COVID-19 shelter in place orders exacerbate domestic turmoil

Reported homicide in Mendocino County highlights issue

Sheltering in place may help curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, but it presents serious dangers for people who are forced to quarantine with their abusers.

On Thursday, a 49-year-old Willits woman died of a head injury that the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office believes was the result of a violent encounter with her husband.

North Coast Assemblyman Jim Wood issued a press release Friday to raise awareness about how COVID-19 is being used by abusers to isolate their targets from friends and family, according to reports from the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

“The recent passing of a woman

from Mendocino County, allegedly from an attack by her husband who had been arrested numerous times for domestic abuse, is a grim reminder of the tragedy of domestic abuse and sexual assault,” said Wood. “We are now asking people to isolate and shelter in place in their homes, which should be a place we rely on to be safe.”

“The place you’d think of as the most safe for you, your home, is not the case for survivors,” said Brenda Bishop, director of Humboldt County Domestic Violence Services. “It’s the most dangerous place for them.”

Bishop said the organization’s support line usually receives about 10 to 20 calls per day concerning intimate partner violence, which is domestic violence between intimate partners as opposed to violence between roommates, siblings or other relations.

A survivor will generally call the support line when the abuser is out of the house, but now there are fewer opportunities for that, Bishop said. So the number of calls has held steady since the shelter in place order went into effect, but the nature of the calls has become more serious, she said.

Callers are increasingly reporting feeling very stuck, physically and emotionally, Bishop said, and the increase in gun sales is also cause for alarm for survivors.

In March, the FBI reported doing the most number of background checks for guns than it has since it began keeping records in

1998. Last month the FBI had 3,740,688 requests for background checks compared to 2,802,467 in February.

“We know that when there’s a weapon in the house, the chances of that weapon being used on the survivor increases,” Bishop said. “So that’s very frightening.”

EPD usually receives an average of 82 domestic disturbance calls per month that result in an average of seven to eight police reports since not everyone wants to file a police report, Brittany Powell, the department’s spokesperson, wrote in an email.

“We get far more calls and inquiries than law enforcement will,” Bishop said. “Survivors are more inclined not to call unless they’re forced to call.”

While the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and Eureka Police Department didn’t report seeing an increase in calls related to domestic disturbances, Humboldt County District Attorney Maggie Fleming wrote in an email that domestic violence calls could be underreported.

“The current situation does limit the ability of victims to report domestic violence and may make people less likely to go to the hospital (further limiting opportunities for law enforcement to learn of abuse),” Fleming wrote.

The woman who died in Willits was originally admitted to the emergency room for a fall that hospital staff reported to authorities as suspicious because of its severity, according to a Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office press release.