Domestic violence deaths in Illinois rose by 110% in 2023.

68% of those deaths involved firearms, including the fatal shooting of getting a Gonzalez and her 15 year-old daughter Danielle lot of artists in July 2023.

In Little Village, she took out an order of protection against her husband weeks before he shot and killed them.

According to prosecutors.

Now there's recently passed Bill in Illinois named in her honor.

It's intended to protect domestic violence survivors, but providing a process that requires police to remove guns after orders of protections are granted.

Joining us to talk about this is money led Atlanta GA director of policy advocacy and research for the network advocating against domestic violence.

And Lauren with the at is managing authority of attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Family Services.

Thank you both for being here.

And I want to stuff with the Milan.

This bill has been the works for more than a year.

Is this a victory for domestic violence victims?

Would you say?

Yes, absolutely.

I think that this the passage of this bill really Strong's sends a strong signal, 2 survivors and victims of domestic violence that the state of Illinois is taking their experience of violence seriously.

You know, what was your, you know, your feeling when you finally realize that?

>> All that work that you think that everyone has been putting in multiple people that this bill is is getting past.

It was really emotional to be honest with you.

I think for a while because we first introduces in January of 2023.

We were a little nervous that it wasn't going to go through rated had passed a version of it had passed out of the House of Representatives in 2023.

And then we were able to get it over the finish line.

Also, it's been a long time coming now.

We also want to mention that we'll some butter number of critics of the bill, including Republican state lawmakers and gun right advocates.

But they declined our invent in that Haitian.

I want to proceed with you.

What would you say?

The previous legislation failed to address?

I think you over the course of the time from introduction and the passage of the version from 2023 to the version that we have today was that we were just able to have more conversations with law enforcement with states attorneys we're really able to address kind of some of their concerns of how this would play out day to day.

We wanted the strongest version of the bill to pass to make sure that it is going to work as it's intended to work.

So I think it just give us the opportunity to kind of have those conversations, those hard conversations.

We both ultimately all ultimately have the same.

All I think it was just a matter of getting getting there.

And Lauren, I want to go back.

What is a process for survivors to obtain an order of protection for those who don't know that prices?

Yes.

So it's a court process.

Typically a person will go to the courthouse and Chicago at 5, 5, 5 West Harrison.

>> And asked to fill out a stack of paperwork.

It's a long stack of paperwork and it's a daunting process for survivors when they are.

>> Seeking orders of protection going through this emotional toll, it can Absolutely.

And there's very few resources at the courthouse for survivors and no matter how hard organizations like legal aid Society or our partner organizations and advocates work, we will never be able to address the need of survivors when they're seeking this assistance.

>> And what survivors facing when they go to the process of obtaining an order of protection.

Absolutely.

So when a person relationship but there's domestic violence, that's most dangerous time and that relationship.

That's the time that the person who has been committing abuse feels that they have lost control over the survivor.

>> So it's already a dangerous time when they leave a situation.

There could be a lot of other factors.

They could have lost their housing.

They could have lost their financial support.

They could have children with them.

So it's a really difficult time for survivors and they need a lot of assistance that something that you say that many people don't know about that process afterwards.

Putting that order of protection can be little need.

What does that look like for a survivor?

Absolutely.

At that point, the survivor has probably left their house or they have been forced to leave their house.

They have left, you know, whatever sort of stability that they had before.

>> And going to court is a daunting process.

And if you add the dynamics domestic violence on top of that, >> it just adds so many more emotional layers to an already fraught court process model.

And now the bill will require police to take guns from alleged abusers.

>> Can you tell us more about the new regulations in the bill?

Yeah, absolutely.

So as Lauren was saying, you know, orders of protection are really intended to be very comprehensive.

Domestic violence can impact a survivor in every area of their life, whether it be financial housing, emotional mental and so orders of protection are intended to be one-stop shops, very comprehensive.

So in that current border protection process, you can request firearm relief.

