2014 was a violent year for women in Chatham County.
Three women in Savannah and unincorporated Chatham County were killed in acts of domestic violence. Another, in Port Wentworth, was raped and killed in her home — allegedly by a man indicted for raping three other women in two separate local incidents.
Rapes in the Savannah-Chatham police department’s jurisdiction last year were at their highest documented rate since 2007. Police investigators confirmed 64 occurred.
Officials with the Rape Crisis Center of the Coastal Empire, however, say nearly 20 more were reported. According to the center’s director, reported cases have increased about 30 percent each year since 2012.
Domestic violence also has taken its toll on the area’s children, leaving some motherless and others emotionally or physically injured. Two examples are the children of Lauren Brown Smart, who have been living with their grandparents, Barry and Sunni Brown, since their mother was beaten to death in June.
In one case in November, police said a 6-year-old girl was shot by a man who was fighting with the child’s mother. Metro police made more than 500 domestic violence arrests last year.
“We can’t turn our backs to it anymore,” said Sloan Knudson of Tybee Island.
Knudson is working with the Browns to create a database that would allow users to search for people convicted of domestic violence, with the hope of attracting enough attention to get lawmakers to consider a registry.
‘… a sweet girl that he totally destroyed’
Norman Smart was sentenced to life in prison last month, convicted of murder for beating his wife, Lauren Brown Smart, to death in front of their 6-year-old son in the couple’s Wilmington Island home.
It took jurors less than three hours to find Smart, 37, guilty of all eight charges against him — four counts of murder, three counts of aggravated battery and one count of cruelty to children.
The sentence Chatham County Superior Court Chief Judge Michael Karpf imposed on Smart for malice murder excluded the possibility of parole. Additionally, Smart was sentenced to 20 years in prison, consecutive to the life without parole term, for the cruelty to children charge.
“I think the jury got it right,” said Barry Brown, Lauren’s father. “... Someday the just punishment will come to him.”
Brown and his wife, Sunni, have been raising their daughter’s two children on Tybee Island since their mother’s death. The family is still reeling, but members of the community came together to help them financially and emotionally — especially to get Lauren’s children the care they need.
They began to suspect Smart had aggressive tendencies when a family friend alerted them to his past.
“We didn’t know that he was this violent, but there were some concerns there,” Brown said. “We tried our best to split them up for months, until he took full control of her brain — actually, he wouldn’t let her have anything to do with us.”
Domestic violence, he said, is hard on children. In the most severe cases, they can wind up losing both parents.
Brown said his daughter was a “bright, diligent” woman who never met a stranger.
“Somebody described her as, ‘She didn’t walk into the room; she floated into the room,’” Brown said of Lauren. “He had a sweet girl that he totally destroyed.”
The Browns don’t want anyone else to suffer Lauren’s fate.
After their daughter’s death, they asked for help in creating a database that would allow users to search for domestic violence convictions. Smart had been convicted twice for such charges in Ohio before he met Lauren.
‘The person who’s doing the hitting should be ashamed’
Lauren never called the local domestic violence shelter for help.
In fact, none of the local women whose deaths were classified as domestic violence homicides in at least the last 18 years have made that call, said Cheryl Branch, executive director of SAFE Shelter, which provides a haven for victims of such abuse.
“Domestic violence is about power and control,” Branch said. “In these relationships, you’ve got one person who’s in control. It’s not a healthy, balanced relationship like most people.”
From 2003-2013, there were 38 domestic violence-related deaths in Chatham County, according to statistics from a report by the Georgia Commission on Family Violence and Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Metro police say three women killed in the department’s jurisdiction last year died as a result of domestic violence.
In April, 45-year-old Kathleen Sheehan was found dead in the Montgomery Crossroad apartment she shared with her husband, Daniel Patrick Sheehan. The latter was indicted Oct. 15 for murder. The Chatham County grand jury charged that Sheehan caused his wife’s death “by smothering her and beating her.”
In June, police arrested Smart after they found Lauren, 34, dead on the floor of the couple’s bedroom. He had called 911.
And in November, Roman Hills was charged with murder after officers found his 35-year-old girlfriend, Beverly Jones, dead in a bloody room. According to a preliminary police report, Hills told officers Jones fell down stairs and hit her head. Police, however, saw blood spattered in the room where Jones’ body was located but little on the stairwell.
The first officer on scene saw dried blood on Hills’ pants, hands, shoes and under his fingernails.
According to the report, Hills told officers, “I told her to stop but she didn’t listen” and “I didn’t know something was wrong with her so I pushed her off of me.”
Finding a better way
Savannah-Chatham police Maj. Larry Branson, who runs the department’s Criminal Investigations Division, called the domestic homicides tragic. Metro police made 585 Domestic Violence Act arrests in 2014 — that’s 112 more than in 2013.
