Nonfatal Strangulation: Brian Bennett on Domestic Violence's Deadliest Warning Sign I Ep. 128

Welcome And Why Strangulation Matters

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Hi Warriors, welcome to Beyond the Statistics Formerly 1 in 3. I'm your host, Ingrid. Today's episode focuses on a topic I've discussed before: strangulation. And you may be wondering why we're revisiting it. Well, the answer is simple, because the statistics are alarming, but the potential consequences are even more devastating. This is one of those topics that simply cannot be talked about enough. Today I'm joined by Brian Bennett, a retired state law enforcement officer and domestic violence and strangulation expert. Whether you're a victim, a survivor, family member, medical professional, law enforcement officer, or advocate, the information shared in this conversation has the potential to save lives. Hi, Brian. Thank you for joining me and welcome. I'm very excited to have you on today.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to share some really important information.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Yes, you have a lot of important information. And before we get into that, could you just share a little bit about yourself with all of us?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Sure. I am a retired state law enforcement officer here in South Carolina with over 25 years of law enforcement experience that was divided between municipal and some federal service. But the last 16 years of my career, I was a senior instructor at our state police academy in the Advanced Behavioral Science Unit. Something unique to South Carolina is that we have a centralized academy where all law enforcement, with the exception of federal officers,

Brian Bennett Background And Training

SPEAKER_00 2:00

comes come to one central academy. So some states have what they call a post system, which is essentially a law enforcement training system built into the technical colleges and colleges around the state because they're so big, like Texas and Florida. But we're small enough that we have a centralized academy. So during my tenure there, the 16 years there, I trained annually about 12,000 law enforcement officers a year. Now that was divided between basic training cadets that came through, but also advanced level training that I did at the academy or in the field. But I was also responsible for providing the domestic violence training updates every year to law enforcement officers around South Carolina. That is a statutory requirement that we had here. And uh interestingly, we had a uh high-definition TV studio at the academy. So we would uh every year I would create new programs uh usually based on questions that officers had in the field, everything from investigative techniques to determining primary aggressor to evidence collection or strangulation or whatever it is. And so every year they got something new, and that was that was about 12,000 officers a year. And um just um I'm fortunate with the um the position that I had that the uh governor asked me to serve um as co-chairman of a domestic violence task force during my tenure. And uh I served on uh two um state level committees as a statutory member of some uh committees uh around uh vulnerable adult fatalities and deaths and uh case review. Um and uh, you know, like you, um I had a lot of people request my training outside of law enforcement. So I've had the ability, both when I was in law enforcement and since retirement, to train doctors, nurses, um law enforcement officers, obviously, uh prosecutors, judges, uh pretty much anybody you can think of, um, you know, therapists and counselors, even about issues related to domestic violence, uh vulnerable adult abuse and neglect and exploitation and uh strangulation assaults.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Wow. So okay. Do does every state have that requirement for the domestic violence training for law enforcement?

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Um I can't say for certain, but I will say as a large, larger portion, I um I would say so. Um because of the pervasiveness of domestic violence and every state having domestic violence laws, most states that I'm aware of have some type of mandatory training curriculum to provide updates for two reasons. One, uh we know that uh turnover in law enforcement is just like any other career. So people that you've trained, you know, either retire or they go to another career, and you have to replace those people and replace the knowledge uh that was lost. So to stay consistent, most states, uh, and if it's not the state, it usually is the training academies that have instituted some type of regular domestic violence training. We see this also a lot with our uh prosecutors. Um, we call them solicitors here in South Carolina. They might be district attorneys in other states, but also in those professions as well. And depending on how the domestic violence laws are and how progressive they are in each state, you may even have medical professionals that get um, or or um uh service industries like hotel, restaurant, tourism management, uh, because those type of instances happen in public places as well. So it's um it's uh uh prolific in the sense that it's domestic violence is common, but as to who actually is required to have training and update, it can vary from state to state.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Well, and that's really cool too, that you guys have a centralized uh program because then that way you know what everyone is getting. Everybody's getting the same kind of information.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Right. Uh and I I actually like that. Um other states that have what they call a post system, which is again using the technical college system or uh agencies having their own academy, not that it's a criticism, but what you tend to have is um domestic violence curriculum that can have variations from training uh location to training location. Uh so for example, like in Florida, um they have like a core course, but it's taught by different instructors all over the state. So you get a little bit of variations and maybe emphasis on one area, but less emphasis on another. Um, here in South Carolina, I created those curriculums. We are the content experts. So our instructors write the curriculums, we do all the academic research, we write the manuals, we produce all the training material. And uh, so when we teach it, we are the creators of that course. We teach it so there is consistency statewide for what officers receive.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

There's so much in law enforcement that you can specialize in or be interested in. How did you get involved with domestic violence?

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Well, I think every officer, regardless of what specialty they fall into, there's usually something that has initiated that. And for me, um I have to say, in my family, both immediate and extended, I never saw I never saw any examples of domestic violence. I never saw uh anything that would fit that that definition. Um so I didn't have really any exposure

Why Officers Struggle With Domestic Calls

SPEAKER_00 7:03

to it. Uh my first exposure to domestic violence problems was as a cadet in the police academy. However, um, when I went out into the field for what they call field training, that's when you go to your actual agency and you're with seasoned officers who are putting you through your paces, we responded to lots of domestic violence calls. And as a new officer, you're kind of first in observation mode. You don't make any decisions on your own, you just watch. And I was a bit troubled because we went to domestic calls and I knew what I'd been taught at the academy, but also saw how some officers responded. I'm like, weren't we supposed to do something different? Weren't we supposed to be more involved, inquire more, offer more assistance, enforce the law better? Because I taught uh there were times that I walked out of some of these calls and I was like, I believe someone should have gone to jail. You know? So what I did is um I saw the really bad traumatic effects of domestic violence on families. But I also came to realize very quickly that the dangers of domestic violence was also to our law enforcement officers. The idea being that every time a law enforcement officer goes back to a domestic violence incident, they are also in harm's way. And then if the law enforcement officer has a chance to be harmed, then even the public at large, because domestic violence instances that happen in the public unfortunately cause what we call collateral deaths and injuries. Uh domestic offender gets violent, and they may hurt the person that they're individually targeting, but they also hurt a lot of people around that situation. And so I just made it uh my mission to know anything and everything about domestic violence to start making a change. And so when I was released on my own, I started to make the decisions that I felt were necessary in the interest of safety and enforcement of the law. And what I found out is that uh when we do what the law tells us to do, when we investigate effectively and investigate the right way, we can bring a resolution and we can bring some peace and some stability to the families that are suffering this. And so that's what I found. I found success there. And interestingly, you know, if you talk to most officers, and they're honest with you, domestic violence calls are the cause that they dread the most. They are the absolute worst for most officers. It causes the most stress, the most uncertainty. But it's an area that I thrived in. And it just became my passion that I was going to be as knowledgeable and as effective as I possibly could. And that just followed me through my career into ultimately, I guess to some people being considered an expert in many ways and teaching at the State Police Academy and having the governor, governor, and the legislature ask me for advice and insight. So yeah, that's how that's where it came from. Why is that? Well, uh, a couple reasons that I can, and this is this isn't all reasons, but a couple main ones is some people just believe that what happens in a person's private residence should stay in a private residence. Um it's sad to say that a lot some law enforcement officers feel that way. Uh I think um perhaps maybe um they look at it intrinsically in that, well, do I really want the government coming into my home? Not to say that that officer's doing anything wrong, but you know, the for a lot of people, their home is their castle and it's the safe place away from government intrusion. And so some officers kind of take that to heart and like, well, do I really need to be sticking my nose into personal business? Well, the answer is yes, when necessary. Uh, I tell, I've always told cadets and law enforcement officers, in a law enforcement position, when the situation presents itself and you are lawfully allowed to do so, you have to be lawfully nosy. That is your job. Key word being lawfully. So we have a lot of instances where we're called into homes either because someone called or you know, in the house needing help, or it was a third-party observer that wasn't involved directly but heard something. Sometimes we see and hear things on our own. We're being proactive to look out and seek and pick up things. Um that's one thing is just does the government need to be in somebody's house? Uh, number two is um just a perhaps an officer being unsure with themselves, meaning that do they have the skills, do they feel confident enough in their own skills to figure out the problem? Uh, you know, we often relate uh or use our eyes to pick up on things that we need to be aware of, but it goes beyond that. So an officer has to know what to look for, they have to know what to uh listen for, and they have to know how to have productive conversations that we call either interviews or interrogations. And when officers are not confident in those abilities, they tend not to do as good a job and they feel very uncertain about their decisions, and so they get nervous about it. Like when I go into a home, you know, how how do I know who's really the problem? Uh uh people are you know trying to, you know uh uh what's the word I'm looking for? I'm looking for the word uh um influence me one way or the other. You know, we uh as law enforcement officers, we know that people try to influence us either in a positive way or a negative way. And sometimes this is done uh for purposes of concealing their guilt or the crime, but it also could be self-preservation. Um, you know, we have uh it's not uncommon for um, and I call them victim survivors. Let me just say this real quick. When I say the term victim, I say that because that's the terminology used in criminal law. When I say survivor, that's the social understanding of the situation. So you may hear me say victim survivor, kind of back and forth. But for our victim survivors, there's a lot of reasons for them not to tell the truth or not to disclose because of their word about retaliation or fear. So that just facing that, an officer knowing that, well, there could be an aggressor in there who's trying to run game on me. Do I know what's true? Do I know what's false? Do I know what they're trying to conceal? And the same thing from the other party. And quite honestly, one of the first things that we're supposed to do as a law enforcement officer, aside from making the scene safe first so that we can do our job, is to understand that we don't know right away who the aggressor is and who the victim survivor is. We don't. We have to hold that judgment and let our interactions help reveal that for us, in spite of what initial things we see, because we know that a lot of abusers are very kind of charismatic and they're nice and apologetic, and I want to help you, officer, and just tell me what to do and I'll do it. But that sometimes is a is a facade. But see, that comes on both sides for different reasons. Um, and that's another reason, that's one of the two main reasons that officers get really worked up about it because they're like, I don't know if I'm really gonna make the right decision. And they they um because of that, they tend to back away instead of dig deeper. And that's really where the problem is, is that we they don't they don't look deep enough to make the best informed decision. Now, to be fair, no law enforcement officer is gonna make a decision right 100% of the time. But what we try to do is we try to get all the information, all the evidence, and make the best informed decision we can at the time. And if we find out later that we messed up, then we need to do everything we can to correct it.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