And what this bill was really fundamentally about was strengthening that existing protection in the law to make sure that survivors kind of know what the option is under the firearm Relief section of an order of protection.

Judge is no kind of what the standard is for them to grant that relief and law enforcement understand their role in kind of what the judge is directing them to do through court process.

And why would you say you're so passionate about this bill being passed?

Yeah, I mean, domestic violence is a personal issue for me.

You know, being about the know we know that one in 4 that the nose will experience intimate partner violence at some point in their life.

And this is a really important Bill.

We see the impacts.

It feels like every week we see a new headline of survivors that are being either shot or killed at the hands of someone who says to love them and is experiencing firearm involve domestic It's a really important bill.

Really proud of it.

We're really thankful for our sponsors and all of coalition.

It took to get this over the finish line and talking about that Laurin House domestic violence discuss with marginalized communities.

As you mentioned, especially for Latino's.

Absolutely.

I think that when you are seeking assistance from the court, all the documents are in English.

All of the judges are speaking English.

So I think that there's a literal language barrier when trying to access these services.

>> And this assistance from court or law enforcement or any player that the person might be seeking assistance from.

And you talked about this happening so often.

Now we look at headlines and it's something that we constantly see.

What are some of the challenges that you would say with come with identifying helping?

>> Domestic situations?

Yeah, I think that folks historically have seeing domestic violence as something that we don't talk about publicly, you know, issues in the home should stay in the home or, you know, if you don't have bruises, you don't have any visible marks.

You know, that's that's not enough.

You're not experiencing domestic violence and that's completely country.

We know that some of the highest looked out of La Falla are really, you know, when that person stocking you or, you know, is losing that power and control that we know was a fundamental dynamic of domestic violence.

And so I think we really just have to do more to broaden the conversation and to do a lot of education about what is domestic violence.

I think for a lot of people, it's not a word that's in their vocabulary, but it is unfortunately very common and pervasive in our communities.

Do you think the word, Lauren, domestic violence at people maybe just kind of already used to that word because we see it so much in the headlines.

Yeah.

And I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding sometimes of what domestic violence could be.

I think that some people think that domestic violence is only getting hit.

>> Were strangled, but it encompasses so many other tactics that people who are committing abuse might use financial abuse or mental abuse or emotional abuse.

Lauren, this bill received some pushback and concerns about challenges anticipated was seizing guns.

What was your response to some of these concerns?

Absolutely.

I think as Marlena mentioned you know, are the advocates really worked with law enforcement to try to address some of those concerns?

But I think at the end of the day, these challenges can be overcome.

I think that when we're talking about saving people's lives, I think that it's worth working through those challenges to make sure that we have the safety that the survivors deserve.

And what are your thoughts on the same question?

Because according to the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence in 2023, 94 incidents of domestic violence led to 120.

That's and increase from the 45 incidents of domestic violence that led to 57 deaths in 2022.

Yeah, you know, I think again, we had a lot of conversations with law enforcement who ultimately we want to make sure that this works for them because going to be the ones enforcing this rate.

>> I think that this is a question about being proactive when we know that there's a high risk of look ballot E for the survivor and or their family to make sure that those firearms are removed as quickly when there's that immediate urgency to remove them.

And that's what this bill really is about is emergency cases where we know that there's a credible threat of violence, too, that person and their family.

We need to remove victims.

Study also see that the police that they were open to this change.

Yeah.

I at the end, you know, with this final version of the bill, law enforcement was neutral so they weren't in strong opposition.

And we're really excited to see that happen.

And final question here.

What accountability measures are in place to ensure the bill is carried out fully?

Yeah, I think that we have a very long and robust implementation process ahead of us.

We know that as advocates that worked on this, we have half of this work was getting the bill across the finish line, right?

But there's going to have to be a lot of time and energy and the same passion is going to be there to make sure that we're monitoring having conversations with law enforcement with the state's attorney's office and making sure that this really works the way that it's intended to work and if it doesn't, we will certainly be back in Springfield and final thoughts.

Floor.

So I just want thank you for bringing