Locally, SAFE Shelter assisted more than 800 women and children in 2014. That’s about 140 more than in 2013. More than 200 males, including children, were helped.
Branch said it’s hard to get people to talk openly about domestic violence. That’s something, she said, that needs to change.
“We have to find a better way to reach the victims,” Branch said. “People just don’t want to talk about it. They think it will get better on its own.”
Domestic violence does not go away when ignored.
“I’ve seen women scrape up their last nickel to bail a man out of jail who has just beaten the hell out of her,” Branch said. “They’ll say, ‘You don’t know him like I do.’”
Compelled by Lauren’s death, Knudson, of Tybee Island, is offering the Browns her help.
“Barry and Sunni felt that if (Lauren) had access to that information, she might not have gotten involved with him,” Knudson said.
So Knudson and some tech-savvy volunteers got to work compiling information for the database, which she expects to launch within the next few months. Funded through a nonprofit, the database will use only information that’s publicly available, she said.
People who look hard enough can find such information already, but the goal of the project is to streamline that process.
“You’re shining a light on something,” she said. “People don’t have to go searching for it any more.”
The Browns hope the database will gain enough traction to inspire lawmakers to require a registry for people convicted of domestic violence — much like ones that exist for sex offenders.
Knudson called domestic violence an epidemic that forever colors the lives of the people it affects.
“It can’t be kept a secret any more,” she said. “The person who’s being hit should not be ashamed. The person who’s doing the hitting should be ashamed.”
Sexual violence
On Jan. 18, 2014, Lisa Marie Pynn’s 6-year-old child found her dead in the bedroom of their Port Wentworth home. The child told a neighbor, who called police.
Following Pynn’s autopsy, the city’s police chief announced her death was being investigated as a homicide. Officers remained mum about the investigation, but in August the Chatham County grand jury indicted Torrey Scott on murder, rape and robbery charges for Pynn’s slaying, accusing him of strangling the 33-year-old woman in her home.
Scott was already in jail, charged with raping three other women.
Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation charged him with raping two Savannah State University students in December 2013 at their college housing. A campus police incident report said the assailant had a firearm during the attacks and robbed the women.
The 38-year-old man was initially arrested in March when metro police charged him with the February kidnapping and rape of a woman abducted at gunpoint from a hospital parking lot.
Scott wasn’t the only local man last year indicted in a serial rape scenario. Alfred H. Colquitt was charged in four separate rapes of two elderly women. Prosecutors said he attacked one woman three times over two months.
Additionally, he was indicted on an aggravated assault charge, accused of putting his hands around another elderly woman’s neck at a downtown business, and with aggravated sexual battery and related crimes for an attack on a fourth woman.
The crimes authorities attribute to Scott and Colquitt grabbed headlines, but they were far from the only rape cases reported in the county last year.
“We can’t help but know that we’ve had more rape occurring, and we’re focused on getting and keeping those offenders off the streets,” said Kesha Gibson-Carter, executive director of the Rape Crisis Center of the Coastal Empire. “We hope that the more outreach we do, the more comfortable people will feel to come forward.”
Rise in rapes
Last year, the Rape Crisis Center responded to 108 sexual assault cases in Chatham County, five in Bryan County and 16 in Effingham County, according to statistics provided to the Savannah Morning News.
Rape Crisis Center staff say they only respond to cases reported to police. Eighty-one of the cases labeled as reported rapes were listed as being in the Savannah-Chatham police department’s jurisdiction. In year-end crime statistics released this month, however, metro police say 64 rapes were reported in their jurisdiction in 2014.
“I’m concerned that there is a difference,” Gibson-Carter said of the difference in statistics from her center and police. “We need to come to understand why.”
The center includes all reports of rape in its statistics, while the metro police department does not include cases in which investigators determined rape to be unfounded or falsely reported. Gibson-Carter said the center’s statistics only include cases in which examinations have been performed.
In Georgia, the crime of rape falls within specific boundaries — basically sexual intercourse between a man and a woman without her consent. Anything short of that, no matter how brutal and sexual in nature, is classified as a different type of sex assault. Metro police spokesman Julian Miller said the department’s statistics are generated by federal statute to meet FBI uniform crime reporting guidelines.
In its stats, metro uses the FBI’s old definition of rape — “carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will,” opposed to the new federal definition, which is broader but that Georgia hasn’t adopted.
Metro has a team of detectives, its Special Victims Unit, that focuses on solving rapes, other sex crimes, cases involving children and other sensitive issues.
“We want everybody to feel comfortable coming forward,” Miller said.