So does South Carolina have a mandated lethality risk assessment that law enforcement conducts when they go to these calls? I know some states do.

unknown 14:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Um we don't. Um I wish we did, uh, but let me let me tell you the importance of that. Um research is very clear that lethality assessments do give us a very good indication of what is going to happen in the future and um the the frequency

Lethality Assessments And Risk Signals

SPEAKER_00 14:33

uh and the level of violence that will occur. Uh when I was um part of the Governor's Domestic Violence Task Force as co-chairman of my division, uh one thing that uh that I did um or my team under my direction was we created something called the domestic violence toolkit. Uh it was a five-part ums. Uh it's a essentially if you kind of visualize a folder, um, we had five things in this toolkit that officers were to use or suggested to use when responding to a domestic violence call. And one of those things was a um a lethality assessment. And we created the lethality assessment. We created a lot of other documents there too, uh, what we call a domestic violence supplemental form to make sure the officers didn't forget things. Um, but um out of that task force, we created this and it was made available for free to every law enforcement agency in South Carolina. But out of that task force, we could not mandate that agencies use it. We strongly suggested it as a part of the task force report to the governor, and some agencies dec decided to use it. Uh, some for whatever reason chose not to. Um so it's available, but but statutorily we don't have a mandated lethality assessment um protocol in place, uh, which I think is a problem.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

How how effective do you think those are? And what's usually included, like what information is usually included in the in the risk?

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Yeah, and I'm being very basic. I mean, there's there's um um with most lethality assessments, there's at least 10 to 20 different factors to be considered. I I think they're quite effective. Um and and the reason I say that is they've been around for quite a long time. Um and Jacqueline Campbell, who's the the nurse that developed that, everybody knows who she is because she developed that framework. Um but it was based on research. It was based on good empirical research, and the statistics are are are pretty substantial that when you know we see certain indicators that the potential for violence or death um can increase. And so I found it to be effective. Uh, but some of the main things in there are um things that were said, okay, because you know, someone may not commit an act, but a threatened act still has importance if they say what they're going to do. Then there's things that were actually committed, um especially uh assaults, but then also different types of assaults like strangulation. Um, you know, whether children are involved, um, drugs and alcohol. Um, so there's quite a few different factors, and you know, some are some lethality assessments are longer than others. Um but the idea behind that is that when you are trained to do a lethality assessment and you score it correctly, um, that scoring is supposed to initiate some type of protocol, um, whether it's um further intervention through law enforcement, whether it's intervention not through law enforcement, but it's at the stage where the victim advocate at the department or an advocacy group can step in. And in extreme cases, it's immediate domestic violence shelter and placement and um uh trying to apply for emergency orders or protection or restraining orders. And terminology terminology is different from state to state. Um, but protocols are supposed to kick in with the idea that um, you know, we're trying to prevent something from happening. And the prevention comes from our notes and the uh the indications that we've um observed when we do these evaluations. It's just it's not just, well, I just I just felt like I needed to do it. That's never good in court or any other place. You can't just say I just felt like it. You have to have something that backs up um your purpose, and that's what lethality assessments do.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Okay, and I want to talk specifically about one of those items on the on the lethality assessment, and that's strangulation. I've people who have listened to this podcast, they've heard various topic or various conversations regarding strangulation, but uh it's because it's one of the biggest predictors, or is it the biggest predictor?

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Um it is commonly referred to as the number one predictor of a future homicide. So nonfatal strangulation is the number one indicator

Nonfatal Strangulation As Homicide Predictor

SPEAKER_00 18:34

or predictor of a future homicide. Now, when I say that, most people are probably thinking the homicide of the person who had been strangled. And all and that's true in many cases. So for women, um for women, if they survive one non-fatal strangulation event, there is an 800% increase that they will be killed later. That's what the research has been telling us. Now, if you uh look at some old data, it may say 750, some newer data has come out and said it's closer to maybe a thousand. 800% is is uh kind of in the ballpark, but obviously it's a startling number, a startling number. So that means that we know women in relationships who have suffered non-fetal strangulation are at extreme risk of a future uh homicide, but we also have to think beyond that. And what I mean is is that these offenders, these people that use strangulation as a form of assault, as a form of asphyxiation, they're also the ones that are likely to kill police officers. So police officers that have been killed in the line of duty or been severely injured, when we check the background, many of these offenders have a domestic violence background on top of a background and pattern and history of strangling their intimate partners. And then when we go beyond law enforcement, we actually have data that is pointed towards mass shooters. Some of our mass shooters also have uh histories of strangling their intimate partners. Um I can think of three right now in my head, but the most prominent that I can think of is actually it was last month, the there was the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, where you know over 60 people were killed. And uh, I'm not gonna mention his name, I can tell you, but the gentleman who did that, a lot of people said that he was motivated because he, you know, he was Muslim, he was radicalized Muslim, and he had something against the LPGT community. And that may be true, I don't know. But what we do know is he had a pattern of strangling his intimate partners. And so when someone utilizes strangulation, they have demonstrated a mindset that they can they are willing to use something that will kill somebody. And uh more commonly, um, that death comes by firearm, but the but the strangulation pattern was kind of like the red flag, the predictor that something was going to happen.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Now, when people think of strangulation, they think of somebody coming forward with their two hands, putting their hands around their neck and strangling that way, or a variety of one hand versus two hands, but strangulation can involve objects, other parts of the body.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, when when we think of movies and stuff like that, I I kind of giggle because movies, uh being visual like they are, they always go with like the common, you know, thing that people would understand. And so when people think strangulation, they think, okay, well, the the the frontal two-hand grab or the frontal one-hand grab. But the reality is it's it's really spatially related to the position of two people. You can be strangled

What Strangulation Looks Like

SPEAKER_00 21:43

from the front, from the side, from behind, one hand, two hand, the forearm, the crease of the elbow. Um, I mean, a lot of fights go to the ground, especially in law enforcement, but a lot of fights go to the ground. So people being caught between someone's legs or their thighs or their calf muscles and being squeezed that way. Um, I've seen strangulation cases where the knee or the shin was pressed into the side of the neck. So when we say manual strangulation, we're not just talking about the hands, we're talking about other parts of the body being used, like a forearm to the front of the throat, that sort of thing. When we talk about ligature strangulation, we're just talking about uh other objects that are used to cause that compression or that restriction of the structures of the neck. And common items we might see is. Articles of clothing like a shirt being pulled up around someone's neck, articles of clothing, a coax cable like the cable coming out of the TV, power cords. There's a case here in South Carolina of a young lady who was strangled to death with a USB power cord in the front seat of her car. So different types of items that allow for focus pressure in being looped or wrapped around the neck is what we're talking about. Now to make a to make a distinction though, you'll often hear people say the word choking. And that's one of my that's one of my little soapbox issues. It is not choking. That's commonly what the media refers to it. That's what movies refer to it. You even see medical programs, it's not choking. Choking is an accidental internal blocking of the airway. Strangulation is external pressure on the structures of the neck that block oxygen to the brain or the body. Um, and so I tell people it when we say choking, it minimizes the physical trauma and the psychological trauma that a person actually went through. Uh, it doesn't sound so serious. I mean, if you walk, if you had people coming out of a store and you said, hey, uh, what do you think sounds more serious, choking or strangulation? They probably would say more the more serious, it sounds like strangulation. It's just because of the terminology. Um, but we need to use the correct terminology when we're talking about strangulation. It's not choking.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

