Local leaders discuss next steps for Family Justice Center in Orange County

ORLANDO, Fla. — An international concept designed to protect victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, elder abuse and human trafficking could soon be making its way to Orange County.

In conjunction with Alliance for Hope International, Harbor House of Central Florida is spearheading the initiative, which could revolutionize the way survivors are cared for, with a goal of decreasing homicide rates.

Local leaders and community advocates came together to discuss the implementation of a Family Justice Center (FJC) in Orange County, since the concept has yet to be introduced in Orlando.

The goal is to provide all the services survivors need under one roof. These centers will serve as a centralized database for service providers, so survivors only need to share their story once.

Harbor House CEO Michelle Sperzel said this is important for survivors because it gives them hope that there is life on the other side of domestic violence.

“We followed a survivor and three days after she experienced her domestic violence incident, she had to go to 14 locations and had to fill out over 150 pages’ worth of paperwork," Sperzel said. "That in itself, when you’re in pain and trying to understand everything that’s just happened to you, you have to work with your kids, you have to work with law enforcement, to have all of that be something that’s going to be in one place is removing barriers to someone being able to seek services."

“If it’s difficult to get to it, it’s most likely they’re not going to get it," she added. "Having all these partners, they’re not necessarily all on site. But we’re not going to continually refer survivor to different service providers."

The Family Justice Center will consist of a partnership of key players that typically interact with survivors after an incident has occurred, including trained law enforcement personnel, legal aid staff, and medical personnel.

Former San Diego city attorney, Casey Gwinn, first introduced the Family Justice Center model there in the early 2000s.

Prior to launching the Alliance for Hope International organization with CEO Gael Strack, they worked together as prosecutors at the San Diego City Attorney’s Office.

During that time, both Gwinn and Strack conducted a study reviewing 300 attempted strangulation cases to “determine the signs and symptoms of attempted strangulation that could be used to corroborate the victim’s allegation of being ‘choked’ for purposes of prosecution.”

The study demonstrates that a lack of proper training may have contributed to police and prosecutors to overlook symptoms of strangulation or rely too heavily on the visible signs of strangulation.

“That’s when we realized these guys were strangling women before they kill them, and they’re not being prosecuted. We’re failing at early invention and stopping them before the homicide,” said Casey Gwinn, president of Alliance for Hope International.

Since then, he and Strack created the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention and have launched more than 150 Family Justice Centers across the country, with a focus on strangulation training.

 “The hope of all this is in San Diego, when we started focusing on strangulation cases and we created a Family Justice Center with all the services for victims under one roof, our homicides went like this," Gwinn said. "Today, San Diego has the lowest domestic violence homicide rate in America. Orlando and Orange County are six to eight times higher in homicides than we are."

Gwinn says that in his experience, when survivors have access to resources like these, they typically don’t recant or return to their abusers. 

Sperzel sad the planning for this Family Justice Center in Orange County started more than five years ago.

Since then, a study tour conducted in January of this year compiled feedback from community players and domestic violence survivors on what they would like to see at their FJC.

“The goal is to start small but dream big,” Sperzel said.

Among those who attended the planning session was Pastor Michael Neely.

Neely has worked at the Hillsborough County FJC for six years and understands firsthand what survivors go through, because he himself is a domestic violence survivor.

To Gwinn’s point, he says FJC’s are beneficial to the community since they have contributed to a massive decrease in homicides in the cities where they have been implemented.

Still, Neely warns that there’s still work that needs to be done to this day.

“Believe it or not, it’s 2025 and that kind of ... ultra-patriarchal thinking still exists that a woman should stay and pray, that God still hates divorce, just keep loving him, keep respecting him and one day he’ll change, that kind of thing," he said. "It’s really more prevalent. You would think that by now, and then there have been some changes, but overall, that kind of thinking still exists."

According to Alliance for Hope International, there are more than 150,000 adult and children survivors who receive services at FJCs annually in the United States.