Chatham County District Attorney Meg Heap said the discrepancy in reporting between Rape Crisis Center and metro police is an issue that needs to be resolved.
Heap said she hopes to see more cohesiveness with the Sexual Assault Response Team, which includes her office, law enforcement and the Rape Crisis Center.
“If there’s a disconnect,” she said, “what is it and how do we fix it?”
They will be meeting on a regular basis, Heap said.
“We’re all working to stop the rapists and the sexual assaults and to stop having victims and to prosecute the abusers,” the district attorney said. “We need to get on the same page... We may agree to disagree on how it’s classified, but we should all have the same number.”
Gibson-Carter said she’s optimistic the reporting discrepancy will be handled.
“Our position is to continue to provide the prevention education and awareness in the hopes of heightening the awareness of citizens in our community to be vigilant about their safety, but at the same time really advocate for justice for individuals who become victims,” she said.
Gibson-Carter attributed the increase in rape to what she calls a “hook-up culture” in which more people are using social media to meet and have casual sex.
Last year, the center teamed with metro police to begin bartender training aimed at increasing awareness and encouraging staff at alcohol-serving establishments to deter sexual violence. In December, off-duty metro police arrested a man they said they caught raping an unconscious woman in a parking deck late at night. They later charged a second man with party to the crime.
“Many times rape is a crime of opportunity,” Heap said. “It’s not about sex. It’s about control.”
In many rape cases, the victim knows the attacker. Gibson-Carter said spousal rape is also a part of the problem.
“Obviously, not all sex is rape, and rape is not sex,” she said. “But people have to wrap their heads around the fact that this can happen to someone you know. We have to fully understand what consent means.
“No means no. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a relationship.”
Trying to make a change
There are resources for local victims of domestic and sexual violence. Along with SAFE Shelter and the Rape Crisis Center, options include the Chatham County Victim Witness Assistance Program and the Coastal Child Advocacy Center.
SAFE Shelter’s primary service area is Chatham County, but Branch said its doors are open to anyone. Occasionally, victims come from other counties and states.
“We’re never going to turn a victim away,” she said.
Domestic violence, she said, is something that’s not always apparent. Many people who face it don’t make it known, and it can affect anyone.
Heap said the DA’s office is trying to make a dent, too. Sex assaults and homicides are prosecuted by the major crimes division, and two Chatham County prosecutors specialize in trying crimes against women.
“These are hard cases,” Heap said. “When I was a victim advocate, I did domestic violence. To see them just come back beaten and beaten — it’s tough.”
In many cases, Heap said, victims who have been beaten will change their minds about testifying.
“It’s repeat violence by a certain person,” she said. “It’s a cycle. They have issues. A lot of times, they’re financially dependent on the abuser, which makes them less likely to prosecute.”
That cycle of violence, she said, affects all walks of life.
“This crime crosses all barriers — rich, poor, black, white, Hispanic,” Heap said.
The DA’s office is trying to increase its outreach. Two steps have been to add a domestic violence docket that separates those cases from others and to remind bonding companies that it’s illegal to allow victims of domestic violence to bond out the person charged in the crime.
Additionally, the office is trying to make sure that people arrested on domestic violence charges can’t get out of jail before advocates have a chance to reach the victim. To do that, judges have been asked to set conditions on bonds for domestic violence charges, requiring the offender to appear before a judge prior to getting bond.
“If we can break that cycle, if they can see there’s hope or a way out,” the district attorney said.
Just like SAFE Shelter, the Rape Crisis Center operates a 24-hour crisis line, through which trained volunteer advocates and staff provide support and information to victims of sexual assault, their families and friends.
Gibson-Carter said rape is under-reported, and that her center is constantly trying to reach those victims who might feel uncomfortable coming forward about being attacked.
“It doesn’t matter if you were raped five minutes, five years or 15 years ago — you can pick up the phone and get the support you need,” Gibson-Carter said.
The center is automatically contacted when someone calls police to report a rape. Previously, the center only worked with St. Joseph’s/Candler, but this year will also begin a partnership with Memorial University Medical Center. Nurses there are being trained in the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner — or SANE — program to help victims who come to Memorial, Gibson-Carter said.
Both the shelter and the center also offer courses to help prevent people — women, men and children — from becoming victims.
“Anybody who hurts someone who can’t defend themselves is nothing but a bully. Period,” Branch said.
TO REPORT OR GET HELP
To learn more about SAFE Shelter Center for Domestic Violence Services, go to www.safeshelter.org. The shelter operates a 24-hour crisis line at 912-629-8888.
To learn more about the Rape Crisis Center of the Coastal Empire, go to www.rccsav.org. The center operates a 24-hour crisis line at 912-233-7273 and 888-241-7273.
To report violent crime as it is occurring, call 911.