I appreciate you clarifying that because I did have a social media post where it was said strangulation versus choking. And I had a person comment saying, What is the big deal? Why, what is the point that you're trying to make by differentiating the strangulation versus choking? So I really appreciate you clarifying that. That same social media post also had actually might have been the same individual, uh, was talking about the traumatic brain injury associated with strangulation. Could you just talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Uh yeah, absolutely. So um let me let me kind of just also say this as far as my background and in and specialization expertise in non-fetal strangulation, which in South Carolina I'm considered the foremost expert. Um, some of the some of the most prominent forensic pathologists in the United States were my instructors in strangulation. Uh matter of fact, uh Dr. Dean Hawley, who was the head of the forensic pathology department at the University of Indiana, which is considered like the premier strangulation expert, was one of my instructors. And uh so I I come in qualified to some degree, maybe not sufficient for everybody, but uh but to your question. Yeah, so traumatic brain injury or acquired brain injury is often associated with concussive type of incidents, like for example, explosions, car accidents, being struck on the head with a brick, something like that. But what we have to understand, and and where the uh medical physiological part of this comes into is when the brain is starved of its needed oxygen. They call that hypoxia and anoxia, a a low oxygen state and particularly a no oxygen state, brain damage absolutely occurs. So if you are unconscious because your brain does not have oxygen, whether you're being strangled, whether you know you're drowning, whatever, brain cells start to die by the millions. The the brain cells and the synapses in your brain are dying by the millions every second you're without oxygen. Now, what determines the the outcome of your your health is uh how long are you without oxygen and how many brain cells die. There's people that are strangled that initially don't have seemingly anything wrong with them. Uh they might have some memory deficit, which we can get into later, but um brain damage absolutely occurred. It absolutely occurred. It just wasn't to the level that we can detect visually. Now, clinically in a hospital, they might be able to detect some of those very, very minor uh well, it's not minor, brain injury is not minor, but as far as level of injury, might be able to pick up on that to a better degree than someone you know just doing an evaluation face to face. Um, so so with that traumatic brain injury, yes, um, traumatic brain injury has been directly correlated and connected to strangulation assaults to the degree that there are both uh short-term and long-term uh cognitive changes in the brain. The brain just doesn't function like it used to. It goes into a dysfunction. We see behavioral changes, characteristic changes, changes in decision making, changes in memory recall. Um, and these are the same things we see in soldiers coming back from war with you know explosions and that sort of thing. So, yeah, it absolutely causes traumatic brain injury. And one of the aside from um a stroke risk, which we can get into in a minute, which is a real huge problem for strangulation victims, is stroke risk. But the other one is um just the fact that the the memory is going to be altered. And so when you look at uh someone who has uh an altered memory, and and you don't see, and we'll get into this too, when you don't see any injuries on their on their body and they can't tell you a story of what happened, they tend to be discredited, and that's that's not the way it should be. Lack of a memory due to a strangulation should indicate a loss of consciousness. So lack of memory indicates loss of consciousness, which means there's there's something happened to the brain. And um uh and so when that brain again goes into a dysfunction, it can cause people to decredit discredit them and what they say because they don't they don't know what happened. But it also what we found out uh in the realm of behavioral science is that that traumatic brain injury can cause suicidal ideations where they never existed before. So someone who might be clinically depressed and has have talked about taking their life before any of this, uh it may still be there. But we have a lot of instances, a lot of research that are supporting the fact that people that never considered self-harm start to think about self-harm out of the strangulation uh damage to their brain. And I know of actually a few cases where people did take their life months after a strangulation, and there's no other thing that we can attach it to based on their previous behavior than the damage that they had to their brain. So sometimes these stranglers uh indirectly are causing deaths in people, not by the strangulation act itself, but by the injuries and the cognitive deficits that are created by the strangulation.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

That is so interesting because I know that there is an increased level of suicide in domestic violence victims because of a variety of reasons of just feeling they can't get out and all of the psychological damage that happens surrounding that. But that's really interesting. I had not heard that before.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Yeah, it's it's it's a very startling and more and more research is being done on this. So, I mean, literally every six months or so, new stuff is coming out about the correlation of traumatic brain injury or acquired brain injury and what that actually looked like looks like in the lived experience of those um who have survived a strangulation event.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

And I know we're going to get more into uh everything that's involved with strangulation, but it's something that is so damaging and has all of these consequences. Why do you think it's minimized so much? I know that for one, it's difficult to determine whether strangulation occurred if somebody did lose consciousness. But why do you think it's minimized so much by victims and and others in in the community of domestic violence?

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Well, I think the first thing comes from due to a lack of public awareness. Uh, if you look at other countries like uh New Zealand,

Brain Injury Memory Gaps And Minimization

SPEAKER_00 30:34

uh the UK, Canada, some other uh some of those countries, um, they do a pretty good job of putting out public service announcements, not just related to domestic violence, but strangulation. Um, these are you know state-supported or government-supported um public service announcements that keeps this idea to the forefront of people's mind. Um we don't have that here in the United States, you know, uh as a as a large collective of the country. It may happen kind of regionally in certain states because you might have you know some um some funding that allows for some local public service announcements. But but by and large, you know, we you know our country is pretty good about talking about human trafficking awareness, um uh DUI or DWI, you know, drunk driving enforcement and reduction. When's the last time you ever saw a public service announcement about domestic violence or a campaign about strangulation? You don't until until October when it's domestic violence awareness month. I mean, the the stuff that we push all year with other serious crimes or things that that we deem as serious, drunk driving, human trafficking, why don't we see that same vigor and energy behind domestic violence and strangulation? And I think that is first the problem. Everybody that I talk to, all the trainings that I do, no matter what profession or even lay people, when I get done with my presentations, people's minds are completely blown. They're like, I had no idea it was this bad, it was this frequent, it did this much damage, and that all these different structures of the body were adversely affected. I didn't have any idea of how it could reach out beyond the strangulation victim and hurt law enforcement officers and and you know be involved in you know mass shootings, and and so I think that is probably the and it even in even in professions, I hate to say this, but at least here in South Carolina, I actually put um strangulation training in the basic training program for law enforcement so that every law enforcement officer coming out of South Carolina with their Class I law enforcement certification had some exposure to the dangers of strangulation. But when you look at other professions like doctors and nurses and lawyers and all that, you know, and even in other states, most certification programs don't have any curriculum built around the awareness of strangulation dangers. So when you take the public being misinformed or uninformed, and then you take professionals who interact with members of the public who've been injured and they're not informed, there you have a ripe situation for uh it not to be taken seriously and for it to be minimized. And the other thing too is again, go back to movies and TV. When have you ever seen a strangulation survivor on a crime TV show? They're always dead. They're always dead. Um so I think that's people are expecting, well, if strangulation occurred, they died. They have to be dead. No, there's a lot more people being strangled, strangled that are alive than than have ever died from strangulation. We're just missing them if you don't know what to look for and you don't know what to look for and see and ask questions about.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

So typically with domestic violence, in in the like if if if we're talking about intimate partner violence specifically, in that relationship, the abuse typically escalates over time. Now, if you take an individual who has strangled the offender who has strangled that intimate partner, are they more likely to strangle their next partner perhaps even earlier in the relationship? Is that something that's going to continue?

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Uh more than likely, yes. Uh it's interesting that you asked that question because I got this question just the other day. The question was, what is the likelihood that someone who strangles strangles again? The likelihood is very, very high. Now we don't have really good numbers of research uh uh to show that, but we use that kind of anecdotally. When you talk to people in the area that I operate in, you know, forensic nursing and stuff like that, we see it. We see patterns where people who have used strangulation use strangling again over and over and over. Uh I said to someone the other day, a pattern is always present before the time of discovery. Patterns are always present before the time of discovery, particularly in domestic violence and strangulation. So, what do I mean by that? We see case histories time and time again where these individuals who use strangulation, they started somewhere. They just didn't one day go, I think I'll strangle somebody. I mean, whether that was a con, you know, out they spoke out of their mouth or in their brain. We generally see a lead up. Um, there's a case here in South Carolina that's um going to be going to trial sometime soon where the gentleman who committed a homicide, um, he was actually strangling pets and stuff when he was a kid. And it progressed through all of his relationships up until the one where he committed this homicide. And we see this pattern. Now, again, like I said, the pattern is always present before the time of discovery. So when we discover it but look backwards retroactively or retrospectively, if I have that right, um, and we look deep enough, we can see these patterns. And to your point, what we see is strangulation being used, and the the level of frequency and the level of violence might be uh more minor at the beginning, but gets gets worse. And that case of the gentleman that did the pulse nightclub shooting, we saw that. He strangled his intimate partners in relationships, but that shooting that he did didn't have anything to do with a domestic violence relationship. But but when we look at the history, yep, there was patterns. And so I would say that yeah, it's if you if they do it once, it's likely to be done again. And think about this. Think about other ways that someone harms another person, whether it's with a gun or a knife or a blunt object. It you know, it leaves open wounds, it's it's something that can be easily seen and very hard to for the abuser to minimize or diminish or explain away. But when it comes to strangulation, strangulation is a crime or a form of assault that can leave no external injuries on the body. So, as a choice or method to abuse another person, the amount of pressures related, the amount of pressure needed and the duration needed to render someone compliant or unable to defend themselves is so low and it leaves so few telltale signs, it becomes the choice. It's like if I'm gonna do something to somebody, I'll use this because there's less of a chance of me being discovered using this method versus another method. I mean, a police officer comes into a scene and they see someone with a, you know, their head split open from a baseball bat. Well, there's bloody baseball bat. There's that. We start to put pieces together, but with strangulation, it becomes much, much harder for untrained people to pick up on the signs and symptoms and then therefore discover that not who just who the abuser is, but what they were doing and the patterns that they were utilizing before the time of discovery.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

Well, and I bet that also plays into victims. I can speak for myself that if you have a non-fetal strangulation, you're not necessarily going to seek medical attention because now you're conscious and you seem to be fine. There's no bruising. But if you were bleeding profusely or had a broken bone, you would be more likely to go get medical attention. Um, are there any signs of non-strangulation signs that somebody may be leading up to utilizing strangulation against their partner?

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Well, sometimes the the strangulation can be spontaneous. There is there is no prior lead up, there's no prior indication that's going to happen. I I can't tell you how many cases I've talked to victim survivors where that was the case. It was like it just came out of nowhere. But then there's other times where either uh physical behaviors, um, what we call nonverbal body language, or articulation uh becomes part of it. Now, for example, like for example, you know, if I'm uh looking at somebody and I want to send a message that I'm gonna do them some harm, I might make a motion like, you know, like this. Now people associate that with oh, I'm gonna cut your throat or something like that, which could be, but I mean I could do things like this. I could I could maybe just, you know, put a put a uh uh piece of clothing around my neck and then just kind of make it real kind of taut, but you know, just kind of make a motion to somebody. Um but I can also say things like, you know, you know, if this happens again, you're not gonna see the light of day. Or you do this again, and I'll make you be quiet. Well, words can say things in a in a coded language kind of way, because there's some language that intimate partners have that no one else outside that relationship is gonna know what it means. Coded language is a really, really big thing in domestic violence. Um, so it give me some coded language, some direct language, and there can be some nonverbal behaviors that again only the victim survivor would know what it means. So when you have words that can say something and actions that can say something, but then when you combine those things together, words accompanied by actions can show intent. So when you when you have both of those together, it's even more uh obvious as to what could happen. Um so being for someone for someone needs to be aware of what those subtle communications are and take them serious. Don't ever think, well, they're just blowing smoke, they're just blowing smoke. I tell people all the time, if someone's willing to say that, they've thought about it in their brain. They've they've played some type of movie in their brain, and and it's not so far from thinking it to saying it to doing it, even if it's a non-verbal type of communication. So pay attention.

