Ever since she joined the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office in 2018, Christina Johnson has struggled with how to handle a certain kind of domestic violence case. It was a sort of case she saw regularly, involving people who didn’t fit neatly into the categories provided by the criminal justice system. In a recent interview with the Banner, Johnson — who has led the office’s domestic violence division since 2021 — offered a hypothetical example.
Say the police are called to a Nashville home multiple times in a single month by a woman accusing her husband of abuse. But when officers arrive there are no outward signs of it, no visible bruises or injuries. Without any physical evidence, the officers separate the couple to interview them about what’s going on and the woman — possibly scared of her partner — says it was a misunderstanding or a mistake. The officers might have their suspicions but can only write up a report and wait for the next call. Then one night, the police are called to the same house again, only this time by the man. When they arrive, he has a scratch on his face. With state law all but mandating an arrest in such a situation, the woman is taken into custody and charged with a misdemeanor.
“The police officers come to court and they tell me, ‘Hey, I [didn’t feel] great about making this arrest but he had a scratch on his face and I want you to know there’s something going on in this house,’” Johnson told the Banner.
Faced with a defendant she believed was caught in a cycle of abuse — an alleged domestic abuser she believed was actually the one being abused — Johnson said she tried to “do the right thing” but found she was working against the grain.
Nashville Picked for Pilot Program
That changed earlier this year, when the DA’s office started a pilot program that diverts the cases of “survivor-defendants” away from the criminal justice system and toward the kind of resources offered to other Nashvillians facing domestic violence. The program is a partnership with the YWCA of Nashville and Middle Tennessee and since June 1, Johnson said, around 40 individuals have had their cases diverted through it.
The program is modeled after one started in Seattle in 2019. Johnson has spoken to officials there about their approach and last year, Nashville was selected by the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys to be one of two pilot sites for similar programs. In partnership with Bowie State University in Maryland, the APA will provide guidance and oversight along with analyzing data to evaluate whether Nashville’s program is effective.
The idea, Johnson said, is to better recognize these types of cases for what they are.
“These are not just acts of violence,” she said. “If I walk in on my significant other in a compromising position, I might be so enraged that I slap them across the face. That’s very different from a power and control dynamic where I’m in control of the finances, where I belittle them on a daily basis, where I use my position in society or over the kids as something to keep [them] in this cycle.”
After a survivor-defendant is diverted from the criminal justice system, their case leaves Johnson’s desk and moves over to that of Daffany Baker, the vice president of domestic violence services at the YWCA. Within 48 hours of a case being referred to it, the YWCA contacts the individual to offer a variety of services. Among them: shelter, counseling, job readiness training, financial education and safety planning.
Before coming to the YWCA, Baker was an associate warden at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, a women’s prison in Nashville. She saw then how many of the incarcerated women she worked with were also survivors of domestic violence.
“The trauma that the women personally had been through, a large percent of it was due to domestic violence, intimate partner violence,” she said.
The diversion program is designed for people found to be survivors of domestic violence and Johnson outlined several ways her unit identifies those individuals. A person can be eligible if they have been named as the victim in a domestic violence case within the past year or if they have recently sought an order of protection. Johnson said she has also gotten referrals from defense attorneys and community advocates.
For now, the program is only offered to people charged with a misdemeanor.
“Every jurisdiction is going to be different,” Johnson said. “I think we are a bit more, for lack of a better word, conservative than some other jurisdictions who are using this for cases all the way up to homicides. We’re not there, but we have to start somewhere.”