Deana Franke is angry. Frustrated, tired and angry.

Franke, executive director of Help-In-Crisis, hasn’t received an increase in funding from the state in 15 years, two key members of her staff have had to quit in the past few months to find jobs that pay more, and the shelter is at capacity, with 28 residents.

Lately, she’s spent several days out of town, working with the state and any other entity that might help her provide for victims of abuse.

“We are woefully underfunded, and services throughout the state are being cut,” said Franke. “We have closed our office in Stilwell, not because we lack clients, but because we had no funding to operate.”

Franke is just one of many directors of domestic violence agencies experiencing a slump in funding and an increase of cases. According Marcia Smith, executive director for the Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, Oklahoma has witnessed at least eight domestic violence-related homicides in the past seven weeks.

“From the metropolitan areas of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, to Stigler, Oologah, Broken Arrow, Durant, Woodward and Tahlequah, eight women have been murdered by current or former spouses or intimate partners who then turned the weapon on themselves,” said Smith.

In a recently released report on 2004 data, the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., found that Oklahoma ranks seventh in the U.S. in the rate of women murdered by men in single-victim, single-offender incidents. In addition, 28 shelters across the state receive a total of less than $5 million to provide services to more than 16,000 women and children who are fleeing domestic violence each year.

Rogers State University student Sherri Loghry, who recently prepared an analysis, discovered that of the 91 inmates on Oklahoma’s death row, 28 are incarcerated for a domestic violence-related murder. Of those who committed such murders, eight had prior protective orders and/or domestic abuse charges against them.

Domestic or intimate partner violence is all too common and takes many forms, said Smith.

“Research suggests nearly 25 percent of women will experience some sort of abuse in an intimate relationship, and 10 percent will suffer from severe abuse,” said Smith. “The most severe form of abuse is homicide by a current or formerly intimate partner.”

If Smith’s statement bears out, it would mean that in a room of four of your closest female friends or family, one or more will suffer some form of domestic abuse. It could be your mother, your sister, your best friend or your daughter who is the victim of a verbal assault, a beating, or worse – death.

Franke indicated stalking is one of the most difficult forms of abuse to prosecute.

“Stalking is one of the most complex ways that domestic violence plays out,” said Franke. “A stalker may do nothing more than leave a rose to let the victim know she is being watched. That leaving of a rose does not meet any standard for criminal behavior, but in the ongoing series of events that constitutes stalking it requires investigation, commitment and tenacity to prove in a court of law.”

That commitment is often lacking from the local justice system, according to Franke.

“As far as how these [domestic violence or abuse] cases are handled locally, it’s sketchy, and seldom focuses on the safety of the victim or the children,” said Franke. “It is not anyone’s favorite crime to investigate, prosecute or sit in judgment on. It is not a one-time incident with witnesses. Most often, only the victim and the defendant are witnesses. Our justice system works well with a one-time incident that results in theft of property, or cases where there is actual physical evidence. It does not work as well when it is an ongoing reign of threats, violence and fear.”