With that funding, a Domestic Violence Response Team was created, ideally pairing up a police officer and a trained advocate. The team will visit scenes of domestic violence calls after police have secured the scene. The police officer is responsible for making sure everything is safe while the advocate talks with the victim and any children present to address their needs. Hernandez says she feels domestic violence has always been a big problem, but recent public cases have brought the issue into the spotlight. Then it took off with the whole O.J. Simpson thing.
Domestic violence is a huge problem that just was never in the limelight until that happened.
Once that happened, the government started putting huge amounts of money into grants and giving domestic violence groups the opportunity to apply for those grants. Unfortunately, something like that had to happen for them to notice. The conference will be Nov. 7 at the state capitol in Sacramento. According to peer educator coordinator Michelle Macarai, the WRRC is also planning domestic violence workshops for winter and spring quarters. It does happen within the college population and people don't always realize that.