NATION NOW

Domestic violence in Central Louisiana an 'overwhelming problem'

Miranda Klein and Jordan Allen
The (Alexandria, La.) Town Talk
Chiquina Robinson's photo displayed at a memorial ceremony for murder victims.

A patient once went out of the way to leave glowing remarks about Chiquina Robinson, a nursing assistant at Rapides Regional Medical Center in Alexandria, La.

“She’s kind. She loves her job. She always checks on her patients. She’s always in good spirits,” the note said.

Edna Robinson, Chiquina's mother, keeps the words framed on the mantle in her living room beside a porcelain angel and her daughter’s blown-up ID photo from Blue Cliff College.

Chiquina, 31, was only months away from completing her medical training there when her live-in boyfriend, Marcus Devon McCray, brutally murdered her in January 2010.

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“She was a sweetheart. She never gave me a day of trouble,” her mother recalled. “She was like this angel.”

Town Talk records show a Rapides Parish jury took about 10 minutes to decide McCray was guilty of bludgeoning, strangling, suffocating and stabbing Chiquina, then depositing her body in a dumpster, miles from their Twin Bridges Road apartment.

“For her to be such a good girl, and to go so horribly, that’s the part that bothers me the most,” Robinson said.

“The judge said it was the most brutal crime he'd ever seen,” Monique Metoyer, a former assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, said the day McCray was sentenced to life in prison.

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, women like Chiquina in every Louisiana parish, have been victims of domestic homicide, and 81 percent of female homicides in the state are committed by a partner or ex-partner.

The Washington, D.C., based Violence Policy Center has consistently ranked Louisiana as having among the highest rates of women murdered by men. The rate in 2014 was double the national average and the second worst in the nation at 2.15 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. That same year, Louisiana had the second-highest partner murder rate in the nation at 30.3 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Though cases of domestic violence are under-reported and local statistics are hard to come by, there are indicators of prevalence in Central Louisiana.

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An 'overwhelming' problem

“Every day, we deal with some element of domestic violence, some allegation of domestic violence,” said 9th Judicial District Judge John Davidson, who sentenced McCray.

“It seems,” he said, “to be an overwhelming problem here in Central Louisiana.”

Consider that Central Louisiana’s Family Justice Center quietly opened in a temporary building on Murray earlier this year. The newly-formed agency, expected to be fully operational in the coming months, served 183 survivors and 61 children from May 16 to Aug. 16.

During that time, Numa V. Metoyer III, the Rapides Parish assistant district attorney who handles domestic violence cases, prosecuted 47 accused of domestic violence; 35 of those pleaded guilty.

Davidson also noted, “We do a tremendous amount of protective orders.”

Data from the Louisiana Protective Order Registry shows during the first eight months of 2016, Rapides issued 604 protective orders. There were 152 issued in Avoyelles, 93 in Grant and 97 in Vernon.

Dr. David Holcombe, medical director for the Office of Public Health, Region VI, cited information from The Rapides Foundation that said in Central Louisiana 13.8 percent of adults had been “hit, slapped, pushed, kicked or hurt in some way by an intimate partner."

He said the conditions that contribute to Louisiana having a high rate of violence are the same ones that help lead to a relatively high rate of domestic violence, including poverty, low educational levels and substance abuse.

While national statistics show intimate partner violence accounts for 15% of all violent crimes, the rate is 21% in Louisiana, Holcombe said.

Prosecutor part of breaking the cycle of domestic violence

Change before progress

Yet, Davidson and others believe the problem can be reversed through awareness and action.

Ending the cycle of domestic violence and preventing murders like Chiquina’s is possible. But it takes a community that cares.

“That defines us as a community,” Davidson said. “We all have to care. We have to care about what happens.”

Deb Faircloth, a local legal advocate for Faith House, said society’s perceptions of domestic abuse have to change for progress to be made.

“We still have to deal with a cultural attitude that says it’s a private matter — that it’s an issue between couples, a man and a woman, a boyfriend and girlfriend,” Faircloth said.

“It’s not,” she continued. “It’s a crime, and in fact, it’s the most common crime in the country. The most common, yet least reported crime in the country.”

Edna Robinson said losing a child to domestic violence is something, “I pray that another mother never ever has to go through."

Edna Robinson signs her daughter's name in a memorial journal at a remembrance vigil for murder victims.

It will be seven years this January since Chiquina’s death.

“And she still don’t have a headstone,” Robinson said. “I can’t do it. I’m not ready. I think it will make it too final. She’s buried practically in my backyard. The church is right there, just when you cross the bridge.

"Sometimes I can cross that bridge, and sometimes, I just keep on going because I can’t do it today.”

Robinson is unaware of most of the evidence presented during the three-day trial of her daughter’s murderer.

“Sometimes, I want to know,” she said. “Sometimes, just to imagine, it drives me crazy.”

Robinson remembers well enough every detail from the weekend her daughter was murdered. The smell of blood in her apartment. How she lost it while watching police put up crime scene tape. The knock on her door at 1:30 a.m. after Chiquina’s body was discovered.

“I could see the headlights coming up the road ... I wasn’t asleep, because I can’t sleep, you know … I knew it was them. I already knew,” Robinson said.

Robinson finds herself asking, “When will it get better? Will it ever get better? Will I ever be that person that I once was?”

She answers herself: “I’ll never be her again. I don’t know who I am half the time.”

“I think, I’m finally, maybe, day by day now,” she said. “I was second by second, minute by minute. I would actually hold my breath and say, ‘Lord just don’t let me breathe. It hurts too much.’”

How to report La. domestic violence:

Domestic violence can be reported by the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence hotline at 1-888-411-1333 or the national hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

Child abuse and neglect can be reported to the state Department of Child and Family Services at 1-855-4LA-KIDS (1-855-452-5437).

Editor's note: This story is part of an eight-day series on the domestic violence epidemic in Central Louisiana. Visit TheTownTalk.com to read the entire series.