SPEAKER_02 40:53

Yeah, and I think I I've had a few episodes on intuition, and we're all born with intuition. And when you're you're being controlled by your abuser, you're taught to ignore that intuition or quiet it. And I will say that if you really do pay attention, I think that probably every victim knows, and I I can't, I guess I can't really say every, but the majority of victims know something's

Patterns Intuition And Escalation Warnings

SPEAKER_02 41:19

coming. I knew something big was coming. I I couldn't have said that I was going to be strangled, but I knew there was going to be some very big event. I could feel it. And he had only pushed me before. There wasn't a lot of physical violence beforehand. And there wasn't he he was not threatening me. He wasn't saying things like, I'm going to kill you. But there was just something that unspoken language, like you said, coded language, there was something there that I could feel it in my gut that something big was coming. And I can actually say the morning of that, I knew. I remember looking at my watch and saying it's nine o'clock in the morning. Today is going to be the day. And I don't even know what it was. But I think if you pay attention to that, you're going to know you nobody knows that abuser better than their victim.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

Yeah, and you expressed in a great way what we call the tension building phase in the realm of domestic violence, behavioral science. That tension-building phase where the stress and the walking on eggshells, you can't always put your finger on it on what it is, but you know something's coming, something's imminent. But this is a story that I relate that seems to make sense to a lot of people about that innate sense that we have. Almost every animal that we know of has it. Let me give you an example of how simplistic it is. Think about when you're walking through your yard. Grasshoppers jump out of your way. Bugs jump out of your way. They avoid you. Why? They may not know why, but what they know is that there's a stimulus that they're picking up on where they sense danger, so they move. Bugs do that. You know, when you try to kick a cockroach and he takes off running, there's a reason there's a reason. Yes. And then, and then so, but even if you go into the mammalia world, I mean, look at the look at the um the animals, you know, on the plains of Africa in the Serengeti. You have your prey animals and you have your uh your prey animals and you have your um your your you know your your lions and your tigers and that sort of thing. Your prey animals are always on alert. You know, your impalas, your wilder beast, they're always like, they eat and they look up and they look around. They're always doing that because they're and when they sense danger, and it may not actually be something that's there, but when they sense it, what do they do? They bolt. You know, and uh it ties in kind of interesting with domestic violence. You know, a lot of people want to criticize victims for you know, picking, you know, pick why did you why'd you pick an abuser? Victim survivors don't pick abusers, abusers target who they do. So the prey animals out there on the Serengeti, that's what they do. They target, you know, the those in the group that are out on the fringe, and we have that big group of impalas and the wildebeest, they don't go right into the middle. They grow, they go for the ones that are on the fringe, that are not being paid attention to, that aren't paying attention, the ones that have some type of infirmity or some type of weakness. That's the ones that these these um predators go after. So it's kind of interesting that you bring that up about our our sixth sense because the The animal world is a good reflection of what happens in our own mind and our own body, but just in a we see it in a different way with the with the animal kingdom. So that innate sense is is built there for a reason. And I've I've even told my law enforcement officers, when you think something isn't right, you may not be able to put your finger on it, but listen to that. It is there for a reason. Even if it's just to heighten your awareness. But if you got to leave, you got a bolt, you can act on that too.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

Yeah, yeah. I will say I'm a nurse practitioner. And if you have a nurse that ever calls you, or as when I was on the floor working as a nurse, and I I would make the call myself and say, something's wrong with this patient. I can't tell you what it is. They look fine on the surface, but my gut is telling me that something is bad is about to happen. You never take those calls lightly because they know their intuition is telling them this person's going to go downhill very quickly. We need to do something.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

Absolutely. Yeah, you see it in your profession. I think all professions to some degree, you know, have have developed their senses within that profession enough to say things like that. And this, you know, it's um what allows them to act on it though, you know, is another issue as far as their disciplines and their rules that they go by. But yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 45:46

So I have a question. Uh back to strangulation. Is that taken as a separate account in when you get to the courtroom? So not even necessarily criminal charges or anything, but going into the family court system, say there is custody issues. Is that something that is taken separately beyond there's a history of domestic violence from this partner to that partner? We're going to take that into consideration when uh determining parenting time or lack of parenting time. Is strangulation something separate?

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Yeah, it it's been my experience that the family court judges the going to be the one who actually makes that decision. Um, I can tell you that um I've been subpoenaed before in family court cases as it relates to um you know custody issues and patterns and history of strangulation. And you know, whatever attorney uh is advocating for whatever side, if if they want to make that an issue, they can certainly have they certainly have the authority to bring that up. And you have um family court judges who um within the you know the control of their courtroom, that's their courtroom, they may take that as a separate issue or they may lump it into the overall issues of domestic violence and coercive control. Um I think it's really important though, however, with what we know about the um possible outcomes of strangulation being so dangerous, um, I would encourage uh family courts to see it as a separate issue and a lethal issue, uh, not just one on um who gets the parental guardianships or uh who's in the best position to watch after the kids, but um I think it becomes a safety factor uh in that regard. Uh and I have to be I have to be fair. There are plenty of cases out there of women strangling men, or women strangling women, or men strangling men in homosexual relationships. And um it's it's pretty bad. It's it's it's pretty bad. And it and it happens on both sides, but in the realm of domestic violence, it is almost always a female victim survivor in the realm of a heterosexual domestic violence relationship.

SPEAKER_02 47:57

I imagine in the woman offender uh strangling a male, that's even that much more difficult to prove.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Yeah, one you know, a lot of men are very apprehensive about reporting. Um we we we all uh everybody in the realm of domestic violence knows that the numbers we have in domestic violence are underreported. Even for the things that are, you know, reported to us by those who are that are affected by it and those that experience it. But we know that a lot of people don't come forward. A lot of people don't come forward to law enforcement, a lot of people don't go to the hospital, and so we have to rely on just anecdotal type of experiences and and uh personal interviews that aren't on the record per se. And you know, for men, um, it's an it's generally based out of embarrassment. You know, who's gonna believe me that a man has been victimized? But I can I could tell you of a lot of men in my career who were victims of severe, severe domestic violence, uh, to the point of um being almost killed uh in very, very violent uh examples. And these men uh were men that most women would want to be around, caring, loving, compassionate, uh not quick to anger, um, very forgiving. And uh unfortunately for these men, um that desire to um maintain the relationship and and get back to the good parts of it, and but also the uh self-realized or self-talk of, you know, I'm gonna be embarrassed or I don't want to be embarrassed by reporting this to law enforcement, kept them in that situation a lot longer than they should have been that almost cost them their lives. Uh but but I I've even seen law enforcement officers, male law enforcement officers and female law enforcement officers who go out here and force the law but are victims of demi domestic violence in their own home. So if you can imagine that for a moment, um if if a law enforcement officer can be a victim of domestic violence in their own home and no one know about it, then what is that what does that say for everyone else?

SPEAKER_02 50:04

Yeah, I had a I had a female officer come on and she was a victim of domestic violence and trafficking by her her partner. So it and when she turned to her colleagues for help, everybody kind of turns their back.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

So Yeah, and this this would take a lot deeper dive, but this is another example that some of your viewers might uh understand uh better uh when people are critical of well, why didn't someone report? Why did they not get out? You hear that a lot. And the story that I relate that most people can understand is is this uh many, many years ago, I was a I was a teenager, I'm 52 now, it's a long time ago. Uh, but there was a program right behind you. There was a program on the History Channel or the Learning Channel or the Military Channel. I honestly can't remember. But it was a show about prisoners of war. And they interviewed prisoners, prisoners of war from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. And um in the military, there's something called SEER training. It's an escape and evasion school that, depending on your discipline, you go through, and what it teaches you to do is try to evade capture, and if you are captured, how to deal with the the horrible things that may happen to you uh during your POW uh experience. And they interview these prisoners of war and they asked them this question. They said, Did you ever try to escape? And I'll never forget their one of their two answers. The first answer they gave is, Well, um, I knew that I could escape, but I was worried of what would happen to my buddies that were left behind. How are they gonna have to pay for what I did? And then others were, I saw chances to escape, but I was worried of what was gonna happen to me. So if we take that same kind of idea uh and we apply it to domestic violence or any type of interpersonal violence, quite frankly, and we say, well, why don't you just get out? It's not that simple. And if you just remember those two responses, you know, these are trained military personnel with millions of dollars worth of training underneath them and a huge network of support if they needed it. And they still couldn't find themselves at a place that they tried to escape. Why do we think that people without those resources, without that encouragement, without that boldness would do anything different? And um, so we you know, we have to stop being so critical.

