Group has facilitated more than 4,000 family visitations
The Partnership for Families, Children and Adults’ Center for Family Connections has been helping separated families have safe child custody exchanges and visitations for six years now.
It’s the only supervised visitation center in the Chattanooga area, said Regina McDevitt, chief operating officer for the Partnership. It’s there for parents who don’t get along due to trauma or other conflicting issues, and provides a safe haven for children to visit their non-custodial parent or be safely exchanged between parents.
“When families separate due to domestic violence, there isn’t an automatic guarantee that victims and the children will be safe,” said Elaine Bradway, director of the Center for Family Connections.
With May being National Supervised Visitation Awareness Month, city and county mayors Andy Berke and Jim Coppinger officially recognized the month during a Wednesday morning proclamation on the center’s front steps.
“Some of the divorces are not so pleasant,” Coppinger said. “We want to give our young people an opportunity to keep their relationships with both parents.”
Since opening its doors in November 2013, the center has facilitated 4,075 visits and exchanges. Just last year, there were 972, and year-to-date there have already been 221.
The center has three different rooms in which families can meet, and two separate entrances for which staggered arrival and departure times can be arranged for parents. Security is also present when there is a possibility of violence.
“Unfortunately there are parents who are not safe to be with their children,” Berke said. “You have to provide some kind of place because that kid might still need to see that parent.”
Recently, there have been cases around the country “where parents have gone to a presumably safe place to exchange the children, only to end up with a tragic ending,”
Bradway said.
Across the country, nearly one in four women and about one in seven men have reported experiencing severe physical violence from an intimate partner in their lifetimes, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Of those victims, about 41% of women and 14% of men experience some form of physical injury. Sometimes, those incidents result in death.
About one in six homicide victims are killed by an intimate partner, and more than 40% of female homicide victims are killed by an intimate partner.
In California, for example, a man is accused of fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend during a custody exchange outside a Hawthorne police station in Los Angeles County.
“It’s very sad,” Bradway said. “It’s very important to acknowledge that centers like these with high levels of security protocols are in place for a reason.”
Right here in Chattanooga, a man was beaten and strangled to death on March 10, allegedly by his boyfriend.
Just before 47-year-old
Starlin Fike was found dead, a witness told police he heard Luke Jackson Jr., 42, tell Fike, “I love you, but I will kill you.”
And the city’s first homicide of the year was a woman who was strangled to death. Police say the suspect is her boyfriend, Kameron Leslie.
Thirty-year-old Taja Whiteside’s son found her dead in their Moody Sawyer Road home on Jan. 11.
She had just recently moved to Chattanooga from Greeneville, Tennessee, with her three children.
Leslie, 30, has been charged with first-degree murder but has not been found. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced on Tuesday that he is believed to be in the Jacksonville, Florida, area.
Leslie has a history of domestic violence against Whiteside. On Nov. 24, 2018, he was charged with domestic assault after punching her in the face. At the time, Whiteside told police he choked her a few days earlier, too, but she didn’t report it.
“Death was her result in trying to love someone who couldn’t love her back,” her cousin Akedus Hamilton previously said.
“We want to give our young people an opportunity to keep their relationships with both parents.”
– HAMILTON COUNTY MAYOR JIM COPPINGER