DV Fatality Review Team Launch

Available for Immediate Release
From: Rose Brooks Center
Date: May 16, 2023
Media Contact: Director of Marketing
Scott Mason, scottm@rosebrooks.org
816-605-7113

Jackson County Domestic Violence Fatality Review Set to Launch
Fatality review provides a systematic way of reviewing domestic homicides, suicides, and near fatal cases through the lens of prevention, offender accountability, and survivor safety

Kansas City, Missouri, May 16, 2023 — The Jackson County Domestic Violence Fatality Review (JCDVFR) team has been working towards this review process for many years and hopes it will create a systems and societal change needed to end DV related deaths. Bringing together program and service providers, the JCDVFR team is to review domestic violence-related fatalities to better understand the dynamics of domestic violence-related homicides, suicides, and near fatal cases and develop recommendations, without assigning for effective strategies to prevent domestic violence-related deaths.

JCDVFR will officially launch its efforts with a training at the Lee’s Summit Police Department, tomorrow, May 17, 2023, at 1:00 with a training orientation for panel members and other community stakeholders, including Jean Peters Baker and the following Jackson County Police Chiefs: [as pictured, from the launch] Chief Dustman (Independence), Chief Forbes (Lee’s Summit), Jean Peters-Baker (Prosecutor’s Office), Chief Graves (KCPD), Chief Munez (Blue Springs), Chief Iseman (Grandview).

This collective is vital, in particular to those helping protect domestic violence victims and survivors. “Our work centers around saving lives and preventing future domestic violence occurrences and homicides,” explains Rose Brooks Center CEO, Lisa Fleming. “This review is the result of the recommendation of the Community Safety Assessment conducted by the Jackson County Safe Family Coalition years ago and will enhance the community’s coordinated response to those who need us most – victims and survivors of domestic violence.”

Ilene Shehan, Chief Operating Officer at Hope House echoes this sentiment, “This work is driven by survivor’s voices. Programs have been developed based on the needs of survivors. The DV Fatality Review will show the system gaps, laws that need to be changed, where collaboration needs to be strengthened, and who else needs to be at the table to better serve survivors.”

The new policies and procedures refer to the “deliberative process for identification of deaths, both homicide and suicide, caused by domestic violence, for examination of systemic interventions into known incidents of domestic.” The result of the review process is an increased understanding of how systems and communities are or are not effective in responding to domestic violence victims and abusers. The systematic examination is focused on systems, not individual responses. The domestic violence fatality review process does not and will not assign blame for domestic violence-related fatalities to individuals, agencies, or institutions. Rather, there is consensus among all participating team members that the person who used domestic abuse against another is ultimately responsible for the abuse.

Training Location:
Lee’s Summit Police Department
10 NE Tudor Rd, Lee’s Summit, MO 64086
Other speakers and presenters tomorrow include:

Welcome: Jean Peters-Baker (Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office)
Dynamics of DV: Annie Struby and Cayla Waller (Rose Brooks Center)
DV Fatality Review Policies and Procedures: Lisa Fleming (Rose Brooks CEO) and Ilene Shehan (Hope House COO)
Closing: Dani Sediqzad (Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office) and Detective Yeager (Blue Springs PD)

More detail: In accordance with Missouri Ann. Stat. § 455.560, the Jackson County, Missouri prosecuting attorney may impanel a domestic violence fatality review panel for the county in which he or she serves to investigate the deaths of victims of homicides determined to be related to domestic violence, as the term is defined in § 455.010.