SafeHaven Creating National Dominant Aggressor Tool
TARRANT COUNTY, TX (Oct. 1, 2023) – SafeHaven of Tarrant County, in collaboration with the nationally-esteemed RAND Corporation, is proud to announce its progress in developing a tool to help the criminal justice system and others in the work of domestic violence determine the dominant aggressor in an abusive intimate partner relationship.
The Texas Assessment of Dominant Aggressor (TX-ADA) will include two separate tools; one for use by law enforcement responding to a domestic violence call on scene, and another for detectives and others who investigate an abuse charge.
Many states require that law enforcement make reasonable efforts to identify the dominant aggressor in any incident, and currently, thirty-five jurisdictions have statutory provisions that direct law enforcement officers to identify the dominant aggressor prior to arrest in domestic violence situations. However, guidance on how to make this determination is limited. No validated tool exists to support this work.
Considering this need, TX-ADA will work to help identify the dominant aggressor in an intimate relationship with violence. Ideally, the use of this tool would lead to a decrease in the likelihood that victims are retraumatized by being incorrectly arrested and charged with domestic violence offenses, and increase in the likelihood that offenders are correctly identified and face appropriate consequences.
“The need was clear. In 2020, SafeHaven received double the number of victims referred to our offender program versus previous years, which meant a hard look at how that pipeline of victim arrests and convictions happened and continues to happen,” SafeHaven President and CEO, Kathryn Jacob, explained. “We’ve now intersected with a wide variety of leaders in this work - from law enforcement to the courts to advocates - and the need for a validated tool has been confirmed time and time again. When completed, this will be a game changer up and down the line.”
Although domestic violence is characterized by a pattern of abuse carried out by one party to establish and maintain power and control over another party, the legal system is set up to respond to isolated incidents of violence. Victims also use violence as a means of self-defense or resistance to abuse from their abusers, which can portray them as the aggressor when law enforcement is called. TX-ADA will consist of a series of questions to ask each party in the relationship to help determine which party holds primary control in order to prevent arresting the wrong or both parties.
The team behind TX-ADA, led by Jacob and SafeHaven, is comprised of experts from across the United States, including representatives from domestic violence survivor and offender work, academia, judiciary, legal, law enforcement, and policy work, as well domestic violence survivors from across the United States. Locally, the team includes Jacob, Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Allenna Bangs, Judge Elizabeth Beach, and survivor and advocate Tracy Rector. The RAND Corporation is overseeing the research and panel of experts behind the tool.
“To be honest, I had some anxiety that the experts we so desperately wanted to serve on the panel would not be interested,” Jacob said. “I was grossly mistaken. You would be hard pressed to find a more qualified group to create this tool.”
The team is wrapping up the creation of the tool and sometime in 2024, will move into a nation-wide research phase where police departments and CDA offices across the country will test and help refine the questioning.
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TXADA Panel of Experts
Jacquelyn Campbell, PhD
Professor and Chair at Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Nursing
Ruth Glenn
President of Public Policy at National Coalition Against DV and National DV Hotline
Margaret Hobart, PhD
Consultant, DV Advocate, Educator and Policy Analyst
Kathryn Jacob, LMSW
SafeHaven President and CEO and Expert Witness
Scott Miller
Expert Witness and Co-Executive Director for Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (DAIP) (The Duluth Model)
David Hirschel, PhD
Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Brenda Ingram, EdD
Director of Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention and Services, University of Southern California
The Honorable Elizabeth Beach
Criminal District Court Number One, Tarrant County, TX
Allenna Bangs, Esq.
Assistant Criminal District Attorney, Tarrant County, TX
John Guard
Chief Deputy, Pitt County Sheriff’s Office, North Carolina
Denise Jones
Law Enforcement Training Consultant
Jerald Monahan
Program Director, Administrator of Justice Studies, Yavapai College
Dave Thomas
Senior Law Enforcement Consultant, Washington DC
Mark Wynn
Mark Wynn Consulting, Domestic and Sexual Violence: Prevention Training/Consultant
Maria Jose Fletcher, Esq.
Director, National Center on Systems Change and Advocacy Battered Women’s Justice Project (BWJP)
Cindene Pezzell, Esq.
Director, The National Defense Center for Criminalized Survivors
Tracy Rector
Survivor, Advocate, Speaker and Producer
RAND Corporation Researchers
Sierra Smucker, PhD
Full Policy Researcher
Aisha Najera
Full Mathematician
Melissa Labriola, PhD
Senior Policy Researcher
Coreen Farris, PhD
Senior Behavioral Scientist
Stephanie Walsh
Senior Policy Analyst
Rachel Holzer
Research Assistant