One City’s Approach to Tackling Domestic Violence

San Antonio has long had a high rate of family violence. An unusual court is trying to intervene before the violence turns deadly.

On a sweltering July night, Jesse Falcon was so high on cocaine, marijuana and alcohol that he would later say that he barely remembered the explosion of violence that happened.

Convinced that his girlfriend was pursuing another man at a social gathering at their apartment complex in San Antonio, he began attacking the man. When his girlfriend tried to intervene, he shoved her so hard that she was left with a gash on her arm.

Mr. Falcon, 21, did recall one thing about the evening: “I was full of rage,” he said.

Cases like Mr. Falcon’s are troublingly familiar to court officials in San Antonio, which has long been plagued with a high rate of domestic violence. “They leave jail angrier and more resentful, and the trauma continues,” said Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, a family violence judge in the city.

A court run by Judge Gonzalez is trying a different approach: providing the abusers with a chance to change.

First-time offenders like Mr. Falcon can avoid becoming another statistic in the long string of men — and a growing number of women — who go to jail for hurting their families, if they are accepted into a family violence diversion program run by Judge Gonzalez’s court, which is known as Reflejo, Spanish for reflection.

The problem is hardly unique to San Antonio, a Latino-majority metropolis in South Texas. Much of the country saw a record spike in domestic violence cases during the coronavirus pandemic as lockdowns, job losses and alcohol consumption drove people into tense situations indoors.

Many cities have tried to address the problem, and rates in several cities are declining once again. San Antonio is among the places that have assigned more detectives to domestic violence cases. It is also conducting “lethality assessments,” in which officers ask a series of questions to determine whether a victim is in danger of serious violence or even death if an intervention does not occur.

But the city felt an urgency to do even more. San Antonio has consistently ranked among the top 20 large cities for rates of aggravated domestic violence — higher than Las Vegas, Philadelphia and Atlanta, according to a survey by the Council of Criminal Justice that was released in October. San Antonio also stood out for having a large share of underreported incidents, said Alex Piquero, a professor of criminology at the University of Miami who was one of the study’s lead authors.

The new court is one of a handful across the country that provide incentives as well as accountability for perpetrators, aimed at helping them control violent impulses before they become deadly.

In exchange for seeing their charges expunged, offenders who appear in Judge Gonzalez’s court are required to complete an intensive program of frequent court appearances, counseling, treatment for addiction and random drug and alcohol testing.

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Falcon and a group of men who had all been arrested at one point for assaulting a romantic partner or a household member gathered in the judge’s chambers. Mr. Falcon soon found himself answering uncomfortable questions. A monitor he was required to wear had detected alcohol in his system, a violation of the program’s rules that could send him back to jail.

“It’ll go a long way if you re-examine your steps,” Judge Gonzalez said, shooting him a stern look. “You’re young. I want to see you do great things.”

This year, the nine family violence homicides in Bexar County, the unincorporated area around San Antonio, surpassed the number in each of the past three years, according to the county sheriff’s office. The city of San Antonio has also seen a troubling rise in domestic violence cases.

In 2019, the escalating number of cases prompted hundreds of people, many of them women, to descend on a town-hall meeting where they described chokings, beatings and other episodes of violence committed regularly, mostly by men in their families.

A judge ordered the creation of a commission on domestic violence to help address the problem.

Abusers tend to come from poor neighborhoods and often numb the memories of their own childhood traumas with substance abuse, said John Vacca, who runs a class known as Pathways to Healing, a requirement for those in Judge Gonzalez’s program.

Mr. Vacca, who served time in jail for gang-related offenses as a young man, today tries to help people recognize the triggers that lead them to violent outbursts. On a recent evening in a community center, Mr. Vacca welcomed several people who are part of the court’s program and made eye contact with Mr. Falcon, who sat in the front row, wearing a shy smile. Mr. Vacca wrote down two words on a chalkboard: Anger. Healing.

“Nobody teaches you about confusion — it’s the beginning of anger, escalating to rage,” Mr. Vacca said as he paced in front of them. “Once you feel that confusion coming up, that’s your warning signal.”