SPEAKER_02 52:33

And those POWs were also part of their training, is the potential expectation that they would become a prisoner of war. And these victims are just they they fell in love with somebody that thought they loved them back and were blindsided by what happened. Okay, so let's talk more about strangulation. I know I'm kind of doing it. Well, that's all right.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Well, it it ties into a lot of different things, but we can get into the what I call the meat and potatoes of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:04

Okay, so you were talking about stroke risk. So how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 53:09

Yeah, so there uh during strangulation, where again there's this external pressure on the structures of the neck, and we got three structures we have to worry about. Our trachea, which is where we breathe in air and it goes into our lungs, then obviously combines with our heart to put oxygen in our blood. We have our jugular vein, which is a little bit closer to the surface of our front of our neck, and it's uh right there

Stroke Risk And Hidden Medical Damage

SPEAKER_00 53:31

by the trachea. The jugular vein takes deoxygenated blood from the brain back to the heart and lungs. And then we have the carotid artery, and that is the artery that comes from the heart and lungs up into the brain that brings that oxygenated, bright red oxygenated blood to our brain. And our brain needs about 20% of our body's oxygen, oxygen to function normally. Well, during a strangulation event, what could happen, not always, what could happen is something called a carotid dissection. And that is where the internal wall of the carotid artery tears. Now think about any time you've cut yourself, what happens? Blood flows into that area, clotting factors start to develop, and there may even be a little flap, I hate be so graphic, but a little flap of skin that's there. That could happen to the inside wall of your carotid artery, and that is very, very problematic and dangerous because the clotting factors and the body's attempt to repair that tear. Now we're not talking about tear of the artery where you're you're hemorrhaging inside your body. We're talking about just the internal wall itself being torn. It creates a blood clot and it creates a change in the flow of blood where more of those clotting factors start to clump together more quickly. That is not that is something that a strangulation victim will not feel. It's not painful per se. Uh the results of it can be painful, but that it they would be not, they wouldn't go, oh, I feel something hurting right here. That wouldn't happen. So that blood clot sits there and it can sit there for months before it either dissolves or breaks loose. The problem is, is if it breaks loose, where does it go? It goes into the brain. And so we have some people that have died as a result of a stroke, but that was caused by a strangulation. So if someone doesn't die by that stroke, then they suffer brain damage as a result of varying levels. And so you got things called cryptogenic strokes, which are strokes of unknown cause. You got hemorrhagic strokes, ischemic strokes, but all these different strokes can be as an indirect result of a carotid dissection. And the only way to really pick up on a carotid dissection is to get medical intervention and get these MRIs and CTAs, these CT scans with the you know contrasting dye to see what's going on. And there's people that have walked, people that I know and cases that I know where people have been walking around with these blood clots in their carotid arteries, having no idea that at any moment they could die. And so when it comes to a non-fetal strangulation, you can die pretty quickly, but you can also die months and months later from the complications that result. And that's just one complication of strangulation. But that's one of the most severe.

SPEAKER_02 56:20

Well, and I wonder how many of those deaths actually end up being attributed to domestic violence.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

That's that's very problematic. Uh, Dr. Dean Hawley, that I referenced earlier, um, he has a very interesting quote. He said, the only way to, and I'm I'm I'm adulterating this a little bit, but I'm paraphrasing, um, that the only way to really substantiate that something was a strangulation death is still by autopsy. Well, you're assuming one that an autopsy took place. The second thing you're assuming is that uh a person trained the right way actually looks at what they're supposed to be looking at. Because some of your autopsies, if they're done, are done by MDs that are not forensic pathologists. A forensic pathologist has eight years of specialized training not to treat the living, but to look at the dead, death causation. And so there's been cases out there uh that uh someone has died of a stroke and they probably never had a never had an autopsy, never, you know, had the parts of their neck opened up to see what some underlying cause was. And there's probably other cases out there where um there was some cause to to require or mandate an autopsy, but it was done, and and the right person was not looking at the right things. So it's it's Brian's position, in my opinion, that there's probably a lot of strangulation deaths that we do not know about.

SPEAKER_02 57:48

Right. Well, and then uh this is a different topic, but uh there's a lot of deaths that are ruled ruled suicide, which are probably actually homicide. It's just the right person wasn't doing the investigation portion.

SPEAKER_00 58:03

Right. And there's some training that's occurring right now across the country of staged um suicide scenes or staged crime scenes. Um a topic for a different day, but when it comes to like ligature deaths and everything, there's there's some things that we can look at forensically that helps us determine whether something was truly a suicidal hanging versus a a ligature strangulation. But there are professionals out there and training out there that is that starting to clarify this so we um don't miss what we we should be noticing.

SPEAKER_02 58:34

Right. Okay, so stroke risk is one of the risks. Are there what other you mentioned an increased risk of homicide, 800 to 1,000 percent. Is that within a certain time frame? Is that for the rest of their life, or as long as that offender is living or not behind bars?

SPEAKER_00 58:55

Yeah, they they haven't specified a time window, just that um that uh especially with that individualized offender, the risk goes up pretty, pretty high. Um and we're talking about specifically that rate being associated with women in an intimate partner uh relationship. Um and again, most uh almost exclusively it is with that partner they were with at the time that they were strangled. Um, it's sad for me to say this, but one of my acquaintances was actually murdered um last year. And uh here in our state, she was actually executed in broad daylight by her boyfriend on the interstate here in South Carolina. I didn't know who it was at the time until I found out later. And um uh inter I interviewed the family, and what we were able to discover is that were that there were patterns of strangulation in that relationship before she was she was shot to death. Um and no no one knew because when I talked to the friends and family around that situation, uh, and we'll probably get into this next, were the subtle signs and symptoms that she had been strangled. People passed it off as other stuff and didn't have the insight to know that it was more than what they thought.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:07

Okay, yeah. I I'm first of all, I'm I'm so sorry for that. That's awful. Um, but yeah, let's get into the subtle signs because it is you're right, it's often after the fact when people start talking about things later that you start to discover that there is this history there.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:25

Yeah. So I'll go down a few of them relatively quickly for you. Um one is uh complaints of a headache. Now, uh, as I say at all my trainings, just because someone has a headache doesn't mean they've been strangled. Okay. These are all indicators. What I'm getting ready to tell you is these are not proof of strangulation, but as what we say in law enforcement, the more indicators of something you see, the higher the probability. So headache. Now, headache happens for different reasons. We don't have time to go into the medical physiological reasons, but uh someone can have a headache from too much caffeine, not enough caffeine, too much alcohol, not enough, too much sleep, not enough sleep. But they might say, you know, my head hurts, or they're rubbing their head. Okay, that's something to notice. You know, and we may we may ask a question, hey, what's wrong? Oh, my head hurts. They may not tell us why, and that's up to them. We may inquire further and they just say, Well, I don't know, maybe I just slept too long or whatever. But that's something to notice, headache. Um, trouble breathing or trouble swallowing. So as you might imagine, I tell people, you know, if you've ever played a sport and you've twisted your ankle or you twisted your wrist, uh, you know it hurts pretty bad to start off with. But you might, you know, kind of rub it out, get back in the game and finish, but then tomorrow morning your ankle or your wrist is the size of a grapefruit. That's the body's response to trying to repair the damage and the injury. So in strangulation, the same thing can happen. You can suffer some pain, have some pain, the pain goes away, but then the body's natural response to handling those injuries causes things to swell and close off in what we call occlude. You're you're familiar with the word occlusion, which is blocking off or restricting. And so people's airways and their tongue and uh structures of their neck and their esophagus and their trachea can swell and they may not be able to swallow very well. Um, there's been cases where uh women uh predominantly, but uh people that have been strangled have not drank for days. They show up to the hospital dehydrated. Why? Because when they try to drink, the dysfunction of you know sometimes nerves being damaged and or the structures of the throat and mouth being different. Every time they try to drink something, it goes down in their trachea and they start coughing and choking. It's not going down into their esophagus. So they go for days without drinking. So trouble swallowing, trouble breathing, you may hear wheezing or whistling. You know, people think you know that the trachea is this, you know, massive, you know, big open tube. It's not, it's very, very small. Um, you know, when they intubate people for surgery and stuff, you're talking about an air about the size of a dime that you have to get the intubation tube down. Well, imagine when that starts to close up. You know, just get a good restaurant, take a straw and try to breathe through a straw with the same pattern and and force, it becomes very, very hard. So we sometimes see struggling to breathe, whistling, wheezing, um, changes in voice. About 50% of the time, there is an altered voice. Their voice is different. Now, you may not know that the voice that you hear is different from their normal voice. It comes from a basis of understanding. If you're a friend or a family, then you might pick up on it. But if you're a stranger, if you're an investigator, you may not know that this is not their normal voice. They may not even pick up on it. So sometimes we have to ask, hey, is the way that you're speaking your normal voice? And it can alter up or down, but it's different. That's about 50% of the time, and that's usually due to um nerve dysfunction in the neck. Uh that could be temporary or could be permanent. We also have um uh memory loss or memory deficit. Now I'll say, why does that happen? Uh real simple. We have a thing in our brain called the hippocampus, and the hippocampus sits in the middle of our brain and it's responsible for storing memory. It's also the part of our brain that is first affected by lack of oxygen. So it is not uncommon for victims, survivors of strangulation to have gaps in their memory or no memory at all. When you have gaps in memory or no memory at all, we can say that there could have been a dysfunction in the hippocampus. It could be related to lack of oxygen or no oxygen. So that's that's can be seen. Now, uh, when someone says they can't remember, as I said earlier, they can sometimes be discredited. Well, what do you mean you can't remember? But they may say things like, well, I remember us being in the kitchen, but I woke up in the ditch outside. Or I remember us fighting the front seat of the car, but I but I somehow ended up in the back seat. I don't know how that indicates a loss of consciousness. We just got to kind of try to figure out what that loss of consciousness was due to. And then we also have uh involuntary um loss of bowel control, uh, whether it's urinary or otherwise. Um, and that is that is a really dangerous indicator because um a lot of functions in our body are automatic, autonomic, as we say. You know, you don't think to breathe, you don't think to make your stomach work, you don't think a lot of things. You don't think about keeping certain parts of your body and muscles tight to control your bowels. You don't think about it, it's natural. But when the brain goes into a dysfunction and the brain starts to shut down, the part of the brain that controls that causes those parts of the body to relax. And those, and as you know, being a nurse, they could sphincter muscles is what they call them. We have them in the top of our stomach, we have them in our bowels. And so when people sometimes uh uh vomit uh or they go to the bathroom on themselves, it could be due to that brain dysfunction. Uh now, for us as law enforcement officers, that's uh not just problematic uh because of the health and the care that they need and the triage that they need for their injuries, but evidentiary. Because people, if they wake up and they're in soiled clothes, they either throw them away or they hide 'em. Well, for us in law enforcement, that's what we call evidence. And um I mean, imagine someone who's been violently um hurt and violated, and you expect them to tell you that they went to the bathroom on themselves. Just Out of the blue. I just want to let you know that's not going to happen. We as law enforcement officers have to be a little more inquiring and be lawfully nosy, as I said earlier. So those are some of the more subtle signs and symptoms that are just passed off as just, well, it's just they got a headache, uh, they got a cold. That's why they're wheezing. Um, maybe they got laryngitis, that's why they're having trouble swallowing. And we uh we've seen that a lot. We've seen that a lot. But just to let everybody know, there is at least 25, at least 25 known medical complications with being strangled. Many of those can be acute, and many of those could cause death later with uh compression of the vagus nerve or brachial nerves that run through the center of our body. Uh, one that uh I think um a lot of people could identify with is something called thyroid storm. So your thyroid is the gland that sits right here around your larynx area. And um, that thyroid gland produces a lot of different hormones that the body needs for proper function. And there's something called thyroid storm where overstimulation of the thyroid can cause your body to overdose itself on different thyroid hormones, which could cause your death. It actually can cause heart arrhythmias, can cause heart attacks. Um, one thing that some of my former instructors who were emergency uh physicians have noted is that patients have come into the hospital with 105, 106 degree fever, and there's no there's no you know, bacterial cause, no viral cause. And when they start checking thyroid hormones, some of the hormones that control the temperatures of our body have is what's causing that rise in temperature, and without intervention, you can die from not hypothermia, but hyperthermia. So, yeah, I mean people see how how strangulation affects all these functions of your body, and um, and I'll say this too while we're on this. In 50% of cases, whether it's a fatal strangulation or a non-fatal strangulation, about 50% of the time there will be no external signs on their body.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:38

