COLUMN

Violence Victims Seeking Help Find It At Mall

By STEVE OTTO

Published: Oct 12, 2007

It must have been a busy day around the cubicled caverns of government.

There was a crowd at the Family Justice Center of Hillsborough County on Florida Avenue, even if a few were stand-ins. The mayor couldn't make it, so she sent a letter. The congresswoman couldn't come, so she sent an aide. The governor was tied up in Tallahassee, so he sent a representative.

That really wasn't so bad. All of them get invited to a dozen functions a day, and in this case all three have been longtime and true supporters of the fight against domestic violence. That they couldn't personally show up at one more ceremony was understandable.

Then something not in the script happened.

It happened when Charlie Crist's representative stood up to toss out some platitudes about the importance of fighting domestic abuse, paused, and as the tears welled up said she had been a victim of abuse and how she wished she had had a place like this to turn to when it occurred.

There she was, a real person expressing real emotion about an issue that dogs this society as few others.

Hillsborough County has the second highest number of reported incidents of domestic abuse in Florida. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement says that in 2005, its latest statistics, there were 10,050 reported domestic abuse offenses in the county.

Those are the reported cases. Law enforcement people will tell you that is little more than the tip of an enormous problem that includes not just battered women but also children and the elderly, all caught up in a tragedy that nobody likes to talk about.

A year ago, modeled after a similar center in San Diego and working off a federal grant, the Family Justice Center of Hillsborough opened with more than 23,000 square feet on Florida Avenue in what was once the Floriland Mall. Their place is next to the tax collector and traffic court offices in the same former mall.

The facility acts as a clearinghouse for more than 30 agencies that are there to assist victims of domestic abuse. The idea is that those victims are frequently without transportation, in need of medical care, have to deal with children or elderly people living in the same house. They need legal aid, counseling and a whole range of services that are scattered across the county but now have representatives in one place.

Agencies such as The Spring, the Child Abuse Council, the state attorney's office and Bay Area Legal Services are all on-site.

You have to appreciate how far we've come. I talked to Nikki Daniels, the director of the center. She is a therapist and once worked in a trailer out on Henry Street behind the old Suicide and Crisis Center, which is where the county used to do its abused child services.

I visited the place and it was a dump.

"Domestic abuse is traumatic enough," she said. "Now victims can have privacy and access to all of these services. It's a good location and on the bus lines. We want people to know where we are and that we are available to help."

The center is not designed as an emergency shelter - Hillsborough is fortunate to have a facility such as The Spring for that.

It is a place, though, for victims and families to begin rebuilding lives and to have the tools necessary to do it.