For Judge Gonzalez, who works closely with Mr. Vacca, the idea of a court like Reflejo seemed like common sense. Even before being elected as a judge in 2018, she said, she had grown frustrated while working as a lawyer and a social worker; there seemed to be a revolving door of people who were continually rearrested for assaulting a loved one.

“Many reoffend, not knowing why,” she said. “They don’t understand where these emotions are coming from.”

When she started pitching the idea of a program for abusers, not victims, she was met with resistance. One politician told her, “Nobody wants to help a violent offender — it’s bad politics,” Judge Gonzalez recalled.

Legislation to create the court, written with the help of the judge’s wife, Stacy Speedlin Gonzalez, a scholar who has been open about her own struggles with abuse and domestic violence, was sponsored by two local lawmakers and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, in 2019. The court began in earnest a year later.

The court has since graduated 35 offenders, with only one of them being rearrested so far. Judge Gonzalez said she was aware of only two similar courts, one in Ohio and another in Florida.

It is hard to measure whether the program has worked where it matters most: inside families. Women who had a partner participating in the Reflejo court declined to be interviewed about it.

And not everyone agrees with its methods. Marta Pelaez, who runs Family Violence Prevention Services, an organization that runs a shelter and works to reduce family violence, said she found it hard to believe that an abuser could heal long-held, violent traits in a “matter of weeks.” Real change comes after years, if not a lifetime, of treatment, she said.

“Anything that is close to 90 percent I’m very suspicious of,” Ms. Pelaez said, citing the court’s success rate. “It is not possible to shift your attitude that dramatically. It would take years and years for a person to shift.”

Still, Mr. Falcon said he believed that without the Reflejo court, he would still be abusing drugs and making poor decisions. In the past year, he said, he has learned to regulate his emotions and follow rules. “At the beginning it was hard to stay positive,” Mr. Falcon said. “But I am glad I have stayed on track. I realized that they only want the best for us.”

He said the therapy had helped him think about the role his own family history played in his life. He was raised by a single mother who struggled to support the family with a job as a waitress. His father was in and out of prison. And he had faced relentless bullying at school, with classmates often making fun of his weight by mooing while he waited in line in the cafeteria, sometimes hitting him, he said.

Years later, he said, he found himself lashing out at the people he cared about, but had no idea how to seek help. “As Hispanics, it is very difficult to talk about emotions,” he said. “I didn’t seek therapy. It was very stigmatized.”

The other men in the program shared similar stories. Shawn Sullivan, 37, said he was 10 when he was forced to clean the area where his grandfather had just shot his step-grandfather in the head.

James Nicholson, 30, recalled that his mother, who struggled with mental illness and alcoholism, slapped him so hard when he was 4 years old that he lost several teeth.

They had paid it painfully forward: Mr. Sullivan said he was arrested after getting into a physical fight with a former boyfriend. Mr. Nicholson was arrested after striking his wife in what had begun as a petty fight.

At times, some of the people in the program falter.

Deonte Hawkins, 23, a friend of Mr. Falcon’s who is also enrolled in the program, was taken into custody recently after missing some of his required substance abuse meetings.

For that hearing, Judge Gonzalez had called in Mr. Hawkins’s wife to sit next to him. She sobbed uncontrollably as the judge tried to reason with him.

“Give us some insight because we are at a loss,” the judge told Mr. Hawkins. “We want to help you. Is that what you want, to hurt her like that? You love her, right?”

Mr. Hawkins lowered his head. His wife dried her tears and watched as court officers handcuffed him and took him away. Judge Gonzalez later said that Mr. Hawkins was doing better and had gotten back on track.

Walking out of court that day, Mr. Falcon said he did not want to find himself in his friend’s shoes. He said he had found a good job working as a barista at a coffee shop, and, while he was not thinking about starting a family anytime soon, he was not ruling it out for later. First, he said, he would have to do a little more growing.

“My attitude toward life has changed,” he said. “I know how to respond to situations now. I’m a different person.”