So in the movies, that was I didn't know that was for fatal, also. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:42

Yes, that's why that's why Dr. Dean Hawley said that you know, the you know, to know for sure if it's an autopsy, uh strangulation, we have to do autonomy autopsy. And the um, so again, when you pair that 50% of the time there's no external injuries on the body, and a person can't tell you what happened, think about how often it's minimized and just passed over as this is not a big deal. And the person that truly needs help is in desperate need of immediate medical intervention and triage. And that brings up another startling statistic uh is that a lot of people don't get to the hospital because they don't know that they need to go, and when they get there, they're not triaged appropriately. Um, we have some great people out there called forensic nurses, uh, which you're familiar with. Um, I know a lot of forensic nurses. I train forensic nurses. We all sometimes call them uh sexual assault nurse examiners. Uh, those are nurses with specialized training um in doing exams related to sexual assault or domestic violence and strangulation. Um, actually, interestingly, I went through the 40-hour didactic program of a forensic nurse. So I've got a certain level of certification, I just don't do the practical exams. But if we took a hundred cases, substantiated cases of strangulation, only three to five of those hundred would actually get to the hospital. And even the ones that get to the hospital, unless the appropriate people are triaging them, many of them are sent out the door with just a pat on the back, some pain medication, and if something changes, call us later.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:17

So is are there any words that somebody should use when they're going to like first of all, they have to be aware that they were even strangled.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:26

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:26

But if they were aware that this happened, is there any kind of vocabulary they should use with either law enforcement or the medical uh professionals to make sure they're clued in that, hey, I was strangled. This is what's going on with me, these are my symptoms.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:43

Right. Well, the

Getting Care And Forensic Nurse Support

SPEAKER_00 1:10:44

first thing I would say is use that terminology strangulation. Let's get away from the word choking. Um, be very, very clear about that uh if if if you've been strangled. So terminology, strangulation, strangulation. Um, I would definitely encourage people to watch this episode but other information that's available online of the signs and symptoms, so that not that you're self-diagnosing, but you know those indicators. I've been I I believe I've been strangled, or I have been strangled, and I know that what I'm experiencing, this, this, and this, and be very specific, are some problematic issues associated with strangulation. I need assistance getting to the hospital. And law enforcement agencies are supposed to provide affirmative assistance for those seeking that kind of help. So when you say that, if you cannot get to the hospital on your own, law enforcement should be making the arrangements to have that happen. Once you get to the hospital, when you go into that intake or that ER, use that same terminology. I think I've been strangled. I know I've been strangled. These are some things that I'm experiencing that I know are associated with some dangers associated to that. I would like to see or be examined by a forensic nurse. The reason I say that is because you have emergency room doctors uh uh that are, you know, in there. I mean, they're ED to EDs, as we call them, and you have uh varying degrees of expertise and experience. I mean, I've been in emergency rooms where the head emergency room doctor is like, you know, got three years of trauma, you know, experience, and others have 30 years. But what we've seen over and over again is that uh one of the nurses comes in, they do the check-in, they do basic um vital signs, you know, what's the problem, why are you here? The emergency physician comes in, they do what their evaluation, and if they don't believe that this person is suffering either anything acute or potentially harmful, they can discharge them with just some very minor. And I can't tell you how many cases I've I've where I've talked to victim survivors of strangulation who went to the hospital and the emergency room doctor did not feel it was necessary for them to get higher levels of care and triage. And they were sent. Now, to my advice, I told that person you need to get with your primary care physician and get an emergency referral to an ear-nose and throat doctor, a neurologist, or whatever. And what's really interesting, almost without fail, in all those cases, when these victim survivors got to their primary care physician and expressed these same things and then got these emergency referrals to earn nose and throat doctors and neurologists, the ear-nose and throat doctors and neurologists found something terrible that should have been discovered in the emergency room. I've also had cases, not me, but I've also heard cases where the some other not forensic nurses, but nurses in the ER and forensic nurses have had to argue with the emergency physician to order higher levels of uh exams like MRIs and CTAs, uh CAT skins with angiogam uh angiogram uh contrast, uh, to find these internal injuries that because I mean think about it. You you're you're in the emergency room and the the person's been strangled, but they can walk, they can talk, they can answer questions, they might have pain, uh, but it might be minor. They might have no pain at all. And they say, well, I want a forensic nurse. No, no, I don't think you need that resource. I'm not gonna call that resource in. You don't need it. No, no, I do. No, I I'm the one that makes the decisions around here. We I'm not gonna call in the forensic nurse on call. We don't need there's there have been some arguments within emergency rooms, but that's that's a kind of a long answer to a short question. That is the terminology we need to use. I know I've been strangled, I think I've been strangled. This is what I'm experiencing. I know these things are associated with some dangers that could harm me in the long term, and I need medical intervention, I need medical triage, and I need to see a forensic nurse examiner or the other term is sexual assault nurse examiner. They essentially do the same thing, just different titles.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:51

What if, so let's say somebody's listening to this episode and they think back to, oh, I was strangled last month and I'm having these headaches, I'm having whatever subtle symptoms that you described. What should they do at that point? Should they contact their primary care, or if they don't have one, should they go to the emergency department?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:11

Um well, obviously anything acute, which means it's like it's you know, it's it's not going away. It's been um there for quite a while. I would say go to the emergency room, first of all. Um, things that might be a little more subtle, a little more problematic, or maybe follow an up and down pattern if it's here one day and go on the next. Um, you might want to go to your primary care physician. Um, but yeah, for sure. Um definitely go to your doctor. And I always say uh go to your doctor, but be empowered with self-care information. So this is what I mean. There are resources out here on the internet where you can type in signs and symptoms of strangulation and you can print out a little PDF. It's very, very good. It's the infographic that explains and shows a lot of the stuff. There's also one that's the uh medical and radiographic protocol for strangulation victims for physicians. You can find that online too. Um, and that is actually a form that was made by doctors, by forensic pathologists for other medical doctors who were not informed on how to examine uh strangulation victims and what uh processes to order. So, what's really cool about that is you give that to them, and I've I've been in the situation where some of the doctors are like, you know, your police officer, don't tell me how to do my job. Or you might be the patient, don't tell me how to do my job. I'm not telling you how to do your job. What I'm doing you is I'm giving you a resource that was made by doctors like you who have a specialty in something that I'm suffering with that helps you help me. And it and it's and it's and it's a perfect flow chart that any doctor can follow. All the resources are on the back to show where all the information came from that just didn't come off the internet. It came from all these doctors. And it talks about, you know, if if patient exhibits this, do this. If the patient does this, order this exam. If they did this, consult with neurology. If this, consult with the ENT. It's all there on one sheet of paper. And so I'm a real big advocate for uh advocating for your own health care. Um, even even though I haven't had to deal with any of these issues, I've had to go to the hospital and basically tell the doctors what I wanted to happen in my own interest uh and against what they wanted, but ultimately I was in the right. And so be professional, be courteous, but also um speak with authority uh because of the information that you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:48

