Linda C. Crockett admits the title is vague by design. She should know. She wrote it.

“It’s a little subversive,” she said. “But a lot of women won’t pick up a pamphlet that says ‘domestic violence’ on it.”

Nobody really feels comfortable talking about domestic violence. And yet, it’s everywhere. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 5.3 million annual domestic violence incidents at an estimated cost of $5.8 billion. Domestic violence is the most likely cause of death for pregnant women up to a full year after they give birth. And just last year, 180 died in domestic violence incidents in Pennsylvania.

For the past year, Crockett, who works at Samaritan Counseling Center, has been on hand at Lancaster General to train employees and institute a program that addresses domestic violence both in patients and in Lancaster General staff. She is director of Walking Together: Support for Survivors of Family Violence, a program to train clergy, health care providers and other professionals how to recognize and deal with domestic violence when they see it.

The hospital made domestic violence information available via computer to its 4,600 employees. More than 1,700 accessed the file in the first month.

On Wednesday, Crockett and Becky Powell, a counseling coordinator at Domestic Violence Services of Lancaster County, led screenings of “Voices of Survivors,” a documentary to teach health-care providers how they can help their patients who are in abusive relationships.

Now the hospital staff has turned that training to patient screenings in the emergency department, at Family Health Services and Women & Babies Hospital. Soon it will spread to other areas of the hospital system.

“A doctor can play a very pivotal role because people listen to their doctors,” Powell said.

After someone discloses an abusive relationship, how a physician or employer responds is crucial. The response must be supportive, even if a woman chooses not to abandon the relationship.

“Batterers aren’t total ogres,” Powell said. “They’re human beings, and they have strengths, too. If she’s still in the relationship, that’s part of the journey. If that physician comes off as judgmental, you can just forget it.”

And Crockett said the wrong advice can be hazardous. For example, couples counseling is not recommended for couples in abusive relationships.

“She may say something in counseling that she pays for later,” Crockett said. “Couples counseling is very dangerous for women.”

Crockett helped Lancaster General design a progressive policy to safeguard employees in abusive relationships by allowing them time off for court appearances, shifting work areas and schedules so an abusive spouse cannot access them in the workplace and providing escorts to and from parking areas on request.

Powell is impressed with Lancaster General’s programs and remembers when health care providers kept their distance from a once-taboo subject.

“I can remember the days when you came into the hospital and you didn’t see anything about domestic violence,” said Powell, paging through the pamphlet. “Now you see it everywhere here. I give Lancaster General Hospital a lot of credit for doing this.”

So did the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, which recognized Lancaster General in April with an award for efforts to stem domestic violence in the work force, a process that continues and is now turned to the community.


October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Join the community in honoring domestic violence victims at a 5:30 p.m. candlelight vigil in Binns Park Oct. 22. The vigil led by Domestic Violence Services includes music, poetry and reflection. Domestic Violence Services operates a hotline for information, emergency help or shelter at 299-1249. blog comments powered by Disqus