NWI Times
March 03, 2013 12:00 am
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/crown-point/paper-protection-persistent-violations-bungled-case-shred-faith-in-system/article_57de6abe-3caa-547c-b279-9b1a92b648d2.html
CROWN POINT - Phyllis Roy believes her domestic battery case involved two assailants — her husband, who was convicted of the crime, and the legal system she says failed to protect her after the conviction.
Her husband pleaded guilty three years ago to felony strangulation following the bloody battering of Roy over the 2010 Thanksgiving holiday.
But the case did not end there.
She said she lost her opportunity to make a clean break with the defendant, Jerry Victor Gidrewicz, through harassing phone calls that violated a court order of protection she had against her husband.
Gidrewicz did not respond to two phone messages and a written request for comment left at his residence.
A Crown Point police report filed in 2010 by Officer David Wilkins details the original incident:
"Jerry began to strike her with a closed fist during the argument. Phyllis also stated that Jerry began to choke her and that made it difficult for her to (breathe). At that time, Phyllis attempted to leave the residence through a window, but Jerry was able to pull her back inside causing cuts and scrapes to Phyllis' legs and arms, which I was able to observe. Phyllis was eventually able to escape through the rear window."
Escape, that is, by being pushed through it, Roy said.
Days after the attack, Roy's daughter Ona drove her to the Lake County clerk's office, where she met Geneva Brown, a Valparaiso University Law School professor who runs a domestic violence clinic out of the county building. Brown and her students helped Roy obtain a court order of protection, barring Gidrewicz from coming into contact with Roy.
But eight Crown Point police reports dealing with their relationship indicate she has dealt with repeated violations of the order. They also show incidents on June 12 and Aug. 12, 2012, that prompted Gidrewicz to seek an order of protection against her. In one, Gidrewicz claims to have suffered bodily injuries. In the other, he claims Roy threatened his girlfriend.
"I'm going to counseling so I can better myself so I can overcome this, where he (Gidrewicz) just takes a back seat and thinks, 'This is another ride I'm on' … and it's a free ride," Roy said.
Roy wrote to a deputy prosecutor on Oct. 31, explaining why she wanted Gidrewicz jailed for violating his probation by disregarding her order of protection through harassing phone calls.
"I am terrified for my safety and deathly afraid that if Mr. Gidrewicz is released from jail he will attempt to kill me ...," Roy wrote in the letter. "I fear for my safety, so much so that I am willing to move and keep my whereabouts unknown to Mr. Gidrewicz. However, I am currently unable to do so. I plan to move within the next six months. If Mr. Gidrewicz remains in jail for the duration of his probation sentence, I would be able to work and earn money. … It would give me the peace of mind and the opportunity I need to move forward with my life."
Two days before her Dec. 6 court date on the matter, Roy offered her phone records to a deputy prosecutor who was scheduled to handle the hearing, but her offer was rejected.
During the hearing, Gidrewicz's public defender suggested that the only way Crown Point Officer Don Wasserman, who was on the witness stand, knew the phone number that appeared on Roy's cellphone was Gidrewicz's was because Roy had told him it was.
The attorney argued there was no real evidence tying the number in Roy's phone records to Gidrewicz.
Absent any records to prove otherwise, Judge Julie Cantrell rejected Roy's request to suspend Gidrewicz's probation.
But Judge Cantrell told Gidrewicz: "They (prosecutors) didn't do their homework. Doesn't mean I don't think you did it."
A distraught Roy pleaded with Cantrell to allow her to submit the phone records then, but it was too late.
Prosecutor Bernard Carter agreed there were avenues by which the evidence tying Gidrewicz to the harassing phone calls could have been introduced, but Cantrell did not allow it. He said the deputy prosecutors thought they could win the case with the preponderance of evidence and didn't need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Contacted later, Cantrell said even if the court had found Gidrewicz in violation of his probation, he already had been in custody for the maximum suspended sentence under his agreement with the state.
Had he been the deputy on the case, Carter said he would have taken the records Roy had offered.
"That's a lesson they learned," Carter said, "and hopefully it will follow them through their legal careers."
Roy still has another case in Crown Point City Court against Gidrewicz, which the prosecutor says his office is mindful of.
"I don't need to express how frustrated she (Roy) is," said Brown, the law professor. "If it weren't for the sheer willpower of Phyllis, we would have lost her along the way. Because you lose clients based on frustration. … She is vigorous in her pursuit of trying to get justice in Lake County, and she has been frustrated at almost every turn."
Violence victim's 'credibility' issues aside, new order OK'd
CROWN POINT - Despite expressing his skepticism about Phyllis Roy's "credibility," Magistrate Robert Vann granted Roy a new order of protection against her batterer/husband Jerry Gidrewicz last week Monday, the day her old one expired.
After telling Tajanae Mallett, the third-year Valparaiso Law School student representing Roy, that "I know these people better than you do," Vann said a "Mr. Snow," an ex-boyfriend of Roy's divorced daughter, said in testimony from a custody hearing he had seen Gidrewicz and Roy together.
"I don't know why someone else would say they see you with him all the time," Vann said to Roy. She replied she didn't know anyone named Snow or what relationship he might have to her daughter.
The exchange wasn't unexpected. Roy estimated she has been before Vann around 20 times and professor Geneva Brown, Mallett's instructor, noted before the hearing that the Crown Point domestic violence victim has probably "pushed the limits of judicial patience" by seeking full payment of her medical expenses from a 2010 battering. Mallett gave Vann photos of Roy's injuries in that assault 20 minutes into the hearing.
Roy was granted reimbursement for medical expenses to treat those injuries by a previous court order and Gidrewicz has repeatedly pleaded poverty in numerous prior appearances.
Vann said he was granting the protective order request "only because that's the only way you'll stay away from each other," adding he was transferring all of her case, including the reimbursements, domestic battery and divorce to Gary, where Gidrewicz's lawyer filed for divorce.
Roy, a Crown Point resident, doesn't drive.
Outside of court, Brown seemed nonplussed by Vann's questioning of Roy's credibility when she is "an actual verified victim of domestic violence."
Nonfatal strangulation victims more likely to eventually be killed
NAMPA, Idaho - Women who have been strangled are seven times more likely to wind up as murder victims.
But when police arrive to investigate domestic violence, those women aren't likely to report the strangulation. Nearly half of all domestic violence murder victims experience at least one nonfatal strangulation, according to officials at the National Strangulation Training Institute. The institute aims to have 5,000 U.S. officers complete its online training by March 31.
Victims tend to be too afraid or embarrassed to mention that they've been strangled and perpetrators tend to downplay strangulation or choking, as if it's inconsequential compared to hitting, officials said.
Detective Cpl. Angela Weekes, of the Nampa, Idaho, force, said 62 percent of strangulation victims don't have external marks. Officers are now trained to assess domestic violence cases according to risk indicators, of which attempted strangulation is one of the four leading danger signs. The others are forced sex, a recent separation and extreme possessiveness. ~ Associated Press
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