In Sacramento on Tuesday, Cindy Hammond died of infection and pneumonia brought on by the paralysis she suffered two years ago when her boyfriend beat her so severely she was left quadriplegic.

During Joe McCoy’s trial on assault charges, Hammond testified that he had beaten her a number of times before that attack, but that she stayed with him — and did not seek help — out of fear of reprisal.

The Sacramento District Attorney’s Office is now weighing whether to charge McCoy — already serving a 25-year prison sentence for the assault — with Hammond’s murder.

Meanwhile, in Yolo County on Thursday, Ignacio Mendoza was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for fatally shooting his estranged wife, Angel Guadalupe Benitez Ojeda, in an almond orchard near Zamora four years ago.

These deaths are the worst-case scenarios when it comes to domestic violence, but they are scenarios that arise in part because of the lack of services, from restraining orders to emergency housing, received by victims prior to their deaths, experts say.

According to Yolo County officials, when victims receive services from a domestic violence advocacy program, there is a 60 percent reduction in the risk of severe assault. And when abused women use community-based domestic violence services, they almost never become victims of murder or attempted murder.

“It’s a clear reminder that when victims are connected to services, it can avoid escalation,” says Gina Daleiden, deputy to Yolo County Supervisor Jim Provenza. “But only 4 percent of domestic violence murder victims received any type of services.”

That’s why a coalition of government agencies, law enforcement and nonprofits in Yolo County have come together to create a pilot project aimed at providing “one-stop-shopping” services to victims of family violence, be it domestic, child or elder abuse.

Located in the newly refurbished Dowling Family Center in Woodland, which also houses the Yolo County Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Center, the Family Justice Center is now open for business every Wednesday from 9 a.m. to noon.

Here, social services representatives, victim advocates, attorneys, counselors and law enforcement officers gather to provide whatever services a victim might need. Each client who walks in the door is greeted by a client navigator, who helps determine what resources that client needs and who he or she should talk to.

One of the busiest people there each week is Krystal Jaime, supervising attorney with the UC Davis Family Protection Legal Clinic, who helps clients obtain restraining orders, custody orders and other legal documents.

As important as her efforts are, just as valuable is the role of the client navigator, who will then accompany the client to the courthouse and help with the document filing.

“That makes a big difference,” said Lynnette Irlmeier, executive director of SADVC. “Before, they had to do it by themselves.”

And that was a big problem, she noted. Clients would come to SADVC for help, “but we couldn’t do it all,” Irlmeier said. “We still had to refer people to other agencies. The problem was, did they go?”

“Sometimes they had to go to 17, 20, 25 different places to get everything they needed,” added Laura Valdes, program coordinator for the DA’s victim services program. “And they often had to do it all in one day without their batterer knowing about it.”

Everyone involved is hopeful that the new one-stop-shop will encourage more domestic violence victims to seek help and stop the abuse.

The center opened on March 30 after nearly a year of planning by a steering committee that included representatives of more than a dozen agencies. Spearheading the move were Provenza, District Attorney Jeff Reisig and Sheriff Ed Prieto, with a number of other law enforcement, government and nonprofit agency personnel serving on the committee.

They were aided by a number of grants along the way, including $5,000 from Sutter Hospitals and $25,000 from Blue Shield, which singled out Yolo County’s family justice center, along with four others around the country, for the grant.

Just last week, Wells Fargo announced a $10,000 grant to the center.

The program draws no funds from the county, Daleiden said, though a number of county agencies are providing staff time each week.

The need for such a family justice center became evident not long after it opened, participants said.

Clients began coming from all over the county — not just from Woodland, but Davis, West Sacramento and elsewhere — and they were often lined up at the door before 9 a.m.

They’d been referred to the center by everyone from law enforcement personnel to school officials who knew of or suspected abuse.

Not all of the victims want their abusers prosecuted, officials say, and that’s respected at the center.

“Safety is our goal. Not prosecution,” Irlmeier said.

Added Valdes: “When a person comes here seeking services, they are given confidentiality. And if a victim does not want to speak to law enforcement, they don’t have to.”

However, the center will make for more successful prosecutions in the long run, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Raven.

“Victims are coming earlier,” he noted, “seeking help sooner, and in a safer environment. If they don’t have to go to the police department or the DA’s office, they’ll stick with us longer, and we’ll build better cases.”

Currently, the center is using a large conference room in the Dowling Center as well as a couple of smaller therapy rooms, but they hope to expand into the unused south end of the building soon, adding offices and a more comfortable waiting area for families.

They also hope to add a satellite office in West Sacramento in the near future.

Much will depend on continued donations and grants from the private sector, Daleiden said, as well as the continued cooperation of all of the agencies involved.

Said Provenza: “In these tough budget times, we are working together in unprecedented ways to coordinate resources to better serve victims of family violence and protect our community.”

— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at [email protected] or (530) 747-8051.

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