ST. CHARLES COUNTY — Dan Milburn remembers the warning signs.
Milburn, a St. Charles County trucking instructor and ordained minister, lost his 20-year-old daughter Shelbi Milburn in an Oct. 17 shooting he’s still trying to understand.
Shelbi was with her boyfriend in their O’Fallon, Missouri, home about 3 a.m. when she was shot and killed, but the investigation into what exactly led to Milburn’s death remains open, said O’Fallon police spokesman Sgt. Robert Kendall.
Her boyfriend was charged with drug trafficking and as a felon in possession of a firearm within days after the shooting.
While Milburn awaits answers, he’s been reliving a series of domestic violence incidents that he now wishes more had been done to prevent.
In the months before the shooting, Milburn said, Shelbi’s boyfriend had shoved her into a wall and then threw a smartphone at her face so hard it split the side of her cheek in a gash, requiring seven stitches.
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“Now, everyone is coming out of the woodwork,†Milburn said. “They’re telling us: We saw him punch her. We saw him shove her.â€
Milburn is dedicating himself to raising awareness about abuse at a time when, ºüÀêÊÓƵ advocates say, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased domestic violence across the region.
But that increase has also inspired a series of lasting changes in how service providers can help.
“It’s been a devastating few years to say the least,†said Jessica Woolbright, executive director of domestic violence shelter Saint Martha’s Hall. “But if there’s a silver lining, it’s that a lot of people were worried about women during this time and we had to remove barriers to how we help people.â€
Adapting to need
As the pandemic reduced capacity at shelters, canceled many in-person services and kept people home with their abusers, emergency court hearings became available online, shelters added texting to their hotlines and nonprofits looked to hotels when shelters were full, nonprofits told the Post-Dispatch this month.
In 2020, ºüÀêÊÓƵ city and county police both reported their highest number of domestic violence incidents in the last five years. ºüÀêÊÓƵ County responded to 25% more domestic violence incidents compared with 2019, and ºüÀêÊÓƵ police saw a 7% increase.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office recorded an increase of 10%. St. Charles County Police domestic violence incidents rose more than 40%, according to data submitted to the Missouri Highway Patrol.
And while 2021 call totals in the metro area’s two largest departments appeared to be trending back toward previous years numbers, some agencies say abuse cases continue to be severe.
Sgt. Tyler Edgecombe leads the ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Police domestic violence response unit, and said his department and the advocates it works with agree cases are becoming more violent.
“The level and complexity of each investigation has increased incredibly,†Edgecombe said, attributing some of the change to the increased stress on families since the pandemic began. “The rage is higher. The stress is higher. The follow-up is more complex. People’s needs are greater.â€
Edgecombe said mandated reporters such as teachers and counselors were not able to step in as much with limited in-person contact, possibly leading to more violent cases by the time someone called police.
And some shelters, like The Women’s Safe House in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, have continued to see high demand for services, said executive director Mary Ann Owens.
The nonprofit’s hotline is regularly getting more calls than it did pre-pandemic, and shelter beds have been consistently full for months, she said.
“We’re turning more people away,†she said. “The demand is really high right now.â€
Advocates said some people might skip calling police and go directly to shelters for a number of reasons, including that the abuse hasn’t risen to the level of law enforcement intervention, they don’t trust police or they would fear retaliation from their abusers.
And in the past, police also sent people to court to file immediate restraining orders against alleged abusers, while shelters would help them fill out the forms.
Edgecombe said one of the most welcome changes from the pandemic has been the ability to do that online in ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Circuit Courts, allowing police in some cases to help people fill them out on scene, speaking through a window to reduce contact during the pandemic.
As court backlogs grew and court proceedings were delayed, several other counties and ºüÀêÊÓƵ city followed suit. Circuit courts in ºüÀêÊÓƵ and ºüÀêÊÓƵ County plan to make the change permanent, court officials told the Post-Dispatch this week.
Hope Whitehead, ºüÀêÊÓƵ County’s judicial administrator, said in an email that the online protection orders were one of the “shining stars†that came out of the pandemic.
“One victim said to me: ‘Great, now I don’t have to come to court with my bruises displayed,’†Whitehead said.
‘I will call 911’
Beyond the courts, service providers and shelters also had to craft new ways of reaching out.
Woolbright, of Saint Martha’s Hall, said her nonprofit had to get better at safety planning over the phone with women it could not house. The shelter was only able to take in about half the number of women and kids as usual in 2020 because of COVID-19 restrictions.
“Isolation is already a really powerful tool when you’re talking about violence against women,†Woolbright said. “With kids being homeschooled and working from home or women having to leave their jobs, there was no excuse to get away with the kids, so we would coach women over the phone about safety plans or say: ’If you give me your address, I will call 911.’â€
Woolbright said the pandemic also brought attention, as well as a boost of state and federal relief funding to domestic violence providers. That money helped her organization expand, creating its first drop-in center for people who need services other than full shelter. The center is set to open in early 2022 on the campus of Assumption Catholic Church on Mattis Road in South County.
Melissa Tutterow, development director for the Violence Prevention Center of Southwestern Illinois in Belleville, said nonprofits also used technology to their benefit.
They added a texting component to their emergency hotlines to make sure people could reach someone, even if it wasn’t safe to call, and tapped into online counseling to give people access to services, even if they were stuck at home with their abuser.
“I think we’ve done a really good job … of being creative with our outreach,†Tutterow said. “People are reaching out before the violence gets too violent, and our interventions are taking on new meaning.â€
Grief and regret
Dan Milburn plans to tell his daughter’s story to anyone who will listen, in the hopes it might create programs or prompt someone to step up for a family member they’ve seen become isolated or abused.
Shelbi was a lover of motorcycles and butterflies, and was incredibly close with both her parents and her five siblings, he said.
“She just had a beautiful heart.â€
Shelbi began dating her boyfriend when she was 18, and she knew he had a criminal history, he said.
“She was a big believer in second chances and wanted to see the best in everyone,†said Milburn.
Shelbi was helping to care for her grandmother after she suffered a recent stroke. The 20-year-old had recently started cosmetology school and hoped to work one day in a planned family-run nail salon.
Milburn and his wife, Amy, along with Shelbi’s siblings are learning how to cope with grief and regret.
“It comes on so strong and sudden,†Milburn said about three weeks after her death. “Like have you ever swimmed to the bottom of a deep pool and before you get back up to the top you think: ‘I’m not going to make it. I’m going to drown right here?’ That’s what it feels like when I think about her being gone.â€
Milburn has educated himself about domestic violence, begun working with advocates at Saint Martha’s Hall and hopes to lobby for more services and wider awareness of warning signs.
“People need to talk about this way more. I don’t think people realize it’s one of the most common crimes,†Milburn said. “So Shelbi’s still going to have a voice. We’re going to tell her story and make sure people know that they don’t have to suffer like she did, and like we are now.â€