of the judge’s wife, Stacy Speedlin Gonzalez, a scholar who has been open about her own struggles with abuse and domestic violence, was sponsored by two local lawmakers and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, in 2019. The court began in earnest a year later.
The court has since graduated 35 offenders, with only one of them being rearrested so far. Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez said she was aware of only two similar courts: one in Ohio and another in Florida.
It is hard to measure whether the program has worked where it matters most: inside families. Women who had a partner participating in the Reflejo court declined to be interviewed about it.
And not everyone agrees with its methods. Marta Pelaez, who runs Family Violence Prevention Services, an organization that runs a shelter and works to reduce family violence, said she found it hard to believe that an abuser could heal long-held, violent traits in a “matter of weeks.” Real change comes after years, if not a lifetime, of treatment, she said.
“Anything that is close to 90% I’m very suspicious of,” Pelaez said, citing the court’s success rate. “It is not possible to shift your attitude that dramatically. It would take years and years for a person to shift.”
Still, Falcon said he believed that without the Reflejo court, he would still be abusing drugs and making poor decisions. In the past year, he said, he has learned to regulate his emotions and follow rules. “At the beginning it was hard to stay positive,” Falcon said. “But I am glad I have stayed on track. I realized that they only want the best for us.”
At times, some of the people in the program falter.
Deonte Hawkins, 23, a friend of Falcon’s who is also enrolled in the program, was taken into custody recently after missing some of his required substance abuse meetings.
For that hearing, Gonzalez had called in Hawkins’ wife to sit next to him. She sobbed uncontrollably as the judge tried to reason with him.
“Give us some insight because we are at a loss,” the judge told Hawkins. “We want to help you. Is that what you want, to hurt her like that? You love her, right?”
Hawkins lowered his head. His wife dried her tears and watched as court officers handcuffed him and took him away. Gonzalez later said that Hawkins was doing better and had gotten back on track.
Walking out of court that day, Falcon said he did not want to find himself in his friend’s shoes. He said he had found a good job working as a barista at a coffee shop, and, while he was not thinking about starting a family anytime soon, he was not ruling it out for later. First, he said, he would have to do a little more growing.
“My attitude toward life has changed,” he said. “I know how to respond to situations now. I’m a different person.”
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