Yeah, as a medical provider, I will emphasize you need to advocate for yourself. But what was that link again? I want to include that for the um the list.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:59

Yeah, so the um so if you just type into the in a search engine um signs and symptoms of strangulation, um there will usually be a PDF file that will come up from the Institute on Strangulation Prevention out of California that uh is an infographic. And to kind of use a little graphic with my fingers here, it's an eight and a half by eleven piece of paper. It's got a woman's face on it, and she has external injuries that you may see if those type of injuries are there, but there's also a listing of non-visible injuries around the edge of the page that include uh neurological and internal sign symptoms and indicators. So that's that's free online as a PDF. And then the other one, which is also through the Institute on Strangulation Prevention out of California, but you can also find it in some different state databases for domestic violence informed response, is the medical uh radiological um protocol for strangulation victims. And that one basically is uh it can be full color, isn't um it's sometimes either blue and white or purple and white, or it could be blue, black, and purple, but it's a PDF form. And on one side it's simply the flow chart for doctors, and on the back side of that form is all the reference material to let those doctors know that where all this substantiated research came from.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:28

That should be in every emergency department and every primary care practice.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:33

It should, it should, but it's not. And again, I've just seen too many instances and heard of too many instances and talked with victim survivors who were basically like, well, nothing's nothing seems to be wrong with you, you know. Here's some ibuprofen and calls back if well, they may not be able to call back later. I mean, they may go sleep at home and never wake up. Or in cases that I'm familiar with, they went to sleep and they woke up and they couldn't breathe. They couldn't breathe, they couldn't swallow. And now we're looking at a, you know, a major issue where they had to get you know transported back to the emergency room to the same doctors that told them everything was fine six hours earlier.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:07

My gosh. Okay, so you've been doing this for a very long time. Do you notice a significant difference from 25 years ago to today in recognition of strangulation and just domestic violence in general?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:20

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think the approaches um to domestic violence have definitely improved over time. Now, to be fair, I know that everyone's got a story of a response that should have been different. We still have responses out there that are left of

Strangulation Laws And South Carolina Gaps

SPEAKER_00 1:20:35

wanting and not as good as they should have been. But overall, the responses have improved. Um, I think with the younger generation of law enforcement officers, they have a higher level of awareness and understanding and uh uh being personally vested in the care of the people that they're interacting with. Um so I've seen that. And then obviously, obviously with strangulation too. Um, give give California a lot of credit on this because it started in California, you know, 20 plus years ago, and uh over the last 20 years it is slowly but steadily progressed uh in understanding from west coast to east coast, where um here on the east coast, and we could talk about it in a minute, where we're trying to play catch up a little bit, but um uh we're we're we're catching up where the strangulation awareness and interventions are starting to become more mainstream.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:26

So 49 states have some sort of a law, right, on strangulation?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:31

Yeah, so it uh so 49, so I'm talking I'm in South Carolina, so 49 other states and the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense, which is the but which covers the military, have specific codes and statutes that specifically address strangulation. South Carolina does not. Now, uh in 2015, um, when I was on the governor's domestic violence task force, we also instituted a domestic violence reform period as well. Our domestic violence laws in South Carolina had not been changed in decades. Um, in that 2015 domestic violence reform bill, we were able to add some language, but only within the domestic violence realm. Okay. However, the language that we wanted was not kept. It was changed to some degree, and uh because I can say this, trial lawyers in our legislature, mainly defense attorneys, um during the debate of the bills, changed language that I to that to me uh limited the power and authority to address strangulation within domestic violence. It's there, but it's not it's not what we needed, truly. Um, there's actually these different tiers where someone can be strangled in domestic violence and it's still be considered a misdemeanor. It doesn't make any sense to me. The language that was chosen is not uh specific enough, it's not clear enough, it's open to misinterpretation, it's open to misapplication, and as a result, in the realm of domestic violence, even though we've addressed strangulation a little bit better, it's not what we want even within domestic violence. So, what we've been trying to do here in South Carolina is uh with myself and other people, is to create and pass a comprehensive strangulation law under a specific code, not mixed in with other statutes like assault and battery or attempted murder or anything like that, a specific code that would use specific language, uh, would give specific sign symptoms and indicators to those untrained, and qualify it as a felony right out of the gate. Because I think that's that's where it needs to be. Um because the potential for death is really high. People say, well, why isn't attempted murder? Um, not to get too deep, but there are some technical differences on why attempted murder may not be the appropriate charge, and it has to do with some legalities of the law and what can be presented and that sort of thing. But we think uh you know uh a minimum three-year felony up to a 10-year felony for aggravated strangulation is appropriate for a place to start. So we have um we've uh written bills um that have been in our legislature for the last eight years, but we are still fighting to get a comprehensive standalone strangulation felony law in South Carolina. And the reason we want it comprehensive is because strangulation goes way, way beyond domestic violence. Strangulation is used in child abuse, it is used in vulnerable adult and elder abuse, it's used in kidnapping, it's used in sexual assault, it's used in human trafficking. I do presentations on sexual assault and strangulation and human trafficking. I mean, all those topics I do training on. And people sometimes have never thought about that. But in human trafficking, it's one of the most commonly reported uh physical acts done to human uh uh human trafficking victims is being strangled. And as it pertains to sexual assault, you know, and you're familiar with this being used commonly, but we hear drug-facilitated sexual assault a lot. And that's where either some illicit drug or some over-the-counter drug or some type of drug or intoxicant is um given to our sexual assault victim to inebriate them or to make them unconscious for the sexual assault. But what's interesting about that is we don't use strangulation facilitated sexual assault. And the real big difference is that unlike drug facilitated, drug-facilitated sexual assault means you've got to go out and get stuff either illicitly or over the counter. You gotta go buy stuff to to in to put intoxicants in somebody's body. Well, with strangulation facilitated sexual assault, that's a weapon that the offender has with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They carry it with them in plain view. And it does has the exact same effect as the drug-facilitated sexual assault. The reason they use the the drugs is because most of those drugs are going to be out of the person's system and not detected through any type of you know blood testing. Well, with strangulation when there's no external signs on the person and they can't tell you what happened, well, there people say, Well, there's there's no evidence, so it must not have happened. You know, um and we didn't cover this, but I'll mention it now. Um, the pressures and the duration. It only takes five pounds of pressure for about 10 seconds to close off your jugular vein to render a person unconscious. It takes about roughly 10 or 11 pounds of pressure for the same amount of time for the carotid artery to be closed to render someone unconscious. And it takes about 33 pounds of pressure to close off the trachea. Uh, it takes a little bit longer for um unconsciousness to occur because when you close off the trachea, there's still blood saturation in your blood volume, so the body has to burn up all that oxygen before you know you go unconscious. But um, we're talking about pressures are really, really low. People say, well, Brian, give me a comparison. It takes about 20 pounds of pressure per square inch to open a can of soda. So when you take your finger and you pull the tab on a can of soda, that's about 20 pounds of pressure per square inch. It only takes five pounds of pressure per square inch in the right area on the right structure for about seven to ten seconds to make someone go unconscious. So that's why in domestic violence or sexual assault or whatever, vulnerable adults and elders, children. That's why these offenders find it so effective. There's not much force they have to use, and there's very little signs that they actually did it, that anything actually occurred. That's terrifying.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:06

I don't I don't drink soda very often, but I did. We I had a road trip with my kids, and I was struggling to get the tab open because I was driving. But uh I mean, who knows? It probably took like seven to ten seconds just to get that that pop top to to open. Uh, you mentioned elder and children. Is there a correlation? I know we talked about intimate partner violence, that an offender is likely to strangle their next intimate partner. Is there a correlation between those three as well?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:39

Yeah, yes, because you're talking about interpersonal violence. So what we see is that someone that is willing to abuse a child or a vulnerable adult is willing to abuse an able-bodied adult. And the reason we say children and vulnerable, vulnerable adults or elders is because in most state laws, because children are considered an at-risk population with the inability to make informed decisions and protect themselves, they're considered a protect, special protected population. And many in many states, you also have vulnerable adult and elder statutes for the same reason, because with the infirmities of aging or you know different medical complications, an adult can suffer a physical or mental disability that impairs their ability to care for themselves or protect themselves. And so when we see someone utilize strangulation uh against uh one kind of defined group of people, it's easier for them to utilize that across any anybody else really, who's a human being, regardless of age or uh or or ability. And so, yeah, we see these um, you know, we and just talking about domestic violence, we see a correlation, not strangulation, but with um abuse of animals. Usually when there's domestic violence, there's also abuse of the animals in the home, and vice versa. So it's all interconnected, this interpersonal violence and these propensities or justifications for these abusers to harm everybody around them. Not just, you know, one individual, but everyone around the situation.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:16

Right. Like I I know and I don't know the statistics off the top of my head, but animal abuse and the likelihood of child abuse specifically are very closely related. And I think that's why honestly our legal system needs to take into account what is being done to one person doesn't mean it's just that one person. I feel like there's a lot of times where, especially in the family court system, where judges will look and say, well, they were abusing you. They weren't abusing the children, they weren't abusing the animals or or whomever else may be, because there could be other adults in the home as well. The abuse was only toward you. So we're not going to limit their time with any of these other individuals because you're the cause of it, not the other thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:04

And that's why I said earlier, you know, there's always a pattern before the time of discovery. That pattern is not just with usually one person, it's patterns across multiple people, multiple types of relationships. Um, yeah, so you know, when we see it in one area, we really need to start looking in other areas as well. And if we do it right, we almost always find uh multiple uh type of victimization situations going on.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:32

Uh going back to the South Carolina thing, what do you think the holdup is? What do you why do you think there's not just an automatic, okay, you're right, let's do this?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:42

