When it comes to solving domestic violence, have we got some things backward? | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky ranks highest in domestic violence; shelters and advocates aid thousands.
- Advocates say system shifts burden to survivors; abusers often escape prison.
- Proposal: pilot residential centers for abusers, intensive treatment and accountability.
One by one their names were called ... “Arica Brown ... Kadesha Burch ...Cicara James ...SonTia Edwards”... 21 candles for the 21 souls killed in the past year in Kentucky by intimate partners in the scourge of domestic violence.
At Wednesday’s “Say My Name” event, First Lady Britainy Beshear proclaimed October Kentucky Domestic Violence Awareness Month and spoke of the laws and policies that have helped survivors, many of them at the state’s 15 domestic violence shelters.
But for all that progress, Kentucky remains stuck with a tough pill to swallow: Last year it ranked first in the nation for domestic violence abuse.
The 21 names called Oct. 22 included Crystal Rogers — though she disappeared in 2015, and her boyfriend was only convicted of her death this year — but did not include many other victims, such as Beverly Gumm and Crystal Combs, who were killed this summer at a Lexington church by a gunman searching for the mother of his children. The list didn’t include Amia Cox, SonTia Simmons’ friend who happened to be with her when Simmons’ ex-boyfriend opened fire.
Also missing? The thousands of others who survived, but are caught in that cycle of violence.
Flipping the equation on domestic violence
Countless men, women and children have been helped by advocates, but the issue of domestic violence still seems intractable. Darlene Thomas has been in the fight for 36 years, and sees it every day as executive director of Greenhouse17, a Lexington domestic violence shelter the serves thousands of survivors every year.
“There are all of these ways that we’ve reached out, educated the community and the public to recognize the issue, and not judge survivors and improve their lives,” Thomas said at an event at the Capitol in Frankfort Wednesday. “We have done that, but what we’ve not been successful in ending the rate by which women are being abused or killed.”
She’s started to wonder if we need to think about the issue very differently from how we have so far.
Her two main thoughts: We don’t hold abusers accountable enough, and on top if that, we make the victims — most of them women — flee their homes with their children, go to a shelter, go through an arduous court process, leave their jobs and give up income, family and friends.
“We as a society are not willing to put abusers in prison, and we have seen that in some recent cases,” Thomas said.
For example, Labradford Ward, who killed Simmons and Cox before taking his own life in July, pleaded guilty to second-degree strangulation, fourth-degree domestic violence assault and violating a protective order in 2023, according to press reports. He was sentenced to five years of probation, but never served jail time.
In March, the General Assembly passed a bill to make it a felony for violating a protective order for the third time in five years.
“But 90 percent of domestic violence is misdemeanor charges, and we’re just seeing this rotating door in the door, out the door, in the door, out the door,” Thomas said.
Make domestic violence the abuser’s problem, not the survivor’s
Instead, she said, let’s make domestic violence the abuser’s problem to solve with real accountability.
“If I had a magic wand, I would have multiple centers throughout the state where abusers would have to go while families got to stay in their homes, their churches, their apartments,” Thomas said.
These centers would be different from batterer intervention programs, which are located in some areas of the state, but not all, and usually require about a 32-week commitment. That’s not long enough, Thomas thinks. Her hypothetical centers would be longer and tougher.
The abusers could go to work and pay child support, but they would live at the centers full-time and undergo treatment every evening when they came home — treatment that might stick because their whole lives were upended.
“I do believe that intimate partner violence is a choice, and I do believe many abusers will start to make a different choice because it no longer works for them,” she said.
Thomas knows this is a pie in the sky idea that would take tons of money, time and dedication. But what about a two-year pilot program? Or a small study to see if flipping the equation might work?
“We can’t undo what we’re doing for survivors because we don’t have a system ready to replace what we do to protect them,” Thomas said. “But I do know that what’s happening is not fair to survivors in the long run.”
This story was originally published October 23, 2025 at 4:45 AM.
