Texas Family Violence
By the Numbers
Texas family violence centers continued to provide life saving shelter
to women and families experiencing violence at the hands of their
intimate partners. In 2014 alone, 23,311 victims of family violence
sought shelter and safety from violence at a family violence program.
The average shelter stay lasted just over 31 days. Many sought services
like advocacy and counseling rather than shelter: 61,119 Texans.
Shockingly, family violence centers had to turn away 39% of
victims requesting shelter due to lack of space that year. Did you
know that an estimated five million Texans have experienced family
violence in their lifetime according to a recent study by the University
of Texas Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault?
One Day Census
Every year, the National Network to End Domestic Violence
performs a nationwide “Domestic Violence Counts” census of
domestic violence services which includes Texas. Seventy
eight local domestic violence programs in Texas provided the
following information:
• 4,867 victims were served on that one day alone;
• 3,107 victims found refuge in domestic violence shelters or
transitional housing, including 1,380 adults and 1,727
children;
• 1,516 victims had unmet requests for services, 34%
of which were for housing when home was not safe. This is a
15% increase in just one year.
The census also reflected the significant community and
awareness work Texas programs performed on that day:
• 1,517 hotline calls answered
• 1,598 people educated in prevention and education
training events
Family Violence Programs
• 71 funded family violence shelter centers
• 9 nonresidential domestic violence centers
• 28 special nonresidential projects
The TCFV website features a service directory function that allows
you to search for family violence shelters and programs in the state by
city, county or program name. For more information visit:
www.tcfv.org/service-directory
Honoring Texas Victims
Every year TCFV collects the stories of the women killed by their
male intimate partners during the previous year. TCFV later fact
checks with local programs and law enforcement, media stories and
the Uniform Crime Report. TCFV then culls through the available
statistics related to these murders with an eye towards spotting trends
and potential lessons learned by these horrible acts. The result of this
is the Honoring Texas Victims Report available at www.tcfv.org.
Overall, rather than thinking of these fatalities as
inevitable and seemingly random in nature, we began to
see that family violence fatalities are identifiable,
knowable, and preventable.
Rene Peña, District Attorney for Atascosa, Frio,
Karnes, La Salle, and Wilson Counties &
current Board Chair of the Texas District and
County Attorney Association.
Quoted in The Prosecutor (available at
http://www.tdcaa.com/journal/next-jury-box)
In 2013, 119 Texas women were killed. From Potter to
Harris, from El Paso to Cameron, from Dallas to Grayson Counties,
communities across our state encountered family violence fatalities.
Harris and Dallas led all counties with 19 and 20 deaths respectively,
followed by Tarrant (11) and Bexar (7); counties with smaller
populations like Jefferson also experienced greater per capita rates of
death than larger population centers, bringing home the idea that we
must take murders in both contexts seriously. Some 34 of the 119
women killed were aged between 30 and 39; three young women
under 19 years old and 13 women 60 years and older died. Fifty eight
percent of fatalities involved firearms. An additional 17 family
members, friends, and others—including 5 children—were killed
during the same criminal episode; 61 additional people witnessed
these horrific acts, 55 of them children.
Counties shaded in purple
experienced no murders while
those shaded white mark counties
in which murders occurred. We
look forward to a day when we see all of Texas
GO PURPLE.
For more information, visit www.tcfv.org.