Um well that that's the question I often get because again, um, I mean, I've done presentations for just about every kind of group you can think of, and everyone's in agreement. This is dangerous, this is worrisome, this is something we need to jump on. And I've also, with all the bills that we've had, I've given testimony um at Senate judiciary hearings, um, uh House judiciary hearings, I've written a legislative report for the legislature, and there's still no movement. And the two things that I come back to are uh there's members of our legislature who just think they know better than we do, quite frankly. Um for all the data and stuff I've provided, they still think it's not a big deal. And and I I can't I can't reconcile that. I I can't make sense of that. Um or they think that there's some uh ulterior motive um behind um creation of this law that they can't explain there. Well, there's something there's something else y'all are trying to do here, but we can't really figure it out. Another one is that they don't want the government in people's houses. I've had them say that that you know the government doesn't need to be in people's houses. Um, well, that's I have a problem with that because I think there's times that it's absolutely necessary um for the pre- you know we do it in uh we got plenty of other statutes that allow for that. Why not this? You know, what's uh what's the big deal? Um and for many people outside the legislature, it seems to be common sense. Uh we have um a very powerful legislative lobby. Um so we do have members of our legislature that are in support of this, and they you have to have a uh supporter to introduce a bill. So the the the bills that we've written, we've had supporters for it, but we just haven't had enough support to get it over the finish line. And for anybody that's not familiar with the legislative process and getting a law passed, it's not easy. It has to go through the Senate, then it has to go through the House, they both have to be in agreement, they make amendments, then it has to go to the governor, and it's a very, very drawn-out process. But what what I can't understand, um, and this is something I've expressed to our attorney general, this is something I've expressed to our members of our legislature, is that um South Carolina has already identified strangulation as an extreme danger. And they're like, Well, what do you mean? I said, Well, and this this only fits for South Carolina, but it'll make sense. In 2023, um, our General Assembly uh passed a law in our what we call our law enforcement reform bill. And it was pretty comprehensive, but one of the things in that law enforcement reform bill specifically mentioned neck holds and neck restraints. And what it says is that law enforcement officers are prohibited from using uh neck holds and neck restraints unless uh it constitutes deadly force. So, what does that mean? That means that the legislature has already agreed that a neck hold or neck restraint has a potentially lethal outcome. Otherwise, they would not have considered it a deadly force level of action. So my thing is when I look at them and say, so how can y'all make that law and say that it's dangerous, but then not apply that same level of protection to every other citizen in South Carolina with its own specific code. You're right, that doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:05

So law enforcement can't do it, but everyone else can.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:08

Yeah. Well, law enforcement can do it if deadly force is necessary. Right. So for example, so for example, you know, when people think deadly force and law enforcement, they think of guns. But there's a lot of times where officers are fighting people that guns are not available, but but their life is still at risk. So they have to rely on other tools or other methods, and it just says that, you know, deadly force has to be met in order to use a neck hold or neck restraint. It can't be just a to subdue somebody, and that's kind of where it came from. And there's been all kinds of national stories of you know individuals who have died in police custody who are being subdued by neck hold of some kind and then ultimately died later because someone's being taken to custody or they're being restrained. And we've clearly established that this is not just a tool of restraint, this it can only be used as a means of essentially defense or protection because of the high lethality that's associated with it. And so I that's what I I've talked to our General Assembly about. Is how can you reconcile that? How can you say that it's not a big deal and you have all these uh obvious or well, not obvious, but all these things you articulate against a strangulation bill passage, but then you've already approved it in some way, shape, or form under a previous statute two years ago? And I still haven't gotten a good answer.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:27

Yeah, that's wild. Well, is there are there is there anything that residents of South Carolina can do to help facilitate this?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:36

Uh absolutely. I mean, the voice of the people um is basically you know what our government uh representation is based on. And uh, yeah, there's there's individuals like me. Um uh there's a team that I work with. We actually have a task force of like 70 different professionals, doctors and nurses, and you know, victim advocates and everything who've put their name

How To Push Change And Reach Brian

SPEAKER_00 1:36:56

behind this. And we've we've had 10,000 signatures we've collected in South Carolina over the years, years, and it still isn't enough. So a couple of different things that people can do is one is engage with your lawmaker. Um there's ways to reach out to me, and we'll get to that in a minute, but there's um material that I can give you to provide to your um your legislator and here in South Carolina, whether it be senator or house rep, to inform them on what's going on and for you to press them as to why something's not being done. That's one. And there's ways, there's easy ways for people to find out who their senator or house rep here is in South Carolina. So engage with the person that represents you in your area of South Carolina. Number two, engage with the media. Um, I've I've been trying to engage the media in South Carolina for years, news stations, print media, radio stations to cover strangulation. And it's sad for me to say there's only a few news outlets who've been bold enough to take this on. By the large majority, the new stations that I call, and I've called news directors, I've called State House reporters, I've called crime beat reporters, by the large majority, I never hear back from them about the issue or covering the issue. Others I've heard back from, and it's like they seem to have some interest, and then it kind of just dies. And then there's a handful that have really kind of kept it. But I really think that we need to engage the media because when you have individual citizens across South Carolina, you can't have 40,000 of your constituents show up at the State House. I mean, I guess you could, but that's just not going to happen. People just don't have it in their schedule to do that. But when you have media that represent the people go up to in the State House and put microphones in their faces and go, this has been held up for eight years. What is your good reason for not doing it? People need to engage with their media and press them to press our legislature about this issue. It needs to be it needs to be stories that lead the news, it needs to be kept in the constant forward mind of every citizen. And um to engage that media also is just to politely correct the media when they get things wrong. When they use choking terminology over and over when it should be strangulation. I'm one, I I write these people. I say, look, you're you're incorrecting the the words that you choose. Let me provide you some information. I'm not brash about it, I'm not uh insensitive, I'm not rude, but I'm very professional. So engage with your legislative members, engage with your media, even if it's on a local level, your your local newspaper, your town, whatever it is. Um that's what we need. We need the collective voice of the people to bring emphasis and awareness on this problem in South Carolina. And again, I've got some resources that I can attach people to.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:56

Okay, so if people do want to get more information or contact you, how can they do that?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:01

There's three different ways they can do that. One is I have a LinkedIn page, um, Brian Bennett. And so you will see my picture on the LinkedIn page, and you also see my business. I've got a business banner. So after retirement, I started a business called Clearview Justice Training and Consulting, where basically I train and consult on the issues of my expertise, strangulation, which is one of them. Um so go on LinkedIn and look for Brian Bennett, and you'll see a picture of me in my uniform with a business banner above me. Another way that you can engage with me is on Facebook. I actually have a Facebook business page also under Clearview Justice Training and Consulting as well. And then particularly for South Carolina, but anyone outside of South Carolina is welcome to join it. I have a private Facebook page, uh, Facebook page called Strangulation Law for South Carolina, but it South Carolina is abbreviated SC. So Strangulation Law for SC is a private Facebook page where I regularly post on our advocacy uh for passage of a law in South Carolina. Uh, there's lots of people on there outside of South Carolina, but I post legislative updates. Um I post all kinds of informational material about the dangers of strangulation, um, uh opload posters that you can print out and put places. I mean, so it's really a comprehensive uh area, not just for those interested in South Carolina, but just interested in advocacy uh in the topic just in general for strangulation awareness and and training.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:38

Okay, perfect. Well, I know I've taken a lot of your time, so and I think that we're probably going to have to have more conversations because there's a lot of information. Uh, but before we officially close, do you have any final words of wisdom or encouragement that you would like to leave with listeners?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:55

Yeah, so uh remember just that you know, domestic violence and strangulation um obviously I think are one of the more most pervasive things that people deal with in our society. And

Final Encouragement And Closing

SPEAKER_00 1:42:06

I want everyone out there who might be suffering under that to understand that there is hope uh in this in this arena. There are people out there who are willing to help, who can help. The biggest thing is just getting you tied into those resources. Um it does take some boldness and it does take some uh some strength to reach out for help, but understand that your livelihood, both in the short term and the long term, the livelihood of yourself and your family is at risk here. And so, first of all, don't be afraid to reach out for help. Uh don't be afraid to be very, very clear and direct about what has happened to you. Um of judgment, but uh for those that aren't informed about what you're going through, they need to hear it from you if they don't ask you about it. So be very frank and very open. And uh I want you to know that there is a there is a rainbow at the end of this, there there is a light at the end of the tunnel out there. Um and what's often been my experience is that the best advocates for changes in domestic violence response and strangules response are those that have actually lived it. Me and other officers, we can tell a lot of stories. But what I want all of y'all to understand that might be suffering this is there's somebody out there that's in the exact same position as you. You're not alone. And they're looking for people like you who give them strength. Most people who are experiencing this find the most strength out of other people that have lived the experience as well. And so your story and and your success can be really the best motivating factor to bring other people out of these really dark places. So, yeah, there's there's uh a chance for a better and happier life. It's out there.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:00

Thank you so much, Brian, for those words. Those are amazing and your time and all of the work that you're doing and joining me today.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:08

It's my pleasure to be with you and look forward to being with you again.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:10

Yes, absolutely. Thank you again for joining me today, Brian, and thank you, Warriors, for listening. I've included all of the links Brian was referring to, as well as his Beyond the Statistics profile in the show notes. I'll be back next week with another episode for you. Until then, stay strong. And wherever you are in your journey, always remember you are not alone. To learn more, explore episode resources, browse a collections, or register as a guest, visit Beyond the Statistics Podcast.com. If today's episode meant something to you, please share it with someone who may need it. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and follow Beyond the Statistics on social media. Beyond the Statistics is a.5 Panoy production. Music written and performed by Tim Crow.