From the editor: Two events, one target: Domestic violence

A couple of events lined up over the last week and that makes it tempting to believe in fate.
The first was Saturday at the Patterson Area Civic Center. Twenty-eight teams of up to six people each competed in a trivia contest. The contest had a theme: throw-back trivia.
So the participants were dressed as characters from the movie “Grease,” as pioneers (wearing bonnets under a cover for their “wagon” table), as a Roaring Twenties flapper, even as characters from “Sesame Street.”
The other event was Wednesday in Baton Rouge. It was mostly business wear.
Both events — Chez Hope’s Trivia Night and a gathering that was part of National Crime Victims’ Rights Week — were designed to shed light on domestic violence in hopes that people will pay attention.
These numbers, from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, may help, too:
—In 2010, Louisiana ranked fourth in the nation for homicides against women; two-thirds of these homicides were committed using guns.
—81 percent of female homicides in Louisiana are committed by a partner or ex-partner.
—There has been at least one domestic homicide in every parish in Louisiana.
—Over 5,000 adult women per year living in Louisiana will experience domestic violence.
—One in three women and one in four men in the United States have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner.
—On a typical day, domestic violence hotlines receive approximately 21,000 calls, an average of close to 15 calls every minute.
—Intimate partner violence accounts for 15 percent of all violent crime.
—72 percent of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner; 94 percent of the victims of these crimes are female.
As we noted in a video story at StMaryNow.com, Chez Hope has taken on a bigger role in this struggle. The Franklin-based family violence crisis center has stepped in to fill the void left by the closure of the Safety Net for Abused Persons in Iberia and St. Martin parishes. Director Cherrise Picard told us that the number of temporary restraining orders Chez Hope helped file tripled after the Franklin group stepped into the two new parishes.
The Advocate’s Bryn Stole covered the Baton Rouge event and relayed the story of Theolonious Gage.
Gage had been the victim of domestic abuse herself. Then her 24-year-old daughter, Yarnell Keon Gage, tried to divorce her husband. She had been away from her husband for three months and had obtained a restraining order against him.
“And he still killed her,” Theolonious Gage told the gathering.
Anyone who has been around domestic violence cases can tell you a story that strikes at the heart that way.
Women are most often the victims of domestic violence, as the statistics said. But sometimes men are, too, at the hand of a female or male partner.
Don’t forget the kids. Their world gets shaken up violently when they wake up in the middle of the night to hear Daddy curse at Mommy, or see a punch or a choke or something worse.
There aren’t any winners in domestic violence, except for the people who successfully prevent it. They deserve our thanks. More than that, they deserve our help.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review. Reach him at bdecker@daily-review.com.